Latest / The BlackSheep Podcast: Presented by HM Magazine / Darren King: Mutemath (Repost from 1/25/2022)

Transcript

Darren King: Mutemath (Repost from 1/25/2022) · The BlackSheep Podcast: Presented by HM Magazine

• 0:15
  Speaker 1: This Sun Now through Me.
• 0:23
  Speaker 2: And Disout Myself show.
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: Today we have none other than Darren King.
• 0:32
  Speaker 3: This is one of the episodes I am most excited
• 0:36
  Speaker 3: about because Darren, You're somebody who I've been listening to
• 0:41
  Speaker 3: for god at least fifteen years. I remember when Mute
• 0:45
  Speaker 3: Math put out your very first EP, the Control EP.
• 0:48
  Speaker 3: I remember like the day that it came out, and
• 0:51
  Speaker 3: I just was like blown away by the sound.
• 0:54
  Speaker 1: I was like, what is this.
• 0:55
  Speaker 3: This is so different than anything else I had been
• 0:57
  Speaker 3: listening to at the time. So whenever that was that
• 1:00
  Speaker 3: like two thousand and five, two thousand and six, something
• 1:02
  Speaker 3: like that, that's like, I've literally been a Mute Math
• 1:05
  Speaker 3: fan and a fan of you since day one. So
• 1:08
  Speaker 3: and I can I know for a fact Colin has too.
• 1:10
  Speaker 3: I don't know, Culin. Were you into like earth suit stuff?
• 1:13
  Speaker 2: Even I was into earth suit as well? Yes, yeah,
• 1:17
  Speaker 2: way way back. In fact, I was actually just talking
• 1:20
  Speaker 2: to a really good friend of mine the other day
• 1:22
  Speaker 2: and I was like, Hey, guess who was coming on
• 1:25
  Speaker 2: the podcast and Darren King And he's like, oh my god, dude,
• 1:28
  Speaker 2: are you even gonna be able to talk to him?
• 1:30
  Speaker 2: Because you're such a fan boy like you talk about
• 1:32
  Speaker 2: him all the time, so this is a pretty fun
• 1:36
  Speaker 2: moment for me.
• 1:37
  Speaker 4: I got I'm honor. Did either of you get to
• 1:41
  Speaker 4: go to a concert? Either an earth Suit or Mute
• 1:43
  Speaker 4: Mass show? Two?
• 1:45
  Speaker 2: Mut Math shows?
• 1:46
  Speaker 1: What we went to two? I know we went to
• 1:48
  Speaker 1: First Have what I went to First.
• 1:50
  Speaker 2: Have, and then I saw another one in Suit Falls.
• 1:55
  Speaker 2: I think early on they played suit Falls.
• 1:58
  Speaker 4: I love First Ave. That's one of my favorite venues
• 2:01
  Speaker 4: in America. It's always such a special place to play.
• 2:05
  Speaker 4: Do you remember there was one night that Meatmath played
• 2:08
  Speaker 4: first half and a really epic thing happened. The power
• 2:12
  Speaker 4: went out? Was it? Do you remember if it was
• 2:14
  Speaker 4: that show?
• 2:14
  Speaker 2: Don't think it was at that show.
• 2:16
  Speaker 3: I think this was on Like what this would have been?
• 2:19
  Speaker 3: Like what twenty fifteen?
• 2:20
  Speaker 2: Callin Yeah, fifteen, twenty sixteen, something like that.
• 2:23
  Speaker 4: Gotcha? We had this one night. This was later. We
• 2:26
  Speaker 4: had this song called blood Pressure and the power went out.
• 2:30
  Speaker 4: It was probably the second or first song in the set.
• 2:33
  Speaker 4: The power went out, lights, everything, and I think it
• 2:37
  Speaker 4: went out sometime in the second chorus and we just
• 2:42
  Speaker 4: kept it going.
• 2:43
  Speaker 5: Uh.
• 2:44
  Speaker 4: The tracks were running on the laptop, so I still
• 2:45
  Speaker 4: had to click of my ears and I was playing,
• 2:47
  Speaker 4: so all we had was the drums on the stage,
• 2:49
  Speaker 4: and then the audience started singing along. Oh my god,
• 2:54
  Speaker 4: and then there's this moment, did a little break and
• 2:56
  Speaker 4: I did a film and you could not you could
• 2:59
  Speaker 4: not have timed it any more perfectly. It was one
• 3:00
  Speaker 4: of the best moments. The third chorus came in on
• 3:03
  Speaker 4: the downbeat of it, everything turned back on and it
• 3:06
  Speaker 4: was one of it. It seemed planned and it was
• 3:09
  Speaker 4: one of the most like hype things that was. I
• 3:12
  Speaker 4: remember that about First Half. I also I got to
• 3:14
  Speaker 4: see one of my heroes. Are you familiar with DJ Shadow?
• 3:17
  Speaker 2: Have you ever heard of?
• 3:18
  Speaker 4: No him? He's one of my favorite music producers and
• 3:22
  Speaker 4: music makers, and I got to see him at First
• 3:25
  Speaker 4: Half one time. Oh I love that.
• 3:27
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it's such an epic venue. I feel like a
• 3:30
  Speaker 3: lot of like really good musicians appreciate the fans in Minneapolis,
• 3:35
  Speaker 3: just because it sounds like the fans of Minneapolis really
• 3:37
  Speaker 3: appreciate good music and they've always been super supportive of
• 3:40
  Speaker 3: really good artists.
• 3:42
  Speaker 4: Yeah, yep, cold Climate Oh yeah, cold Climate fans.
• 3:46
  Speaker 1: We have nothing else to do but listen to music.
• 3:48
  Speaker 4: Yeah about y'all.
• 3:49
  Speaker 2: Yeah, there's some fun about that venue too, because it's
• 3:51
  Speaker 2: very intimate. Yeah, it's a it's a short venue, but
• 3:55
  Speaker 2: it's tall, so you get you get two levels, but
• 3:57
  Speaker 2: it feels like you're you're right on top of each other. Yeah,
• 4:01
  Speaker 2: and I'm sure as a musician that's got to be
• 4:03
  Speaker 2: like the most fun thing in the world.
• 4:05
  Speaker 4: Yeah, there's a thing about stage height and width of
• 4:09
  Speaker 4: the room and the levels. There are certain places. Another
• 4:12
  Speaker 4: one is the nine thirty Club in DC, where there's
• 4:15
  Speaker 4: just like something about the room's layout and just how
• 4:18
  Speaker 4: where it positions you that makes it fun, makes it
• 4:21
  Speaker 4: feel good. Yeah.
• 4:23
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I've always been a fan of the smaller the venue,
• 4:26
  Speaker 2: the better.
• 4:27
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 4:28
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, Yeah.
• 4:28
  Speaker 3: All right, So we've got a lot of music history
• 4:31
  Speaker 3: to talk with you, Darren. You have been even before Mutemath,
• 4:35
  Speaker 3: you were in some other stuff. We talked a little
• 4:37
  Speaker 3: bit about earth Suit, so we'll talk about that. We'll
• 4:40
  Speaker 3: obviously talk a lot about Mute Math, and then also
• 4:42
  Speaker 3: you've been up to a lot of really cool music
• 4:44
  Speaker 3: projects up I would say probably in the last like
• 4:47
  Speaker 3: five or so years, you've just been like doing a
• 4:49
  Speaker 3: lot of really interesting collaborations and and just your own
• 4:52
  Speaker 3: really interesting music. And so we want to talk about
• 4:55
  Speaker 3: all of that as well, but let's start at the
• 4:57
  Speaker 3: very beginning of Darren King. Okay, because you are probably,
• 5:01
  Speaker 3: at least in my mind, maybe the best drummer of
• 5:05
  Speaker 3: our generation. I want to know what made you pick
• 5:09
  Speaker 3: up the drums, Like did were you a kid that
• 5:11
  Speaker 3: like one day your parents just like on Christmas got
• 5:14
  Speaker 3: you a drum kit and that just like ignited a passion,
• 5:17
  Speaker 3: or like what happened?
• 5:18
  Speaker 1: How did you get into playing drums in my school?
• 5:22
  Speaker 4: I grew up in Marshfield, Missouri, a town of about
• 5:24
  Speaker 4: five or six thousand people, but it was near Springfield,
• 5:28
  Speaker 4: which is a larger city, and I played in elementary
• 5:34
  Speaker 4: and high school band and my best friend, Jonathan and
• 5:36
  Speaker 4: I were both drummers together, and so that was a
• 5:39
  Speaker 4: really positive first experience was having my best buddy also
• 5:45
  Speaker 4: be a drummer, and so we would always jam together.
• 5:47
  Speaker 4: But I didn't have a drum set until after sixth grade.
• 5:53
  Speaker 4: And what I did was everybody my age I was
• 5:56
  Speaker 4: born in eighty two wanted to be Michael Jordan had
• 5:58
  Speaker 4: all these basketballers a horrible basketball player. I've never invested
• 6:03
  Speaker 4: so much time and energy into something with no reward
• 6:07
  Speaker 4: as I did on basketball. I was just always horrible
• 6:10
  Speaker 4: compared to my you know o the kids my age.
• 6:12
  Speaker 4: But what I did was I aired out the basketballs.
• 6:15
  Speaker 4: I about five of them, because you got one each year,
• 6:18
  Speaker 4: you know, at the end of summer camp. So I
• 6:20
  Speaker 4: had about four or five basketballs and I aired them
• 6:21
  Speaker 4: to different pitches, and I pushed the mattress off of
• 6:25
  Speaker 4: my bed and so the metal rim of the box
• 6:28
  Speaker 4: spring was my high hats and I would play my
• 6:32
  Speaker 4: four basketballs boom boom, boom boom. And I had my
• 6:35
  Speaker 4: CD player, which I still have in my studio. Also
• 6:36
  Speaker 4: got that same my old CD player, and you know,
• 6:39
  Speaker 4: you could join the BMG Music Club or whatever, the
• 6:43
  Speaker 4: mail order music four or five CDs a month, and
• 6:47
  Speaker 4: I remember the first I had some really cool jazz
• 6:49
  Speaker 4: CDs for my dad's collection. But the first five were
• 6:54
  Speaker 4: it was I got Weezer, Cranberry's Offspring, and then a
• 6:59
  Speaker 4: few other some jazz things. I had some some more
• 7:02
  Speaker 4: like surf rock, pipe Pipeline and ventures all that I
• 7:07
  Speaker 4: had always. But that was a plank Eye, really yeah.
• 7:13
  Speaker 4: I Plank Eye was one of my first shows I
• 7:18
  Speaker 4: ever went to, and it was a huge plank Eye
• 7:21
  Speaker 4: fan obsessed cool guy. So I play along to the
• 7:24
  Speaker 4: plank I CD and that that was it for hours
• 7:28
  Speaker 4: and hours on my basketballs until my parents for my
• 7:31
  Speaker 4: birthday that summer bought me a drum step and and
• 7:36
  Speaker 4: I think that what made me drum the way I
• 7:38
  Speaker 4: did was I grew up in a charismatic church. They
• 7:43
  Speaker 4: were pretty exuberant. It was. It was in the early nineties.
• 7:47
  Speaker 4: There was the the Brownsville. There were all these there
• 7:51
  Speaker 4: were some you know, a lot of movements happening, and
• 7:54
  Speaker 4: our church was emulating all that. And so the music was,
• 7:58
  Speaker 4: you know, we play a lot. And the piano player,
• 8:03
  Speaker 4: his name was Rob, Rob the only very kind. He's
• 8:05
  Speaker 4: Brad Pitt's brother in law. Well, yeah, he married Julie. So, yeah,
• 8:11
  Speaker 4: Julie and Doug Pitt, Brad's siblings went to my church
• 8:15
  Speaker 4: growing up. And so Julie, Brad's brother in law was
• 8:18
  Speaker 4: the dana player. He had perfect pitch and he was
• 8:20
  Speaker 4: in a group called Glad. Do you remember do you
• 8:22
  Speaker 4: remember this Christian acapella group called Glad. Yeah, look him
• 8:26
  Speaker 4: up there.
• 8:26
  Speaker 2: I swear to God, my grandma and my dad would
• 8:29
  Speaker 2: listen to them.
• 8:30
  Speaker 4: They would, Yeah, they they were I mean very good.
• 8:33
  Speaker 4: You know, as as a cappella groups go, they could
• 8:35
  Speaker 4: they could shred anyhow. So Rob convinced them to let
• 8:39
  Speaker 4: me play percussion, and so they let me be the
• 8:42
  Speaker 4: kunga player in our church. You know, they would have
• 8:45
  Speaker 4: a revival services and we would have church, you know,
• 8:49
  Speaker 4: eight times a week. You know, oh my god, wow,
• 8:53
  Speaker 4: we did that for ten Yeah, for ten ten weeks
• 8:56
  Speaker 4: we had we were trying to emulate those revivals that
• 8:59
  Speaker 4: were happening. So that was whenever. This group a Reba
• 9:03
  Speaker 4: Rambo and Donnie Maguire were Southern gospel royalty turned evangelists
• 9:09
  Speaker 4: and they would come through cities and they would pick
• 9:12
  Speaker 4: up people fresh out of high school and have them
• 9:14
  Speaker 4: be interns, so you play in their van and tour
• 9:18
  Speaker 4: with them for a year. So what they did was
• 9:20
  Speaker 4: they went through New Orleans and they picked up two
• 9:23
  Speaker 4: young men, one named Paul Meanie and the other one
• 9:25
  Speaker 4: Adam mcclough, who used to sing on Bourbon Street. They
• 9:29
  Speaker 4: had a Christian coffee house on Bourbon Street right above
• 9:32
  Speaker 4: Big Daddy's bottomless topless called it's called Cafe Joel. And
• 9:36
  Speaker 4: that was their outreach. You know that their church had
• 9:40
  Speaker 4: was the subourbon street jam session things. That's what they did.
• 9:44
  Speaker 4: That's what Paul and Adam did. They would play at
• 9:46
  Speaker 4: the cafe. Joel Rieve and Donnie picked them up and
• 9:49
  Speaker 4: then their next stop was Springflam, Missouri, and they came
• 9:52
  Speaker 4: to our church for ten weeks. And that's how I
• 9:53
  Speaker 4: met Paul, and that's how I met Adam, who was
• 9:56
  Speaker 4: earth suit. Adam and Paul were suit and that's how
• 9:58
  Speaker 4: I met all of them. I think another part we can,
• 10:03
  Speaker 4: maybe you can talk about this as much or as
• 10:04
  Speaker 4: little as you want, of why I played drums the
• 10:07
  Speaker 4: way I did, is I really believe directly related to
• 10:11
  Speaker 4: the extreme sexual repression of growing up in a nineties.
• 10:16
  Speaker 1: Evangelical purity culture.
• 10:19
  Speaker 4: Yeah, shame culture, I prefer to call it.
• 10:21
  Speaker 2: Yeah, let's let's explore that a little bit. Was it
• 10:23
  Speaker 2: like like every time you had a sexual thought and
• 10:25
  Speaker 2: you would just go bang on some drums instead.
• 10:28
  Speaker 4: It has more to do with like I didn't ejaculate
• 10:30
  Speaker 4: until I was twenty.
• 10:31
  Speaker 5: Five, you know, whole like no way, no way, sorry, yeah,
• 10:37
  Speaker 5: I mean a wait, lots of wet dreams, like a
• 10:40
  Speaker 5: lot of wet dreams.
• 10:42
  Speaker 1: But I would imagine so.
• 10:45
  Speaker 2: I am speechless right now.
• 10:47
  Speaker 4: Yeah, I think the term that's used is like sexual anorexia.
• 10:50
  Speaker 4: I don't know if that that's what my counselor whom
• 10:52
  Speaker 4: I'm very thankful to have found, uses that term.
• 10:55
  Speaker 1: The whole category and term for it.
• 10:57
  Speaker 2: How you would you first eject committed?
• 11:01
  Speaker 1: Maybe thirteen, so half day.
• 11:05
  Speaker 2: I was eleven?
• 11:07
  Speaker 4: Yeah, y'all. I mean I had the extreme shame, and
• 11:11
  Speaker 4: I had all the desires and all the yearnings and needs,
• 11:14
  Speaker 4: but I had such an intense fear and also isolation
• 11:19
  Speaker 4: and shame around all of that. That just didn't do it.
• 11:23
  Speaker 4: Just didn't do that. And I think I really believed
• 11:25
  Speaker 4: that that informed how hard I hit the drums. Wow.
• 11:31
  Speaker 3: So when I watched that one hundred and eighty beats
• 11:34
  Speaker 3: per minute video, that's just you basically trying to get off.
• 11:37
  Speaker 4: That's yeah, that's me processing the first twenty five years
• 11:40
  Speaker 4: of my life.
• 11:41
  Speaker 2: Yeah, So okay, that that that kind of brings me
• 11:45
  Speaker 2: to like a weird point because were your parents very
• 11:49
  Speaker 2: very strict about that stuff then?
• 11:50
  Speaker 4: Too? No?
• 11:52
  Speaker 2: They were everything.
• 11:53
  Speaker 4: No, they divorced when I was seven, and they were
• 11:56
  Speaker 4: very kind. They were they were really good to me,
• 12:00
  Speaker 4: And I mean that that they I felt loved. I
• 12:04
  Speaker 4: felt supported. We didn't talk a lot about that part
• 12:08
  Speaker 4: of life, and certainly in church, you know, there was
• 12:12
  Speaker 4: plenty of talk around. This would have been peak true
• 12:14
  Speaker 4: love Weight's time. This is late nineties. I graduated in
• 12:19
  Speaker 4: two thousand, So yeah, man, it did a number on me.
• 12:23
  Speaker 4: That that messed me up. And I genuinely do feel
• 12:26
  Speaker 4: that the drums were my They helped nate, They got
• 12:29
  Speaker 4: me through not just that, but being a weird kid,
• 12:32
  Speaker 4: getting picked on, you know, being out of touch, being
• 12:35
  Speaker 4: a little overly intense. Anytime I got into anything, I
• 12:38
  Speaker 4: would kind of intense about. So I think the drums
• 12:40
  Speaker 4: are my safe place, even in church, even as even
• 12:44
  Speaker 4: as there were scandals in the church and it got
• 12:47
  Speaker 4: messy and really weird, the sneeze guard, the drum, you know,
• 12:50
  Speaker 4: my plexiglass. That was my safe space. You know, that
• 12:53
  Speaker 4: was where I could be okay, And it was the
• 12:55
  Speaker 4: first time I ever got acceptance. I mean, people would
• 12:59
  Speaker 4: cheer me on, and I think that really taught me
• 13:03
  Speaker 4: that drums. When I drum, people like me. So I
• 13:06
  Speaker 4: did it a lot.
• 13:07
  Speaker 1: There's no telling how good you can be at drums
• 13:08
  Speaker 1: when you suck at basketball and you have a lot
• 13:10
  Speaker 1: of sexual shame.
• 13:12
  Speaker 4: Yes, that's it.
• 13:13
  Speaker 3: Is that the matten that like the secret ingredients, is
• 13:15
  Speaker 3: that the magic? You just have those two things and
• 13:17
  Speaker 3: you're gonna be an amazing drummer.
• 13:20
  Speaker 4: This is what I This is why I brought that up,
• 13:22
  Speaker 4: is because I want to ask you in particular, miss
• 13:23
  Speaker 4: and do you think that when anytime somebody excels at something,
• 13:28
  Speaker 4: there is usually a shadow to it, there's something or
• 13:33
  Speaker 4: whenever there's like and or could it be achieved? Like
• 13:36
  Speaker 4: you learn about like Michael Jackson, then you learn about
• 13:39
  Speaker 4: what happened to him by his father, and I have
• 13:42
  Speaker 4: to wonder, you know, could a kid ever reach that
• 13:44
  Speaker 4: level of skill in a healthy way? I don't think so.
• 13:50
  Speaker 4: That's why I feel always apprehensive anytime I see somebody
• 13:53
  Speaker 4: real young, you know, it's like I hope that I
• 13:57
  Speaker 4: hope they're getting to have a childhood. Yeah, like Riba
• 14:01
  Speaker 4: what was the named Dottie Rambo, the gospel singer she
• 14:05
  Speaker 4: told this story. You know, she was one of the
• 14:07
  Speaker 4: most published songwriters of all times. She wrote that song
• 14:10
  Speaker 4: I Go to the Rock that Went Euston sang and
• 14:12
  Speaker 4: Preacher's Will, and she told this story that God appeared
• 14:15
  Speaker 4: to her and said, Dottie, you will pay dearly for
• 14:19
  Speaker 4: this gift, you know, like, and that was that was
• 14:22
  Speaker 4: her way of saying like it was. It was a
• 14:24
  Speaker 4: very Southern way to say, like, I've suffered to be
• 14:27
  Speaker 4: here where I am, you know, and like I guess
• 14:30
  Speaker 4: I'm trying to ask your thoughts on do you think
• 14:32
  Speaker 4: that there has to be some amount of shame, brokenness
• 14:36
  Speaker 4: or something not right as as an ingredient to what
• 14:40
  Speaker 4: makes good things good? Or do you think we could
• 14:42
  Speaker 4: get there a healthy way?
• 14:44
  Speaker 3: You know, I think you're onto something where it does
• 14:48
  Speaker 3: seem oftentimes the most successful people in their respective fields
• 14:53
  Speaker 3: often do you seem to have this kind of shadow side,
• 14:55
  Speaker 3: if you will, where either they themselves have experien suffering
• 15:00
  Speaker 3: or they like are the ones that are making other
• 15:03
  Speaker 3: people suffer to get to the level of theme that
• 15:05
  Speaker 3: they're at or the level of success that they're at. However,
• 15:09
  Speaker 3: I would like to believe that doesn't always have to
• 15:12
  Speaker 3: be the case. It seems to be quite often the case,
• 15:15
  Speaker 3: but doesn't always have.
• 15:16
  Speaker 1: To be that.
• 15:17
  Speaker 4: Yeah, that life has enough sorrow in its of itself.
• 15:22
  Speaker 4: You don't have to fabricate any like, There'll be plenty
• 15:25
  Speaker 4: to draw from right, right, just by getting to be
• 15:27
  Speaker 4: here being a human, that's enough.
• 15:29
  Speaker 2: You know, coming from the guy who worked with Kanye,
• 15:32
  Speaker 2: I was going to ask you the same question. Yeah,
• 15:37
  Speaker 2: it feels like it feels like anyone who's in any
• 15:40
  Speaker 2: position of cultural relevance or excels in a specific field
• 15:46
  Speaker 2: that has to have some sort of traumatic experiences growing up. Yeah.
• 15:50
  Speaker 4: I think about it in regards to the it's been,
• 15:55
  Speaker 4: you know, two decades since I read or watched The
• 15:58
  Speaker 4: Lord of the Rings. But I think about it in
• 15:59
  Speaker 4: ternal like the Ring of the Power. How you just
• 16:03
  Speaker 4: can't hold that, You can't hold it and be healthy.
• 16:06
  Speaker 4: I don't think anyone can. I don't think there's I
• 16:08
  Speaker 4: think some of us can have more than others. Maybe
• 16:11
  Speaker 4: I don't know. It's the thing I'm wondering about a
• 16:13
  Speaker 4: lot these days. How is it okay to be successful?
• 16:17
  Speaker 4: Is it okay to want to have notoriety? Is it
• 16:20
  Speaker 4: okay to want to be popular? Or to whatever extent
• 16:26
  Speaker 4: you have that it's bad for you? How do you?
• 16:29
  Speaker 4: How do you know and how do you draw that?
• 16:31
  Speaker 4: The line? I know that to be a billionaire, I
• 16:35
  Speaker 4: don't think he can. I don't think you can ethically
• 16:36
  Speaker 4: be a billionaire, for example, and I don't think you
• 16:39
  Speaker 4: can ethically, I don't think you can helpfully be as
• 16:43
  Speaker 4: powerful as Kanye. As Kanye said, no one man should
• 16:46
  Speaker 4: have all that power, right, I don't think you can
• 16:49
  Speaker 4: hold it. I think that some people could probably hold
• 16:51
  Speaker 4: a lot more. I think about Bill Withers. If you
• 16:54
  Speaker 4: ever watch there's a documentary called Still Still Bill, and
• 16:57
  Speaker 4: he really comes across as somebody who made it out alive.
• 17:03
  Speaker 4: He wrote some of the greatest You'd be happy to
• 17:05
  Speaker 4: have any one of those songs attached to your name,
• 17:08
  Speaker 4: you know, use me Grandma's Hands, lean on Me, Lovely Day, Suntick,
• 17:14
  Speaker 4: any one of those tracks that's like, that's a life,
• 17:18
  Speaker 4: that's that's it, that you wrote that song. And he
• 17:20
  Speaker 4: had like nine ten of them, and then he just
• 17:23
  Speaker 4: when he got done, he was done and he had
• 17:26
  Speaker 4: his family, and he the documentary talks about his things,
• 17:29
  Speaker 4: he wished he would have done better differently, but he
• 17:32
  Speaker 4: comes out he presents himself as being really well adjusted
• 17:35
  Speaker 4: and kept having kept his soul intact. But I mean,
• 17:40
  Speaker 4: I want to be careful when talking about Kanye because
• 17:42
  Speaker 4: I know he's bipolar for one, and then I don't
• 17:46
  Speaker 4: know what all he's been through. But he's not well.
• 17:49
  Speaker 4: I know that. And the two days I got to
• 17:53
  Speaker 4: spend with him, I was only with him twice in
• 17:55
  Speaker 4: the studio were super fun and weird as hell. It's
• 18:01
  Speaker 4: the weirdest days my other the complete furthest from my reality.
• 18:06
  Speaker 4: Like nothing about what I knew to be how the
• 18:08
  Speaker 4: world works, is any part of what's happening in that
• 18:12
  Speaker 4: that echelon of music. It's a different, completely different life.
• 18:17
  Speaker 3: So I want to get back to a lot of
• 18:20
  Speaker 3: the music stuff and maybe we can dive into this
• 18:22
  Speaker 3: story you have with your experience with Kanye. But you
• 18:26
  Speaker 3: briefly mentioned that you met Paul and yeah, the other
• 18:30
  Speaker 3: artists in Adam ursuit. Yeah, Adam and so you you
• 18:35
  Speaker 3: all met and that kind of was the beginning formation
• 18:38
  Speaker 3: of earth Suit. And I don't want to spend a
• 18:40
  Speaker 3: ton of time on earth Suit, but at least like
• 18:42
  Speaker 3: talk a little bit about your experience and that history
• 18:45
  Speaker 3: and how maybe that like built up to eventually obviously
• 18:48
  Speaker 3: mute math for me, but yeah, can you talk about
• 18:50
  Speaker 3: some of that history of urth suit and what that
• 18:52
  Speaker 3: was like for you, what your experience was and uh, yeah,
• 18:55
  Speaker 3: just to kind of talk about suit in general.
• 18:58
  Speaker 4: Yeah, they were all older than me, and they were
• 19:01
  Speaker 4: my heroes. And the day after I graduated high school,
• 19:04
  Speaker 4: I hopped on a plane. I flew down to New
• 19:06
  Speaker 4: Orleans with the money i'd saved up, and I joined
• 19:08
  Speaker 4: their band as an intern. And then I and so
• 19:15
  Speaker 4: I traveled and we played Cornerstone Festival, and to be honest,
• 19:18
  Speaker 4: that was as high as I ever dreamed. I never
• 19:21
  Speaker 4: imagined that it could get me better than playing Cornerstone Festival.
• 19:25
  Speaker 4: Maybe at like at night, if you could play the
• 19:27
  Speaker 4: night slot on that side tent, you know, close it out,
• 19:30
  Speaker 4: that's it. That's as That's as far as my ambitions went.
• 19:34
  Speaker 4: But Earth's suit was they didn't need me. I was
• 19:37
  Speaker 4: a percussionist. I was eighteen. They already had an incredible drummer,
• 19:42
  Speaker 4: and they couldn't afford for the extra flight, you know,
• 19:44
  Speaker 4: to have me be the sixth member of their band.
• 19:47
  Speaker 4: So they fired me and they sent me home, and
• 19:50
  Speaker 4: I was broken heart. I was devastated. It was just
• 19:54
  Speaker 4: felt like the biggest disappointment of my life. And then
• 19:57
  Speaker 4: I moved to Nashville and I worked for that those
• 20:00
  Speaker 4: at church or for those ministers Reba Rambling down McGuire
• 20:05
  Speaker 4: for a year in turning for them, working at a
• 20:07
  Speaker 4: restaurant and working at banquet halls. And I would spend
• 20:11
  Speaker 4: the night in the church drumming. I would I would
• 20:13
  Speaker 4: clean the church and then sometimes I would play the drums,
• 20:17
  Speaker 4: you know, after I was done cleaning it. And sometimes
• 20:18
  Speaker 4: I'd be too tired. I would just sleep there on the.
• 20:20
  Speaker 1: Floor render it.
• 20:22
  Speaker 3: Colin and I when we would go to youth group,
• 20:24
  Speaker 3: we'd stay super late, and sometimes we would stay so
• 20:26
  Speaker 3: late that the church would close, and then we would
• 20:29
  Speaker 3: just play in the you know, play drums, and if
• 20:31
  Speaker 3: there was a guitar laying around, we'd play guitar and.
• 20:33
  Speaker 4: Shit, have your own lock in.
• 20:35
  Speaker 2: It was the best man.
• 20:36
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it was great. Those were great times.
• 20:38
  Speaker 4: I wish you could go back. Yeah. So that was
• 20:40
  Speaker 4: one year. And then and then Earthsuit's drummer quit. So
• 20:44
  Speaker 4: then that I had been practicing. I had been taking
• 20:47
  Speaker 4: lessons from Yanni's drummer, Charlie Adams here in Nashville, and
• 20:51
  Speaker 4: I also took a few lessons with Chester Thompson who
• 20:55
  Speaker 4: plays for the Collins. He's a badass.
• 20:58
  Speaker 2: Wow.
• 20:58
  Speaker 4: And so I practiced the That was the year. That
• 21:01
  Speaker 4: was the year of me really shedding.
• 21:03
  Speaker 3: Did you really get a sense in that year because
• 21:05
  Speaker 3: you have such a distinctive style and sound in your drumming,
• 21:09
  Speaker 3: did you really feel like you kind of started to
• 21:11
  Speaker 3: get a sense of like what that sound and what
• 21:14
  Speaker 3: kind of sound and style you really wanted in your drumming.
• 21:16
  Speaker 1: Was it that year that you really developed that.
• 21:19
  Speaker 2: It's almost like a masturbatory sound, right, it is some
• 21:22
  Speaker 2: very self indulgent it's all eyes on me.
• 21:26
  Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, because then I'd started really becoming a music collector,
• 21:32
  Speaker 4: and so that was like college was Tower Records, and
• 21:38
  Speaker 4: I would just spend every spare moment and every spare
• 21:43
  Speaker 4: penny at Tower Records, at the listening stations once they
• 21:46
  Speaker 4: got the listing stations where you like the digital ones
• 21:48
  Speaker 4: where you could search through forget about red Dot, remember
• 21:52
  Speaker 4: that that was insane. But and then the library also
• 21:56
  Speaker 4: you could I hear them a sound roll. You could
• 21:58
  Speaker 4: check out twenty five records, you know, so I would
• 22:01
  Speaker 4: check out vinyl and CDs. And my buddy next door
• 22:06
  Speaker 4: across from me at the apartment complex I lived at,
• 22:08
  Speaker 4: had a computer where I could. He'd let me use
• 22:11
  Speaker 4: his computer at night to just record beats and chop
• 22:16
  Speaker 4: them up, and I started. I started making little demo
• 22:21
  Speaker 4: CDs and I would mail them to Paul and he
• 22:24
  Speaker 4: sang on them and sent them back. And yeah, and
• 22:28
  Speaker 4: and one of those tracks became the first Math song.
• 22:31
  Speaker 4: It was a song called Chaos. But years and years
• 22:34
  Speaker 4: before it was this this track that I had made
• 22:37
  Speaker 4: which didn't have much you know, didn't much resemble the
• 22:40
  Speaker 4: finished song. But that's where I started making my own tracks. Yeah,
• 22:45
  Speaker 4: I was living in Nashville. That's cool.
• 22:48
  Speaker 2: What I always loved about earth Suit is that they
• 22:50
  Speaker 2: were always such a great rhythmic band. You know, the
• 22:54
  Speaker 2: the rhythm section was sick in that band. I don't
• 22:57
  Speaker 2: know who was playing bass. Boy that was Roy, Okay,
• 23:01
  Speaker 2: it felt like unmistakably Roy. Yeah, I should have known
• 23:04
  Speaker 2: that Roy is. In my opinion, you guys, paired together
• 23:08
  Speaker 2: is a combination that no other band, I don't care
• 23:12
  Speaker 2: if you're talking about the greatest of the greats, Like,
• 23:15
  Speaker 2: no other band like really compares.
• 23:17
  Speaker 4: He was is. He's incredible, and I think he has
• 23:21
  Speaker 4: perfect time. People talk about perfect pitch, but I assume
• 23:25
  Speaker 4: it has to also be perfect meter. Yeah, but with
• 23:27
  Speaker 4: Roy you can be like even snap and he'd be
• 23:29
  Speaker 4: like I think that's one thirty five and you'll tap
• 23:31
  Speaker 4: it out. You're like, oh damn what he's tighter than me.
• 23:35
  Speaker 4: He's and playing along with him was was the best,
• 23:40
  Speaker 4: Like when you'd lock in, really lock in. It wasn't
• 23:43
  Speaker 4: until after, you know, he had left, he left meat
• 23:46
  Speaker 4: Math and then I did some sessions or do a
• 23:49
  Speaker 4: session with someone else that I realized how spoiled. I mean,
• 23:52
  Speaker 4: I knew I was lucky, and I was always grateful,
• 23:55
  Speaker 4: but I didn't quite realize I just really got spoiled
• 23:58
  Speaker 4: by his tightness. That was it just like his feel.
• 24:01
  Speaker 4: That's the other thing about a musician is just like
• 24:03
  Speaker 4: you can hear someone's sound check their instrument, through all
• 24:06
  Speaker 4: their stuff, and it sounds can sound bad even, and
• 24:11
  Speaker 4: then all of a sudden they hop up and they've
• 24:12
  Speaker 4: got their feel, their touch and it sounds incredible.
• 24:15
  Speaker 3: So I remember when you guys would play like break
• 24:17
  Speaker 3: the same there was that kind of like long part
• 24:20
  Speaker 3: where you kind of go, you know, do your crazy stuff,
• 24:23
  Speaker 3: and he would like grab like maybe your your your
• 24:27
  Speaker 3: bass or something and like kind of you know, dink
• 24:29
  Speaker 3: around on. I don't remember exactly what it was, but like, yeah,
• 24:33
  Speaker 3: his his even his like little percussion part there was impeccable.
• 24:38
  Speaker 1: It was incredible.
• 24:39
  Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, I always felt like he was just
• 24:43
  Speaker 2: from my observation and from listening, I could tell that
• 24:47
  Speaker 2: he was a very generous musician as well. You know,
• 24:50
  Speaker 2: he he knew the talent that you were, and he
• 24:54
  Speaker 2: played into your talents, and it felt like you played
• 24:56
  Speaker 2: into his talents so well. It really felt like the
• 24:59
  Speaker 2: most cohesive unit in the rhythm section I've ever heard. Yeah,
• 25:05
  Speaker 2: like to this day.
• 25:06
  Speaker 4: Yeah, I haven't thought about that. But both our personalities,
• 25:09
  Speaker 4: he's in life. He's probably the most dependable person most
• 25:14
  Speaker 4: on time and not in a weird or knowing. He's
• 25:17
  Speaker 4: just got his shit together. He smells great, He always
• 25:20
  Speaker 4: smells great.
• 25:22
  Speaker 2: And I wish I could say the same thing about
• 25:24
  Speaker 2: my best friend.
• 25:26
  Speaker 4: Yeah, and I'm the furthest I'm like animal, you know,
• 25:29
  Speaker 4: I'm like a muppet. I'm chaotic, I'm held together by
• 25:34
  Speaker 4: you know, a few pieces of tape at all times.
• 25:37
  Speaker 4: I'm just an inch from falling off the edge. And
• 25:40
  Speaker 4: I think maybe he was this anchor that I could
• 25:42
  Speaker 4: spin around and we were a good team in that way.
• 25:45
  Speaker 4: But I think his personality and identity came through and
• 25:47
  Speaker 4: his playing, his precision.
• 25:49
  Speaker 2: You could tell that he got off on that as well, though. Yeah,
• 25:52
  Speaker 2: he got off on the fact that you were a
• 25:53
  Speaker 2: little bit chaotic and a little bit of a wild man.
• 25:56
  Speaker 2: You had the duct tape your your freaking headphones to
• 25:59
  Speaker 2: your head otherwise fly off.
• 26:01
  Speaker 4: That's the best feeling is whenever you would get far
• 26:06
  Speaker 4: enough along into playing a show, you've played it enough
• 26:09
  Speaker 4: times that the parts become muscle memory. You could play
• 26:13
  Speaker 4: the New Sleep and you can really just think and
• 26:17
  Speaker 4: zone out and feel it and be in the moment
• 26:20
  Speaker 4: when your nerves settle and you get to just Yeah,
• 26:23
  Speaker 4: that's that's a pretty incredible feeling.
• 26:26
  Speaker 3: At what point did you start duct taping your headset
• 26:29
  Speaker 3: when you would play live?
• 26:30
  Speaker 2: And is that an homage to Keith Moon? Like, I'm
• 26:33
  Speaker 2: a mass of the WHO fan, so I've always been curious.
• 26:36
  Speaker 4: I got the idea separately from him because he would
• 26:38
  Speaker 4: take around his head this way, I would go under
• 26:41
  Speaker 4: the chin I could scrap and that I found out
• 26:45
  Speaker 4: afterward that he did that, but I did, like, I
• 26:48
  Speaker 4: love him. He's one of my favorites because I always
• 26:52
  Speaker 4: feel like the drummer should be like unhinged. He should
• 26:57
  Speaker 4: be the one in the game where it's like, eh,
• 27:00
  Speaker 4: we have to go get our drummer, and like it
• 27:01
  Speaker 4: would be ashamed to have to go. You know. It
• 27:04
  Speaker 4: was in two years two thousand, two thousand and one,
• 27:07
  Speaker 4: whenever I was working at that church in Nashville and
• 27:11
  Speaker 4: cleaning it and playing it at that church was called
• 27:13
  Speaker 4: the River, and I worked at restaurants and I also
• 27:16
  Speaker 4: worked at this banquet hall. It was a really fun
• 27:18
  Speaker 4: time in my life, real easy, you know, stress free season,
• 27:22
  Speaker 4: but also one of those times where you don't know
• 27:24
  Speaker 4: if anything's ever gonna happen for you, so you feel terrified, scared,
• 27:27
  Speaker 4: like am I ever going to love someone? Am I
• 27:29
  Speaker 4: ever gonna have to do anything cool at all? I've
• 27:31
  Speaker 4: got no prospects, you know. I remember being terrified also
• 27:34
  Speaker 4: and lonely. But I had these big Aviator air traffic
• 27:38
  Speaker 4: control looking headphones, like these seventies headphones that I would
• 27:41
  Speaker 4: practice on and I would play tracks through the PA
• 27:45
  Speaker 4: And I remember whenever the drummer Hutch left earth Suit,
• 27:48
  Speaker 4: Paul told me it's like, you know, in a few months,
• 27:52
  Speaker 4: we're gonna start playing shows again, so you'll have a
• 27:54
  Speaker 4: chance to audition if you want, and I was like, yes,
• 27:56
  Speaker 4: So he sent me a CD where their track were
• 28:00
  Speaker 4: panned to the left and a click track was panned
• 28:02
  Speaker 4: to the right. So I would play the tracks through
• 28:05
  Speaker 4: the church's PA and then put the click in my
• 28:08
  Speaker 4: headphones the right side. I would send the headphones, and
• 28:11
  Speaker 4: I would always get so hyped up that the headphones
• 28:14
  Speaker 4: would fly off and they had to roll a GAF tape.
• 28:16
  Speaker 4: So I just started taping them on because I got
• 28:18
  Speaker 4: frustrated that they would always fall off, and that became
• 28:21
  Speaker 4: my stick and whenever I auditioned for Paul, that was
• 28:25
  Speaker 4: how I auditioned for him. I taped my headphones on
• 28:27
  Speaker 4: and went for it, and then he hugged me and
• 28:29
  Speaker 4: he's like, yeah, you're in the band. I was like,
• 28:31
  Speaker 4: I just you know, that was like the happiest you
• 28:34
  Speaker 4: know I was. I made it, you know, that was
• 28:37
  Speaker 4: that was it.
• 28:38
  Speaker 3: I can't even imagine you not making a band like
• 28:41
  Speaker 3: you were so fucking talented that It's just like how
• 28:45
  Speaker 3: who would in their right mind would ever say no
• 28:48
  Speaker 3: to Darren King?
• 28:49
  Speaker 4: Oh? Well, we I mean Paul. Paul was intense and
• 28:54
  Speaker 4: he would have me practice. When I moved to New Orleans.
• 28:57
  Speaker 4: I moved to this area called Wagonman. Anybody knows about
• 29:00
  Speaker 4: wagon and there's not a lot to do in that
• 29:02
  Speaker 4: part of Louisiana and Wagonman Louisiana. And Paul had me
• 29:06
  Speaker 4: staying at his mother in law's house because she was
• 29:09
  Speaker 4: a missionary. She was traveling, So I stayed alone at
• 29:12
  Speaker 4: someone else's house. No car, just a drum set. I
• 29:15
  Speaker 4: had a drum set and he would leave his cell
• 29:17
  Speaker 4: phone at night if there was an emergency. And that's it.
• 29:20
  Speaker 4: I lived in a house with a couple of books
• 29:22
  Speaker 4: and a drum set. And eventually I had Oh, I
• 29:25
  Speaker 4: had my car. I had my little Hondo CRX, but
• 29:28
  Speaker 4: that was it. I had no fun.
• 29:29
  Speaker 2: Love that car, by the way, Yeah it was the
• 29:31
  Speaker 2: beast dude CRX.
• 29:32
  Speaker 4: Man.
• 29:32
  Speaker 2: I'm a big Honda fan in general, but CRX that
• 29:35
  Speaker 2: is a dream car for me. Yeah.
• 29:38
  Speaker 4: It was the first year that had that was an
• 29:40
  Speaker 4: eighty eight or eighty nine, but whatever, the first year
• 29:41
  Speaker 4: that had the SI engine. I had one of those.
• 29:44
  Speaker 4: And the thing about that car I'll never forget is
• 29:46
  Speaker 4: just the turning radius. Just you could just turn on
• 29:49
  Speaker 4: a dime, you could zip around, you could give a
• 29:51
  Speaker 4: U turn. It was that was a fun car. And
• 29:54
  Speaker 4: that's the only manual transmission I ever owned, and I
• 29:58
  Speaker 4: would drive around New Orleans and that was a happy
• 30:00
  Speaker 4: time for me. That was a really simple time. I
• 30:05
  Speaker 4: look back on that really finely. And I had an
• 30:07
  Speaker 4: ASR ten that's this keyboard sampler that if we were
• 30:10
  Speaker 4: talking about Kanye, Kanye, Pharrell, timbaland all of them used
• 30:15
  Speaker 4: this particular piece of equipment that had I think came
• 30:19
  Speaker 4: with eight megabytes of memory. You could max it out
• 30:22
  Speaker 4: to sixteen, and eventually you could buy a scuzzy drive
• 30:26
  Speaker 4: so you could save more sounds and not just save
• 30:28
  Speaker 4: it to floppy disk. But that's how I started making
• 30:31
  Speaker 4: beats as I'd sample stuff and make tracks in the
• 30:34
  Speaker 4: ASR ten, and that's how I started making most of
• 30:36
  Speaker 4: the mute math songs. That's what they all started as
• 30:38
  Speaker 4: sequences in the ASR that.
• 30:40
  Speaker 2: Yeah, Yeah, I'd always I had always wondered how much
• 30:43
  Speaker 2: that atmospheric part of Mutemath you were, you were responsible for.
• 30:49
  Speaker 4: Yeah, so the sound of the sound of I think Mutemath.
• 30:52
  Speaker 4: And then also especially if my drumming was trying to
• 30:55
  Speaker 4: emulate electronics and sample based music with live instruments, So
• 31:01
  Speaker 4: listening to you should y'all should listen to DJ Shadow
• 31:04
  Speaker 4: because I think he's one of the graces. He Also,
• 31:06
  Speaker 4: he had a record called Uncle Science Fiction. It has
• 31:09
  Speaker 4: this song with Tom Yorke called Rabbit in Your Headlights.
• 31:12
  Speaker 4: Have you ever heard that one?
• 31:13
  Speaker 2: I have heard that song.
• 31:14
  Speaker 4: Yeah, that's DJ Shadow.
• 31:15
  Speaker 2: Okay.
• 31:17
  Speaker 4: He's just one of the best drummers. Even though he's
• 31:20
  Speaker 4: not a drummer. What he did with beats is to
• 31:23
  Speaker 4: me some of the best drum music I've ever heard,
• 31:25
  Speaker 4: some of my favorite electronic you know, certainly sample bass.
• 31:28
  Speaker 4: He'd make his records entirely out of vinyl records, all
• 31:31
  Speaker 4: chopped up, and I think he's just a genius, And
• 31:34
  Speaker 4: so I would try to drum like those records sounds,
• 31:37
  Speaker 4: and I think in Mutemath we we underplayed. I didn't
• 31:40
  Speaker 4: mean to, but we we didn't talk a lot about
• 31:43
  Speaker 4: my contribution to the songwriting or production. I was known
• 31:47
  Speaker 4: as the drummer, but yeah, I did, you know, a
• 31:50
  Speaker 4: bulk of the producing and songwriting along with Paul, certainly
• 31:54
  Speaker 4: with the exception of the lyrics and melodies. I mean,
• 31:57
  Speaker 4: we knew that he was the best singer, of course,
• 32:01
  Speaker 4: but he also typically had the best melody there was
• 32:05
  Speaker 4: always at least one song on every record that I
• 32:07
  Speaker 4: wrote the vocals too, but you most all of them
• 32:10
  Speaker 4: were otherwise were him. But the music was just the
• 32:14
  Speaker 4: two of us working. I mean, we jammed a lot
• 32:16
  Speaker 4: as a band, but a lot of the way that
• 32:19
  Speaker 4: the songs and some of the songs would start from
• 32:23
  Speaker 4: Roy's riffs or start from ideas, and he's a great
• 32:25
  Speaker 4: Roy's a great producer as well. Yeah, it was a
• 32:28
  Speaker 4: lot of just Paul and I in a studio. I
• 32:31
  Speaker 4: might be getting ahead of myself here, but yeah, that
• 32:33
  Speaker 4: was a part of a lot of the process was
• 32:35
  Speaker 4: a pretty meticulous just you know, we'd kind of all
• 32:38
  Speaker 4: go to our own corners and spend time on our computers.
• 32:41
  Speaker 4: A lot less jamming than you'd think, I guess.
• 32:44
  Speaker 1: Colin and I have talked about this extensively.
• 32:48
  Speaker 3: We've always tried to figure out like not only who
• 32:50
  Speaker 3: was like responsible for the sound of Mutemth, but also
• 32:54
  Speaker 3: Mutemath has such a unique soundscape. I don't know how
• 32:57
  Speaker 3: else to describe it. There were there was just sound.
• 33:00
  Speaker 3: It wasn't necessarily like melodies or like certain instruments. It
• 33:04
  Speaker 3: was just sounds that was so unique to mute Math
• 33:08
  Speaker 3: that honestly to this day, Like I don't know if
• 33:10
  Speaker 3: there's any other band that has like even come close
• 33:13
  Speaker 3: to replicating it. Where it sounds like when you hear
• 33:16
  Speaker 3: a mute Mass sound, when you hear a mute Math song,
• 33:20
  Speaker 3: you know it's mute Math just because of the soundscape.
• 33:23
  Speaker 3: Like I don't know the tonality, I don't know what
• 33:25
  Speaker 3: it is, but there's just something very distinct about mute Math,
• 33:28
  Speaker 3: and we've always kind of wondered, like, who's a part
• 33:31
  Speaker 3: of that. It sounds like you and Paul were maybe
• 33:33
  Speaker 3: largely a part of like just this simply the sound,
• 33:36
  Speaker 3: not even necessarily the song structure and songwriting, but just
• 33:39
  Speaker 3: the sounds.
• 33:40
  Speaker 4: I think a lot of the sound of Mutmath also
• 33:43
  Speaker 4: had was me trying to impress Paul or keep up
• 33:47
  Speaker 4: with him, or to you know, show off or make him,
• 33:51
  Speaker 4: you know, happy with what we were doing. I was
• 33:55
  Speaker 4: very eager to I don't want to make that sound
• 33:59
  Speaker 4: like I think that maybe came across wrong, but like
• 34:03
  Speaker 4: I deeply emulated, you know, and looked up to him
• 34:08
  Speaker 4: as a creator and producer, so I was trying to
• 34:12
  Speaker 4: keep up, and there was a competitiveness I think in
• 34:14
  Speaker 4: that as well. But Yeah. I look back on the
• 34:19
  Speaker 4: records and sometimes I feel critical or I can pinpoint
• 34:24
  Speaker 4: the moments where we weren't where we were missing the plot,
• 34:28
  Speaker 4: you know, where we were worried too much about making
• 34:31
  Speaker 4: money or checking off certain boxes and trying to make
• 34:36
  Speaker 4: too many people happy. And I can also see the
• 34:39
  Speaker 4: moments where we were just seeking our own bliss. And
• 34:43
  Speaker 4: I think when music is really good, it's you're playing music.
• 34:46
  Speaker 4: It feels like you're getting away with something you shouldn't,
• 34:48
  Speaker 4: you know, And that all those records I love are
• 34:53
  Speaker 4: people I think either being who they really are or
• 34:56
  Speaker 4: who they wish they could be or want to be. Sonically,
• 35:00
  Speaker 4: some of the records, I feel frustrated that there are
• 35:02
  Speaker 4: a few songs that I feel like we're out of
• 35:04
  Speaker 4: place because just stylistically, we were worrying too much about
• 35:09
  Speaker 4: what people would think of us or trying to admit.
• 35:14
  Speaker 4: Especially the second record, that process of making that one
• 35:20
  Speaker 4: was really a masterclass in losing the point. And there
• 35:24
  Speaker 4: are still songs I like on that record I'm proud of,
• 35:27
  Speaker 4: but we we took ourselves way too seriously, you know,
• 35:31
  Speaker 4: and we are our process was really inefficient and full
• 35:38
  Speaker 4: of self doubt and I think there's a church element
• 35:41
  Speaker 4: to that too. I think that CCM culture sets you
• 35:45
  Speaker 4: back and puts you at a disadvantage from having style
• 35:49
  Speaker 4: because it's less about having style and more about just
• 35:53
  Speaker 4: checking off certain words and making sure that it's you know,
• 35:57
  Speaker 4: that you're being that you're being Christian or this being it.
• 36:01
  Speaker 4: And since we came from that culture, I do think
• 36:03
  Speaker 4: we were at a style, style of sign disadvantage. That's
• 36:06
  Speaker 4: especially like you here. I don't want to be critical
• 36:08
  Speaker 4: of the Erstu records because they're not mine. I didn't
• 36:09
  Speaker 4: make them, but those records just sound like a different
• 36:12
  Speaker 4: band every single song.
• 36:13
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 36:15
  Speaker 4: You know that's because you know, whenever you kind of
• 36:18
  Speaker 4: are grown up in that isolated CCM, especially if it's
• 36:22
  Speaker 4: that charismatic, non denominational culture, Yeah, you're just you're kind
• 36:27
  Speaker 4: of sheltered from style of substance. I guess I don't know.
• 36:32
  Speaker 3: I want to at least get this off my chest
• 36:35
  Speaker 3: because I think it relates. And I also don't want
• 36:38
  Speaker 3: to like dive into like music industry and music business stuff.
• 36:41
  Speaker 3: But I do want to say, as you're talking about,
• 36:44
  Speaker 3: like you know, maybe making some songs that just kind
• 36:47
  Speaker 3: of like fit the Bill and maybe were what was
• 36:51
  Speaker 3: going to be more receptive to a popular audience. I
• 36:54
  Speaker 3: will say, though I have always thought this for years
• 36:57
  Speaker 3: and years and years, Mute Math always seemed like a
• 37:02
  Speaker 3: band to me. As much as you guys were very
• 37:04
  Speaker 3: successful in a lot of ways, felt like they should
• 37:08
  Speaker 3: have literally been on the level of like a cold Play.
• 37:11
  Speaker 1: And I'm like, I really.
• 37:13
  Speaker 2: Always say the same thing.
• 37:15
  Speaker 3: There was something so catchy about your music. I mean,
• 37:19
  Speaker 3: you guys had such really groovy and catchy type of
• 37:23
  Speaker 3: rifts and just like the like there's some word that
• 37:26
  Speaker 3: you use calling all the time, like the earworm, right,
• 37:28
  Speaker 3: like that you guys had such earwormy type of rifts
• 37:32
  Speaker 3: and melodies and just really catchy tunes.
• 37:35
  Speaker 2: But also the technicality to be able to like pull
• 37:38
  Speaker 2: in that crowd that typically wouldn't listen to that kind
• 37:40
  Speaker 2: of music, that wouldn't listen to like a cold Play.
• 37:43
  Speaker 1: There was such a uniqueness to Mute Math.
• 37:45
  Speaker 3: And then also add on top of the fact that like,
• 37:47
  Speaker 3: you guys were way better live than all of your pewers.
• 37:51
  Speaker 3: So like you add all of these things together and
• 37:53
  Speaker 3: to me, it's like it's all the ingredients to be
• 37:56
  Speaker 3: like a super successful band and for whatever reason, like
• 37:59
  Speaker 3: you guys didn't get to the love of Coldplay. And
• 38:01
  Speaker 3: that's again that's not to say that you guys weren't successful,
• 38:03
  Speaker 3: but to me, Mute Mass should have been a band
• 38:06
  Speaker 3: at the level of Coldplay. And and this is not
• 38:10
  Speaker 3: a blaming like I'm not blaming or like that. That's
• 38:12
  Speaker 3: just a music business thing at the end of the day.
• 38:14
  Speaker 3: But like I want to say that, like, you guys
• 38:17
  Speaker 3: should have been huge at least in Thank.
• 38:20
  Speaker 4: You, Thank You. I might this might be sound arrogant.
• 38:25
  Speaker 4: I hope it doesn't, but maybe it's far enough re
• 38:27
  Speaker 4: moved from the time that it's okay. Well, one thing
• 38:30
  Speaker 4: I was always really proud of, or it made me
• 38:32
  Speaker 4: feel good, was that in in our peak time, in
• 38:37
  Speaker 4: our in our hitdache, it was known that bands would
• 38:40
  Speaker 4: not let us open for them like we were. We
• 38:43
  Speaker 4: would get turned down for certain tours, you got mixed
• 38:46
  Speaker 4: for it because they knew we were we were. We
• 38:49
  Speaker 4: would go hard live and I always appreciated the bands
• 38:53
  Speaker 4: who really understood that you can't ever outdo a headliner.
• 38:56
  Speaker 4: So the bands that did take us out, I always
• 38:59
  Speaker 4: appreciated that they knew and they were like, yeah, like,
• 39:03
  Speaker 4: it doesn't matter if Mutemath gives live birth, live virgin
• 39:07
  Speaker 4: birth on stage and then the baby sings and the microphone.
• 39:11
  Speaker 4: The crowd's going to be more impressed once we come
• 39:13
  Speaker 4: out and sing that the hit on the rate that's
• 39:15
  Speaker 4: been on the radio. There's this You're never gonna add
• 39:17
  Speaker 4: to the headline, though, I do love there's a DMX quote.
• 39:20
  Speaker 4: Have you ever heard? He had a quote like, you
• 39:22
  Speaker 4: decide to order, I decide the headliner. That's that's my
• 39:30
  Speaker 4: favorite quote. But music, that's the band. That's just the
• 39:34
  Speaker 4: main part I shouldn't say. But specifically, our our A
• 39:36
  Speaker 4: and R guy at Warner Brothers was Perry wats Russell.
• 39:39
  Speaker 4: And Perry had signed Radiohead to Capitol. He signed Damien Rice.
• 39:44
  Speaker 4: He had all these crazy Radiohead stories and you know
• 39:46
  Speaker 4: he was the guy discovered Damien Rice busking in England
• 39:50
  Speaker 4: and signed him to a record deal. Perry wats Russell
• 39:53
  Speaker 4: had this incredible accent. He's just the most delightful, you
• 39:57
  Speaker 4: know smart. You know guy and his other started what
• 40:01
  Speaker 4: label was it that The Cocktoo Twins were signed to
• 40:03
  Speaker 4: that legendary British label fore I can't remember the name
• 40:06
  Speaker 4: of it. Yeah, Perry tried to get us to open
• 40:10
  Speaker 4: for News because Perry signed News as well, and he
• 40:13
  Speaker 4: came back to me, He's like, yeah, News, like straight up?
• 40:16
  Speaker 4: Did the drummer just told me that he don't want
• 40:17
  Speaker 4: you all opening, you know. I'm like, News is not
• 40:21
  Speaker 4: gonna like News is fine like Paramore. I remember Paramore
• 40:24
  Speaker 4: opened for News one time. Paramore sold three CDs that night.
• 40:28
  Speaker 4: They always told me that story is like, yeah, we
• 40:29
  Speaker 4: opened for News at Wimbley sold three CDs.
• 40:32
  Speaker 2: Hold up though, hold up the one of the world's
• 40:35
  Speaker 2: greatest areno rock bands said they don't want some little
• 40:42
  Speaker 2: group out of.
• 40:43
  Speaker 4: Some little Christian damn right to show them up.
• 40:47
  Speaker 2: That's awesome, that's beyond cool man.
• 40:52
  Speaker 4: But they were probably still in them like they it
• 40:55
  Speaker 4: was back. I saw them live at the Curiosa tour.
• 40:58
  Speaker 4: Do you remember that? Did you hear that tour that
• 41:00
  Speaker 4: the Cure headlined? It was Interpol the Cure mus It
• 41:03
  Speaker 4: was this insane lineup and I saw mus that was
• 41:06
  Speaker 4: early and they they shredded us like they were.
• 41:10
  Speaker 2: So good, Like, oh, they had some massive sound, some
• 41:14
  Speaker 2: signal chain on the bass.
• 41:16
  Speaker 4: I remember the bass player had this sound that I
• 41:18
  Speaker 4: felt like was the most aggressive thing I'd ever heard,
• 41:21
  Speaker 4: Yeah in that time.
• 41:23
  Speaker 2: Without being too harsh, Like he was able to fill
• 41:25
  Speaker 2: just so much, so much space without being too harsh.
• 41:29
  Speaker 2: It almost seemed like it defied musical physics.
• 41:32
  Speaker 4: Yeah, I one of my regrets though, I actually saw
• 41:35
  Speaker 4: Muse at Wimbley. I saw them when we played v
• 41:38
  Speaker 4: Fest and they played later that night, and I deeply
• 41:41
  Speaker 4: regret because the headliner at Vfest was Daft Punk. And
• 41:47
  Speaker 4: but Perry ain't our guys Like, Yeah, I got y'all
• 41:50
  Speaker 4: tickets to see mus you should come with me, and
• 41:51
  Speaker 4: I wanted to. Didn't want to be a jerk, didn't
• 41:53
  Speaker 4: want to bail on him. But looking back on it,
• 41:55
  Speaker 4: that was my chance to see Daft Punk.
• 41:57
  Speaker 2: And I didn't shoot man that.
• 42:01
  Speaker 4: I know. I know anyhow, I'm getting way off topic.
• 42:04
  Speaker 2: No, you're good. Going back to me, Matth real quick.
• 42:07
  Speaker 2: One question I wanted to ask you, Yeah, because this
• 42:10
  Speaker 2: album is is so dear to my heart, it completely
• 42:17
  Speaker 2: it almost puts you up on like my Mount Rushmore
• 42:20
  Speaker 2: of of.
• 42:21
  Speaker 3: Music Top five Top three favorite albums for you probably right.
• 42:25
  Speaker 2: Yeah, odd Soul in twenty eleven. I'm curious because you
• 42:29
  Speaker 2: were talking about how like some of the albums like
• 42:30
  Speaker 2: kind of had some of the songs that were maybe
• 42:32
  Speaker 2: not as genuine as you as you wish that they
• 42:34
  Speaker 2: would have been. Was odd Soul kind of a little
• 42:38
  Speaker 2: bit of a different endeavor because it felt so authentic
• 42:42
  Speaker 2: in every single way.
• 42:44
  Speaker 4: Yeah, I think that Odd Souls one that I remember
• 42:47
  Speaker 4: really funly. The the idea behind Odd's Soul was we
• 42:51
  Speaker 4: did that one differently than every other record. What happened
• 42:56
  Speaker 4: then is we said, what if we make a record
• 42:59
  Speaker 4: that is as fun as possible to play live? And
• 43:02
  Speaker 4: that was the one metric, So we were aiming for
• 43:04
  Speaker 4: something with that one. The second record felt like, uh
• 43:10
  Speaker 4: oh no, our first record did kind of okay, and
• 43:13
  Speaker 4: people are paying attention to us. Now we have to
• 43:15
  Speaker 4: become the greatest band of all time, and we were
• 43:18
  Speaker 4: trying to be five different bands in hopes that one
• 43:21
  Speaker 4: of those avenues would take off.
• 43:23
  Speaker 3: It.
• 43:23
  Speaker 4: It wasn't even about catchiness or pop. It's not even
• 43:26
  Speaker 4: about hookiness. It's about identity. It's almost like if you
• 43:29
  Speaker 4: were going on a date with somebody and they kept
• 43:32
  Speaker 4: you waiting an hour because they kept changing their outfit,
• 43:35
  Speaker 4: and you're like, look, I don't whatever outfit just come
• 43:38
  Speaker 4: hang out with me, but they're upstairs like no, no, no,
• 43:40
  Speaker 4: There was just this insecurity.
• 43:41
  Speaker 1: I haven't ejaculated in twenty five years. Come on, just
• 43:43
  Speaker 1: like put.
• 43:47
  Speaker 4: But they have a shot heard around the world. Please
• 43:50
  Speaker 4: come down right.
• 43:54
  Speaker 1: So that was sorry, I had to say it. I
• 43:56
  Speaker 1: just had to say. It was just.
• 43:59
  Speaker 4: That we had to do more with like an insecurity
• 44:02
  Speaker 4: and by odd soul, we saw ourselves as like, oh, okay,
• 44:05
  Speaker 4: we're not a wreck, we're not a radio band, because
• 44:09
  Speaker 4: still in that era, the goal was to get on
• 44:13
  Speaker 4: the radio. If you could get on the radio right,
• 44:15
  Speaker 4: then you were set. Now it's TikTok, right, And I
• 44:19
  Speaker 4: think that we realized that that was probably a long
• 44:22
  Speaker 4: shot for us. We weren't easily formatted into a radio format,
• 44:28
  Speaker 4: and so we said, let's just lean into the fact
• 44:30
  Speaker 4: that we are a good live band. So let's pretend
• 44:33
  Speaker 4: like those four guys that are about to have to
• 44:35
  Speaker 4: go on tour in six months, let's just give them
• 44:38
  Speaker 4: the best like stuff they can really lay into. And
• 44:41
  Speaker 4: that's why that that that was like a peak, like
• 44:45
  Speaker 4: the touring part of it was. I always felt like
• 44:49
  Speaker 4: our songs got infinitely better after that album was out,
• 44:52
  Speaker 4: and then we started touring them. That's when they really
• 44:54
  Speaker 4: became the song you know, and we have. When we
• 44:58
  Speaker 4: have a good song, you can dress it up any
• 45:00
  Speaker 4: any different way. You can put all kinds of different
• 45:02
  Speaker 4: styles around it. But if you know, if the core
• 45:05
  Speaker 4: is lyric melody, if it all works together well, if
• 45:07
  Speaker 4: the rhythm's good, if it's got a sentiment, if it
• 45:10
  Speaker 4: means something, then you can play it all kinds of
• 45:12
  Speaker 4: different ways. And Paul was a genius at revising, like
• 45:17
  Speaker 4: he some some artists really screw up their songs when
• 45:20
  Speaker 4: they remix them, and then you have to hear like,
• 45:22
  Speaker 4: oh great, now I get here stings like wanky version
• 45:25
  Speaker 4: of Feels of Gold, and I just want to hear
• 45:27
  Speaker 4: like I want to hear the chords. Paul was really
• 45:31
  Speaker 4: good at at adding and taking away but still keeping
• 45:35
  Speaker 4: the the core of what made something good or extending parts.
• 45:38
  Speaker 4: I mean, whenever I played in church for him, he
• 45:41
  Speaker 4: never he never told us. I spent a season living
• 45:45
  Speaker 4: with Paul, like this is around Hurricane Katrina. I lived
• 45:47
  Speaker 4: with he and his wife and we and we played
• 45:49
  Speaker 4: at this really really eccentric charismatic church in New Orleans,
• 45:55
  Speaker 4: which you know, New Orleans is eccentric in and other
• 45:57
  Speaker 4: so and Paul would only tell me track one. He
• 46:01
  Speaker 4: would only tell me the first song that we'd be playing,
• 46:04
  Speaker 4: and the rest of it was just fugazi. I just
• 46:06
  Speaker 4: had to follow him for the rest of the service,
• 46:08
  Speaker 4: and he didn't. He didn't. We never had a set list,
• 46:11
  Speaker 4: we never had it planned out. It was just like,
• 46:12
  Speaker 4: come along for the ride. It was pretty awesome. That
• 46:14
  Speaker 4: was That was kind of a pivotal season for us
• 46:18
  Speaker 4: as well, to learn how to listen, you know. Anyhow, Yeah,
• 46:22
  Speaker 4: so odd Soul, the making of Odd Soul was really dismal.
• 46:25
  Speaker 4: I had just gotten married and Stacy was still touring
• 46:29
  Speaker 4: and I was alone. So I was a married guy,
• 46:32
  Speaker 4: and I was living in Tyler, Texas, where Stacy's from,
• 46:35
  Speaker 4: but I was staying at Paul and Deanna's house. So
• 46:37
  Speaker 4: I was a married guy but living with a married couple,
• 46:40
  Speaker 4: but not my wife, you know, alone in their guest room.
• 46:44
  Speaker 4: She was on tour. We had like eight dollars, you know,
• 46:47
  Speaker 4: we were we that newly weed had no money, and
• 46:52
  Speaker 4: I stressed, and it's just lonely. That was just the
• 46:55
  Speaker 4: really really lonely time. But we got a good record
• 46:59
  Speaker 4: out of it, and then I fell that's the only
• 47:04
  Speaker 4: there's a little derivative, like like the song O Soul.
• 47:07
  Speaker 4: I feel like it was slightly derivative of Black Keys
• 47:11
  Speaker 4: at times, and if I had it to do over,
• 47:13
  Speaker 4: I would just steer us a little slight, slight bit
• 47:17
  Speaker 4: more into this psychedelic that Some of the songs that
• 47:19
  Speaker 4: were more psychedelic were were some of my favorites on
• 47:24
  Speaker 4: that work. The only song that I like had almost
• 47:27
  Speaker 4: nothing to do with was a track called in No
• 47:29
  Speaker 4: Time I think was the last song on there, which
• 47:32
  Speaker 4: Paul he really just wrote that chords and milk. I
• 47:35
  Speaker 4: had this old organ that I brought, and he played
• 47:38
  Speaker 4: that and sang it, and I was just cheering him
• 47:41
  Speaker 4: on while he wrote that one. But that one was
• 47:43
  Speaker 4: pretty much just him. The other songs, the way that
• 47:47
  Speaker 4: we would that I would make the beginning instrumental is
• 47:52
  Speaker 4: oftentimes I would just set up a really cool signal
• 47:54
  Speaker 4: chain of a synth or a guitar, and then have
• 47:57
  Speaker 4: one of us jam to a beat or a click
• 48:01
  Speaker 4: for fifteen minutes, and then I would take the laptop
• 48:05
  Speaker 4: and just chop it, chop it, chop it up and
• 48:08
  Speaker 4: shred it into pieces and move it around and that
• 48:11
  Speaker 4: was that was how we So we'd not jamming together
• 48:14
  Speaker 4: as a band, but just one person playing and then
• 48:18
  Speaker 4: take that and turn it into something. Was a really
• 48:20
  Speaker 4: fun way just to try to create as inspiring of
• 48:23
  Speaker 4: a sound, get a really cool guitar tone, and then
• 48:28
  Speaker 4: have whoever was best the guitar play it, or whoever
• 48:31
  Speaker 4: was feeling it that day play and then take take
• 48:34
  Speaker 4: the laptop away and go chop it up. Was really fun.
• 48:37
  Speaker 1: That's so cool, That's amazing. Okay, so we've talked a
• 48:40
  Speaker 1: lot about mute math.
• 48:42
  Speaker 3: About four years ago, now maybe even a little longer
• 48:45
  Speaker 3: than four years ago, you decided I'm gonna go on
• 48:48
  Speaker 3: do my own thing. Can you talk a little bit
• 48:51
  Speaker 3: about that process and then all the cool shit that
• 48:53
  Speaker 3: you've been up to since. I mean, you've done a
• 48:55
  Speaker 3: lot of really interesting stuff. But yeah, can you talk
• 48:57
  Speaker 3: a little bit about maybe some of the reasons, I
• 49:00
  Speaker 3: mean behind your decision to all right, I'm done with
• 49:02
  Speaker 3: mute mass stuff and now I'm going to move on
• 49:04
  Speaker 3: to some of my own stuff. Can you talk a
• 49:06
  Speaker 3: little bit about that decision process and then all the
• 49:09
  Speaker 3: goalshit that you've been up to since.
• 49:11
  Speaker 4: Yeah, I can I don't know how much or what
• 49:15
  Speaker 4: part of that story is most interesting or best to
• 49:19
  Speaker 4: tell or smart to tell. It was five years ago,
• 49:23
  Speaker 4: almost six years ago now, and it was a particularly
• 49:28
  Speaker 4: sad time, a personal little apocalypse. And I think that
• 49:32
  Speaker 4: mute math was probably something that I needed to let
• 49:34
  Speaker 4: go of sooner than I did. And as you know,
• 49:38
  Speaker 4: with anything that you know you're supposed to let go
• 49:40
  Speaker 4: of and don't, the longer you hold on to it,
• 49:44
  Speaker 4: the more it festers, and the more toxic it becomes,
• 49:47
  Speaker 4: and the more unhealthy. I was not well. My marriage
• 49:51
  Speaker 4: was not good. Stacy and I were not We had
• 49:56
  Speaker 4: to tear down our marriage and rebuild it. There's a
• 49:58
  Speaker 4: quote I heard from on being with Krista Tippett.
• 50:01
  Speaker 1: Ah, what a godsend of a person she is.
• 50:04
  Speaker 4: Yeah, there was this one episode where it was a
• 50:07
  Speaker 4: woman who was I guess she was an expert in
• 50:12
  Speaker 4: unique marriage arrangements, like certain marriages in Mongolia where there's
• 50:18
  Speaker 4: three husbands and one wife, but two of the husbands
• 50:21
  Speaker 4: are always gone at one time hunting and come back
• 50:23
  Speaker 4: just you know, not the American nuclear family, right right.
• 50:28
  Speaker 4: And she studied and she had a quote in this
• 50:30
  Speaker 4: episode where she said, I believe everyone should be married
• 50:33
  Speaker 4: three times, even if all three times are to the
• 50:36
  Speaker 4: same person, and that that really helped me. Stacey and
• 50:40
  Speaker 4: I got to a part of our lives where we
• 50:42
  Speaker 4: were either going to totally dismantle our marriage an attempt
• 50:47
  Speaker 4: to rebuild it, or we weren't going to make it.
• 50:51
  Speaker 4: And it was the most terrifying time of my life.
• 50:54
  Speaker 4: And you know, before it could be turned down, torn down,
• 50:57
  Speaker 4: it had to be condemned, I think. And that was
• 51:01
  Speaker 4: just I knew that if there was any hope of
• 51:05
  Speaker 4: us making it. We had two daughters at you know,
• 51:08
  Speaker 4: our second daughter had just been born. If we had
• 51:11
  Speaker 4: any hope of making it, I knew that it wasn't
• 51:14
  Speaker 4: with me touring. I had to quit. I had to
• 51:17
  Speaker 4: be home. And even I remember of stations having a
• 51:19
  Speaker 4: really bad argument one night, and my at that time
• 51:21
  Speaker 4: she's nine now but at the time newly four, your
• 51:24
  Speaker 4: old daughter came in between our argument and looked at
• 51:27
  Speaker 4: me and said, Dad, I need you to slow down.
• 51:31
  Speaker 4: And I just was like, oh, yeah, me too, me too, thanks,
• 51:38
  Speaker 4: And she was right. And so I had to lose
• 51:41
  Speaker 4: the thing that was my identity. It was like I
• 51:44
  Speaker 4: knew that so long as I was the drummer of
• 51:46
  Speaker 4: mute Math. People liked me. It was the number one
• 51:48
  Speaker 4: way that people liked me, and letting go of that
• 51:51
  Speaker 4: hurt so much. I felt so ashamed and disappointed in myself,
• 51:55
  Speaker 4: felt like a like I had really blown it. And
• 51:58
  Speaker 4: I also felt this is all I'll say about this.
• 52:01
  Speaker 4: This might even be too much, and maybe I've said
• 52:03
  Speaker 4: too much already, but I feel I felt so angry
• 52:07
  Speaker 4: when I look back on the business of Mutmath, but
• 52:11
  Speaker 4: also the contractual part of it, the you know, the
• 52:15
  Speaker 4: contracts that I signed, and my naivity and my youthfulness.
• 52:19
  Speaker 4: My life could probably be pretty different now had I
• 52:22
  Speaker 4: not signed some pretty pretty predatory contracts in my early days.
• 52:27
  Speaker 4: But maybe not better, because I might have just had
• 52:30
  Speaker 4: more money, and maybe that wouldn't have made me better.
• 52:33
  Speaker 4: Maybe it was good that I didn't have any more
• 52:34
  Speaker 4: money than I did at that time. You know that.
• 52:37
  Speaker 4: Sometimes I wonder if Mutemath's lack of becoming Coldplay was
• 52:41
  Speaker 4: just the best blessing possible, because I got to be like,
• 52:45
  Speaker 4: I got to be right in this sweet spot and
• 52:48
  Speaker 4: play the House of Blues and almost sell it out,
• 52:51
  Speaker 4: but then also get to go home and just you know,
• 52:54
  Speaker 4: be myself and I didn't have too much of my
• 52:57
  Speaker 4: identity wrapped up into it. It's kind of a kind
• 53:00
  Speaker 4: of a cool medium that we struck for a long
• 53:02
  Speaker 4: long time, but it reached a point where it became
• 53:04
  Speaker 4: unsustainable and where it wasn't healthy. So and and my
• 53:10
  Speaker 4: relationship to Paul was very bad. It it had become
• 53:13
  Speaker 4: really unhealthy, probably for both of us. So that's why
• 53:18
  Speaker 4: I left. And I feel really proud of the way
• 53:23
  Speaker 4: that Stacey and I both centered our family and especially
• 53:28
  Speaker 4: our daughters, and the way that we worked to reparent
• 53:31
  Speaker 4: ourselves and relearn what type of home we wanted to
• 53:35
  Speaker 4: have and how to secure how to foster a secure attachment,
• 53:41
  Speaker 4: how to be how to love our kids, and so
• 53:45
  Speaker 4: that part of my life it feels like it's just
• 53:48
  Speaker 4: so good. I feel this deep every day. Just I
• 53:54
  Speaker 4: feel so much love and peace at home and with
• 53:57
  Speaker 4: our kids. And at the same time, I feel like
• 54:02
  Speaker 4: I've missed a lot of opportunity and I've passed up
• 54:06
  Speaker 4: on a lot of, you know, success that I could
• 54:10
  Speaker 4: have tried to seize on. I've tried to do enough
• 54:13
  Speaker 4: to keep the lights on and to stay happy, and
• 54:16
  Speaker 4: but but I've I've really for the last five or
• 54:19
  Speaker 4: six years. Just it's been a been about being dead.
• 54:23
  Speaker 2: So Darren, your rubbing shoulders with the Kanyes of the world,
• 54:28
  Speaker 2: the Travis Scotts of the world. You're creating amazing collaborations
• 54:34
  Speaker 2: with all these different people. I just I just saw
• 54:36
  Speaker 2: you with Pockets, Scary pockets.
• 54:39
  Speaker 4: Scary pockets.
• 54:39
  Speaker 2: Yeah, scary pockets. I saw you on Musicians React, which
• 54:43
  Speaker 2: is super cool. I watched that religiously. Oh wait is
• 54:47
  Speaker 2: that out? Yeah? It just came out five days ago.
• 54:49
  Speaker 2: I think of this recording.
• 54:52
  Speaker 6: Oh wow, I missed that. Okay, you gotta go out
• 54:54
  Speaker 6: and check it out. Yeah, I didn't know that they
• 54:57
  Speaker 6: put that video out yet. I was waiting for it.
• 54:59
  Speaker 6: I love I love that series. I was really honored
• 55:01
  Speaker 6: to get to be a part of that.
• 55:02
  Speaker 2: Yeah, those guys are so cool. You've been really hanging
• 55:07
  Speaker 2: out with, not just like the people who are good musicians,
• 55:09
  Speaker 2: but the people who musicians really really respect, like Theo
• 55:13
  Speaker 2: Katzman and stuff like that. Just really really impressed with
• 55:17
  Speaker 2: where your career is going. What are some things that
• 55:20
  Speaker 2: you're just really really excited for in the future. What
• 55:23
  Speaker 2: are some things that that you're you're really proud to
• 55:25
  Speaker 2: have been a part of and things of that sort recently.
• 55:29
  Speaker 4: Oh, I'll tell a story I haven't told Anyboddy yet.
• 55:31
  Speaker 4: I think it's far enough along in the projects that
• 55:33
  Speaker 4: I get to talk about it. For one, I mean,
• 55:36
  Speaker 4: I'm I am really disappointed in what happened, you know,
• 55:40
  Speaker 4: with Travis Scott at that Astro and I have to say,
• 55:45
  Speaker 4: I'm real worried about. I know y'all are pumped on
• 55:47
  Speaker 4: this when we were young, right festival, y'all gonna go.
• 55:51
  Speaker 2: I'm not gonna go. I I was into a different,
• 55:55
  Speaker 2: different type of stuff personally.
• 55:56
  Speaker 3: If there was like a tooth and nail version, which
• 55:58
  Speaker 3: I guess is furnace fast. But that's how when when
• 56:01
  Speaker 3: you were young.
• 56:03
  Speaker 4: I mean, that's being put on by the same people
• 56:05
  Speaker 4: who did you know that the Astro World Show, and
• 56:08
  Speaker 4: I can't I look at that many bands in one day.
• 56:12
  Speaker 2: One day. Yeah, that's too much.
• 56:14
  Speaker 4: That sounds like some kind of work tour. Like work
• 56:17
  Speaker 4: tour was We did work to her one time and
• 56:19
  Speaker 4: that was a ship show. Yeah, you know, it was
• 56:22
  Speaker 4: kind of fun too for a week, but that was
• 56:24
  Speaker 4: a mess. I can't imagine what that we I'm worried
• 56:27
  Speaker 4: about that when we were young festival. Anyhow, So I
• 56:30
  Speaker 4: got an email about a year ago and it said
• 56:33
  Speaker 4: Travis Scott twenty twenty one and it was from Mike Dean.
• 56:39
  Speaker 4: If you're familiar with the producer Mike Dean, he's like
• 56:41
  Speaker 4: one of the greatest producers all He's the producer I
• 56:44
  Speaker 4: worked with on the Travis Scott and Kanye songs that
• 56:46
  Speaker 4: I worked on. It said that the email just said, Hey,
• 56:50
  Speaker 4: I've got some new Travis stuff you want to work
• 56:53
  Speaker 4: on it, I'll send you to you. And I was like, yes, absolutely, yes,
• 57:00
  Speaker 4: I'll send you any beats you want. And then he
• 57:02
  Speaker 4: must say dope. Oh, by the way, can you send
• 57:06
  Speaker 4: me all the Kanye tracks that you have, just all
• 57:10
  Speaker 4: of the stuff on your ar, like anything you've got
• 57:13
  Speaker 4: from all this, all the songs we worked on together.
• 57:15
  Speaker 4: And I was like sure. He's like I lost it all,
• 57:19
  Speaker 4: which I thought was really weird, Like Mike Dean probably
• 57:23
  Speaker 4: has a pretty extensive hard drive back up nobody He's like, yeah,
• 57:26
  Speaker 4: nobody has any of it. So they like, send it
• 57:30
  Speaker 4: to me via this link. So I sent it. I
• 57:33
  Speaker 4: gathered it all in a dropbox, sent it to them,
• 57:36
  Speaker 4: and then when I tried to download the fault the
• 57:38
  Speaker 4: file he sent me, it was these corrupt files, and
• 57:41
  Speaker 4: so I texted Mike. I was like, hey, I sent
• 57:43
  Speaker 4: you that stuff, but I can't download any stuff that
• 57:46
  Speaker 4: you sent me, so can you, like, do you want
• 57:49
  Speaker 4: to resend it? He just sent me one he texted
• 57:51
  Speaker 4: me back packers. I was like, damn it. Oh no,
• 57:56
  Speaker 4: And so I was like, dude, I'm sorry I sent me.
• 57:58
  Speaker 4: He's like it's fine. He's like he's like, I've had
• 58:01
  Speaker 4: fifty people, like I've got the FBI. And he's like oh,
• 58:04
  Speaker 4: He's like yeah everybody. And I look back and the
• 58:07
  Speaker 4: email had like one letter and it instead of you know,
• 58:09
  Speaker 4: whatever his email was, it was had one letter off yeah,
• 58:13
  Speaker 4: And I'm so sorry. Oh, like, don't worry about it's fine,
• 58:16
  Speaker 4: like it's not a big deal. And and then he
• 58:19
  Speaker 4: and then he called me and he said you're that drummer, right.
• 58:22
  Speaker 4: I was like yeah. He called me back. He's like, hey,
• 58:25
  Speaker 4: I've actually got something for you to play on. And
• 58:27
  Speaker 4: I was like okay. He's like, yeah, I'm working on
• 58:29
  Speaker 4: something right now and I think you'd be perfect for it.
• 58:33
  Speaker 4: So I'm gonna send you the files. And it turns
• 58:36
  Speaker 4: out is one of my favorite singers of all time
• 58:39
  Speaker 4: is a woman from France. Her name is Christine and
• 58:41
  Speaker 4: the Queens. Have you heard of her?
• 58:43
  Speaker 2: Oh?
• 58:43
  Speaker 4: Oh, she's amazing. She's an incredible dancer and incredible singer
• 58:49
  Speaker 4: and I love her music and I love her and
• 58:52
  Speaker 4: so I was like, what, yes, I absolutely yes, I'll
• 58:55
  Speaker 4: play on that. So for the last few months I've
• 58:59
  Speaker 4: been you know, getting from them and them playing drums
• 59:02
  Speaker 4: for for her next But she's doing this very epic project.
• 59:05
  Speaker 4: Maybe I shouldn't say anything more about it if she
• 59:07
  Speaker 4: hasn't yet, sounds great. But so I've gotten to work with,
• 59:12
  Speaker 4: you know, one of my favorite producers of all time
• 59:14
  Speaker 4: and one of my favorite artists. And who's Christinas? You
• 59:17
  Speaker 4: not heard her yet? You got to said crap. Then
• 59:19
  Speaker 4: I've made a record called Lockers. It's got twelve tracks
• 59:24
  Speaker 4: on it or eleven, and I took a really long
• 59:27
  Speaker 4: time to make it. I made it with thirty other musicians.
• 59:30
  Speaker 2: That's so cool.
• 59:31
  Speaker 1: I remember talking about this. It was like.
• 59:33
  Speaker 4: Whoa, Yeah, I just wanted to make a record with
• 59:37
  Speaker 4: all my favorite rappers and singers, my friends, and it
• 59:40
  Speaker 4: turned out to be, you know, way more of a
• 59:43
  Speaker 4: process than I had initially set up for and I
• 59:45
  Speaker 4: got I did get discouraged, you know, middle of a pandemic.
• 59:48
  Speaker 4: I kind of you know, gave up on it for
• 59:50
  Speaker 4: a year and just needed to stop trying to work
• 59:53
  Speaker 4: on it. But then I picked it back up and
• 59:55
  Speaker 4: I just finished it. So hopefully in the next month
• 59:59
  Speaker 4: or two will get to send that off to have
• 1:00:01
  Speaker 4: it pressed for vinyl and I'll get to release that.
• 1:00:04
  Speaker 4: I've released a couple of singles. I'm just using the
• 1:00:06
  Speaker 4: name DK the drummer for that.
• 1:00:09
  Speaker 2: I was playing some of those things. I'm a teacher.
• 1:00:11
  Speaker 2: I was playing some of those sin of those singles
• 1:00:13
  Speaker 2: for my students today and they were like, mister Mac,
• 1:00:16
  Speaker 2: this stuff is sick. And I'm like, yeah, it's really good.
• 1:00:20
  Speaker 2: And it's like you can get their approval at least
• 1:00:24
  Speaker 2: like on that initial listen, I think you're on the
• 1:00:27
  Speaker 2: right track, my man.
• 1:00:28
  Speaker 4: Thank you. Yeah, it's a fun record. I'm really proud
• 1:00:30
  Speaker 4: of it. I just made these instrumental tracks and I
• 1:00:33
  Speaker 4: sent them to my friends and I just said, please
• 1:00:36
  Speaker 4: sing or say whatever you want on top of this.
• 1:00:40
  Speaker 4: And so I think the cool thing that happens is
• 1:00:42
  Speaker 4: actually in the variety of the voices and standpoints the
• 1:00:47
  Speaker 4: perspectives each song. It's probably not like a mut Math record,
• 1:00:51
  Speaker 4: you know, each song probably sounds pretty different from the voice.
• 1:00:54
  Speaker 4: I mean, that was one thing about Meet Math was
• 1:00:56
  Speaker 4: Paul's voice was unmistakable. But my production style is consistent,
• 1:01:00
  Speaker 4: I think throughout for the most part. But it's got
• 1:01:03
  Speaker 4: It's got PJ. Morton on it. It's got some of
• 1:01:06
  Speaker 4: my friends, like, uh, let's see Adam Ledbetter is one
• 1:01:10
  Speaker 4: of my favorite mcs of all time. If you look up,
• 1:01:13
  Speaker 4: he's got this thing he does called bars and boards.
• 1:01:16
  Speaker 4: He's an incredible keys player and MC. He's incredibly profound.
• 1:01:20
  Speaker 4: He's one of the best. He'll play synth and rap
• 1:01:25
  Speaker 4: at the same time, and it's nuts. He's so good
• 1:01:28
  Speaker 4: bars and boards. Adam is on it. Let's see my
• 1:01:32
  Speaker 4: buddy win. So many good so many good singers and
• 1:01:35
  Speaker 4: vocal stakes. He's on it, of course. And well there's
• 1:01:39
  Speaker 4: a band. There's a group here called Brassville. They're a
• 1:01:43
  Speaker 4: great like New Orleans style brass band. And in the
• 1:01:47
  Speaker 4: next weekend they're gonna come over to my place and
• 1:01:49
  Speaker 4: we're going to track a song together that I've got
• 1:01:52
  Speaker 4: And I'm working on a solo record where I sing
• 1:01:56
  Speaker 4: I want to do just like this eight or nine
• 1:01:58
  Speaker 4: song record where I feel like I feel like there's
• 1:02:01
  Speaker 4: at least something I could do with my voice that's
• 1:02:04
  Speaker 4: worth a record. I don't sing like Stacey, and I
• 1:02:07
  Speaker 4: certainly don't sing like like you know my my friends
• 1:02:11
  Speaker 4: who can really sing, but I can do enough to Like.
• 1:02:15
  Speaker 4: I don't know who are y'all's favorite untrained voices? Can
• 1:02:19
  Speaker 4: you think of Chris Cornell? WHOA I don't know. You
• 1:02:23
  Speaker 4: think he's uh that dude that pipes, didn't he?
• 1:02:25
  Speaker 2: Yeah? He uh? He literally came off a fish factory
• 1:02:28
  Speaker 2: floor and sang for the first time when he was
• 1:02:31
  Speaker 2: thirteen years old in his band. He was a drummer
• 1:02:34
  Speaker 2: to start with.
• 1:02:36
  Speaker 4: But he's not a bad singer. Like he had good
• 1:02:38
  Speaker 4: tits though.
• 1:02:38
  Speaker 2: Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, lots of power. That was basic kid,
• 1:02:42
  Speaker 2: but definitely undrained.
• 1:02:44
  Speaker 4: That dude's voice. Man, I wish I could have heard
• 1:02:46
  Speaker 4: him live. That would have been one.
• 1:02:47
  Speaker 2: I saw him six days before he before he killed himself,
• 1:02:51
  Speaker 2: and it was incredible. It was It's a moment, oh man.
• 1:02:57
  Speaker 3: I mean I guess, like I don't know exactly who's
• 1:03:00
  Speaker 3: all trained and untrained, But I mean, like Christian Lynkskog
• 1:03:04
  Speaker 3: from Blindside. His voice, but especially because I, like, you know,
• 1:03:08
  Speaker 3: come from a lot of like the metal world. I mean,
• 1:03:10
  Speaker 3: his voice both for screaming and singing is on paralleled
• 1:03:14
  Speaker 3: in terms of that balance of singing and screaming.
• 1:03:17
  Speaker 4: Or not even untrained but just unrefined might be a
• 1:03:21
  Speaker 4: better term for who's favorite unrefined vocalists? Whoever? That? What's
• 1:03:25
  Speaker 4: that dude from? Uh? It is lost on me? A
• 1:03:28
  Speaker 4: Scottish punk group that's so badass Idols Iah that dude's boy.
• 1:03:38
  Speaker 4: But you just go, there's this. There's a Kenny Beats.
• 1:03:43
  Speaker 4: Are you familiar with the producer Kenny Beats. He's got
• 1:03:46
  Speaker 4: a YouTube, he has a he has a recent video
• 1:03:49
  Speaker 4: with Idols where the dude wraps. He's great. He kind
• 1:03:52
  Speaker 4: of sounds like method Man a little bit. It's really
• 1:03:55
  Speaker 4: bad guy sounds like the Scottish method man.
• 1:03:58
  Speaker 2: You know. Okay, Sorry, this is totally a weird side tangent.
• 1:04:02
  Speaker 2: I was thinking about this earlier. I was thinking, how
• 1:04:05
  Speaker 2: insanely cool would it be if you could get Darren King,
• 1:04:11
  Speaker 2: Tame and Paula and Alpha Misted in the same room
• 1:04:15
  Speaker 2: together working on some cool shit together.
• 1:04:19
  Speaker 4: Not heard that third one who's Alpha Albamist.
• 1:04:22
  Speaker 2: He's a really really good drummer, jazz jazzy type stuff,
• 1:04:26
  Speaker 2: but also has a lot of like hip hop elements.
• 1:04:29
  Speaker 2: But what he'll do is he'll do a lot of
• 1:04:31
  Speaker 2: sampling as well, but more in like the jazz hip
• 1:04:34
  Speaker 2: hop type type type world. If you haven't heard him,
• 1:04:37
  Speaker 2: you absolutely must.
• 1:04:39
  Speaker 4: Can I tell you my Tam and Paula's story real? Yeah? Yeah,
• 1:04:42
  Speaker 4: we got to put Memeth after one of our records.
• 1:04:47
  Speaker 4: One of the records did well in Japan. Oh, I
• 1:04:49
  Speaker 4: think it was. I think it was Armistice. It's weird.
• 1:04:52
  Speaker 4: Each of the five records, Each of the first five
• 1:04:56
  Speaker 4: records did good in a different country. So yeah, So
• 1:05:01
  Speaker 4: the second record did good in Japan and we got
• 1:05:04
  Speaker 4: to go to Japan six times and that was one
• 1:05:05
  Speaker 4: of the coolest things I ever got to do. And
• 1:05:08
  Speaker 4: after Odds Sould, Odds Soul did well in Australia and
• 1:05:10
  Speaker 4: we got to tour a lot in Australia and had
• 1:05:13
  Speaker 4: some great appearances there. But while touring in Japan, we
• 1:05:17
  Speaker 4: played this two great festivals there, There's Summer Sonic and
• 1:05:20
  Speaker 4: Fuji Rock and we got to play I think it
• 1:05:23
  Speaker 4: was Summer Sonic that year that we were playing at
• 1:05:26
  Speaker 4: and it was, oh gosh, who was Tyler? The creator
• 1:05:30
  Speaker 4: played and bombed in front of these Japanese like they
• 1:05:33
  Speaker 4: didn't know about him at all, and they were shocked,
• 1:05:36
  Speaker 4: shocked by him, you know.
• 1:05:39
  Speaker 1: He was or what was he doing?
• 1:05:41
  Speaker 4: This was early it was it was the whole what
• 1:05:44
  Speaker 4: was the name of the group, but Wolf, Wolfgang or
• 1:05:46
  Speaker 4: whatever they called it, Odd Odd Future. So it was
• 1:05:50
  Speaker 4: the whole crew, and it was just this audience was
• 1:05:53
  Speaker 4: not ready, you know, so they just kind of stood
• 1:05:56
  Speaker 4: still while they you know, went off, which it was.
• 1:05:58
  Speaker 4: The show was insane. I got to see Devo they destroyed.
• 1:06:03
  Speaker 2: I would love to see.
• 1:06:04
  Speaker 4: Yeah, the headliners were flaming lips.
• 1:06:07
  Speaker 2: I loved, of course, how did you not?
• 1:06:09
  Speaker 4: So I got up the courage to go talk to
• 1:06:12
  Speaker 4: to Wayne and uh and and I asked him like,
• 1:06:16
  Speaker 4: can I be some Can I be in your show tonight?
• 1:06:19
  Speaker 4: Can I be one of the characters. He's like, yes,
• 1:06:23
  Speaker 4: you can be the frog Prince Prince and I walked
• 1:06:28
  Speaker 4: away and as I was walking away from Wayne, these
• 1:06:31
  Speaker 4: three really young youth group looking guys came up to
• 1:06:35
  Speaker 4: me and they're like, did you just talk to Wayne
• 1:06:37
  Speaker 4: Coin and I was like, yeah, he's like a cool
• 1:06:40
  Speaker 4: It's like he's super cool. You should go talk to him.
• 1:06:42
  Speaker 4: I asked if I could be in his show, and
• 1:06:45
  Speaker 4: he's gonna let me be dressed up as a frog
• 1:06:47
  Speaker 4: on the side of stage. They're like no, why, and
• 1:06:49
  Speaker 4: and I was like, well, what are you all doing here?
• 1:06:51
  Speaker 4: Because are you playing? Like yeah, yeah, we're a band.
• 1:06:54
  Speaker 4: This is our first time. And then they're like, what's
• 1:06:56
  Speaker 4: your band called? And they're like it's Tame and Paula.
• 1:06:58
  Speaker 4: And I was like, oh Tame what Tame Tame and Pauler,
• 1:07:03
  Speaker 4: you know that Tame and Paula. I was like, oh cool, Well,
• 1:07:06
  Speaker 4: I hope you'll have a great set. And just by
• 1:07:08
  Speaker 4: like how happy they were and the way they were
• 1:07:10
  Speaker 4: hanging out, they had like a very it was. It
• 1:07:12
  Speaker 4: was it very like mx PX was what I would
• 1:07:14
  Speaker 4: have guessed that their music sounded like, you know, could
• 1:07:17
  Speaker 4: not have been more wrong. And then the part that
• 1:07:20
  Speaker 4: was so amazing was later that night I put on
• 1:07:23
  Speaker 4: the Frog Princes costume and then I look around behind,
• 1:07:25
  Speaker 4: you know, it was the three of them all. Yeah,
• 1:07:27
  Speaker 4: They're like we made it. So I got so sweaty,
• 1:07:33
  Speaker 4: I got so sweaty and I left my phone in
• 1:07:35
  Speaker 4: my pocket that my phone was completely ruined by my
• 1:07:39
  Speaker 4: I remember I lost my phone that night. You know
• 1:07:42
  Speaker 4: my palm Trayo was. That was the night my Trayo died.
• 1:07:46
  Speaker 4: Oh that's my and Paul story. That's a pretty good one, right.
• 1:07:50
  Speaker 2: That's a fun one.
• 1:07:51
  Speaker 4: But then I went home, I was like, oh, I
• 1:07:53
  Speaker 4: bet I should look up these guys just to see
• 1:07:55
  Speaker 4: what they're like. And then I found out like, oh damn,
• 1:07:58
  Speaker 4: that's the best drum sound I've ever heard.
• 1:08:00
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's super cool.
• 1:08:01
  Speaker 4: Yeah it was. They'd only had that first record out,
• 1:08:04
  Speaker 4: you know.
• 1:08:04
  Speaker 2: Yeah, speaking of drum sound, you can still Darren sound
• 1:08:08
  Speaker 2: Darren King sound our listeners.
• 1:08:11
  Speaker 4: That's making you think.
• 1:08:12
  Speaker 2: That's so weird to me that you could just like
• 1:08:14
  Speaker 2: take your your samples and the samples of your actual
• 1:08:20
  Speaker 2: drums and you could and you can put it in
• 1:08:23
  Speaker 2: in anyone's music.
• 1:08:24
  Speaker 4: Yeah. My company is called Thickaudio dot com and I'm
• 1:08:28
  Speaker 4: making sample pack.
• 1:08:29
  Speaker 2: With seeds Thick Thick with two seeds. Yeah, we were
• 1:08:32
  Speaker 2: th h I.
• 1:08:33
  Speaker 4: C K Audio. Yeah, should I have done two seeds?
• 1:08:37
  Speaker 2: Well in two if it was twenty twenty one, yes,
• 1:08:41
  Speaker 2: if if it was before that probably not you want
• 1:08:43
  Speaker 2: to know them exactly.
• 1:08:47
  Speaker 4: That's what I'm thinking, is like, I should probably just
• 1:08:49
  Speaker 4: make some hats and shirts that say Thick on them
• 1:08:51
  Speaker 4: and don't say anything else, and I'll at least i'll
• 1:08:53
  Speaker 4: probably sell more of those than I would sample pack
• 1:08:55
  Speaker 4: so geez, so yeah thick audio and yeah, I'm making
• 1:09:01
  Speaker 4: sample packs, royalty free sample packs people can use in
• 1:09:03
  Speaker 4: their own songs. My favorite is one time a guy
• 1:09:06
  Speaker 4: came up to me at a Mute Mass show and
• 1:09:08
  Speaker 4: he's like, hey, I use your beats all the time.
• 1:09:11
  Speaker 4: And I was like, oh, thank you. What have you
• 1:09:14
  Speaker 4: used them in anything? I would have heard? He's like,
• 1:09:16
  Speaker 4: do you ever watch a show called My Little Pony
• 1:09:18
  Speaker 4: Friendship Is Magic? No? I don't. He's like, yeah, I
• 1:09:25
  Speaker 4: use your snares a lot in My Little Pony Friendship
• 1:09:28
  Speaker 4: is Magic. I do want't using for My Little Pony
• 1:09:30
  Speaker 4: Friendship Is Magic so badly. I don't know if you
• 1:09:34
  Speaker 4: ever watched that show. It's not great. There's a lot
• 1:09:36
  Speaker 4: of drama. It feels like I don't want I don't.
• 1:09:39
  Speaker 4: I don't like actually having that on for my kids.
• 1:09:41
  Speaker 4: I don't like the just the tone of it. It's
• 1:09:43
  Speaker 4: too whiny. You know.
• 1:09:45
  Speaker 3: I was thinking like maybe a full circle thing would
• 1:09:48
  Speaker 3: happen here and some of your music would be used
• 1:09:50
  Speaker 3: in like porn.
• 1:09:52
  Speaker 4: Oh well there was Oh.
• 1:09:55
  Speaker 1: You want a story, Darren, I want to hear the story.
• 1:09:57
  Speaker 4: It's not born, it's not porn. But but one of
• 1:09:59
  Speaker 4: the first times that Mute Maths music got used in
• 1:10:03
  Speaker 4: a film, of course, was the Twilight film. That was
• 1:10:05
  Speaker 4: the big we were in the first we got used
• 1:10:08
  Speaker 4: in some horror films, but we had no clearance. I
• 1:10:12
  Speaker 4: had no I never knew whenever one of our songs
• 1:10:14
  Speaker 4: was gonna get used except for that one, the Twilight one.
• 1:10:16
  Speaker 4: We we you know, made it for them, or you know,
• 1:10:20
  Speaker 4: made a version to fit that, But all the rest
• 1:10:22
  Speaker 4: of them that just oh, I guess our song is
• 1:10:24
  Speaker 4: in a movie. And one of them was this MTV
• 1:10:27
  Speaker 4: film called Never Back Down. It was like fighting. It
• 1:10:30
  Speaker 4: was a teenager wrestling MTV, you know, two thousand and
• 1:10:34
  Speaker 4: eight type of movie, and they used you our Mind,
• 1:10:37
  Speaker 4: which is this you know love song. At the time,
• 1:10:39
  Speaker 4: and when we wrote it, it was just a pretty much
• 1:10:41
  Speaker 4: a straight up worship tune. But it was one of
• 1:10:43
  Speaker 4: the more earnest songs and it's used in this cornius scene.
• 1:10:50
  Speaker 4: It's like, yeah, I'd tap that, and then he slaps
• 1:10:53
  Speaker 4: around the button and it was playing in the background.
• 1:10:54
  Speaker 4: He's like god, oh, it was like we were still pumped.
• 1:10:57
  Speaker 4: I was like, oh, I get to see and it's
• 1:10:59
  Speaker 4: like that's sucked. I'm making out and then he slaps
• 1:11:06
  Speaker 4: around the butt and it was just like, oh, this
• 1:11:07
  Speaker 4: is the weirdest, this is crazy corny film. Sorry, but no,
• 1:11:13
  Speaker 4: I don't know.
• 1:11:14
  Speaker 3: You lose all your CCM street crowd if you're if
• 1:11:17
  Speaker 3: your song is being used to tap another girl's ass.
• 1:11:20
  Speaker 4: Yeah, I had to turn in my devil word. They
• 1:11:22
  Speaker 4: actually came and reclaimed it. Yeah, all right, Darren.
• 1:11:26
  Speaker 2: We are now going to move into our top five
• 1:11:28
  Speaker 2: most influential albums, as we ask of all of our guests.
• 1:11:33
  Speaker 2: Uh so, I'm curious to hear what your top five
• 1:11:35
  Speaker 2: are and why one of them is Isley, because I'm
• 1:11:37
  Speaker 2: sure there's gonna be one of them as Isley, Right, one.
• 1:11:40
  Speaker 4: Of them is not Isley?
• 1:11:41
  Speaker 2: Oh man, your wife a bone there on that one.
• 1:11:45
  Speaker 4: Well, you know what else is funny?
• 1:11:46
  Speaker 2: Though?
• 1:11:46
  Speaker 4: I remember whenever I was in my twenties, before I
• 1:11:50
  Speaker 4: was in a committed relationship with Stacy Dupree of Isley.
• 1:11:54
  Speaker 4: I remember thinking that my partner and I would really
• 1:11:58
  Speaker 4: need to have the same music taste, right, Like that
• 1:12:00
  Speaker 4: would be a that was a really important thing in
• 1:12:02
  Speaker 4: my twenties and in my thirties, I'm realizing how little
• 1:12:05
  Speaker 4: of what really matters about our day to day life
• 1:12:08
  Speaker 4: is that we like this. I do like her taste
• 1:12:11
  Speaker 4: the music, and I love the music she creates, and
• 1:12:13
  Speaker 4: I like making music with her. But I remember at
• 1:12:15
  Speaker 4: that time thinking like, oh, I could never date someone
• 1:12:18
  Speaker 4: who didn't like the music I liked when and now
• 1:12:20
  Speaker 4: I realized I could. Yeah. But first one first record
• 1:12:26
  Speaker 4: is an album called Sing Sing, Sing with a Swing
• 1:12:30
  Speaker 4: by Benny Goodman, where Jean Krupa on drums. And this
• 1:12:34
  Speaker 4: is important to me. I could spend an hour talking
• 1:12:37
  Speaker 4: about this one song, so you'll have to just cut
• 1:12:39
  Speaker 4: me off. It was performed at Carnegie Hall, I believe,
• 1:12:43
  Speaker 4: in the thirties forties, in the forties, the forty six,
• 1:12:48
  Speaker 4: nineteen forty six or forty seven, I think it was,
• 1:12:50
  Speaker 4: and the legend of it was, of course, there was
• 1:12:52
  Speaker 4: a recorded version of it that was successful, but they
• 1:12:55
  Speaker 4: played this twelve minute version of it at Carnegie Hall
• 1:12:58
  Speaker 4: and recorded it, and supposedly people got out of their
• 1:13:02
  Speaker 4: seats and danced in the aisles, and that had never
• 1:13:04
  Speaker 4: happened in such a renowned music hall before. But the
• 1:13:09
  Speaker 4: thing about that recording is, for one, it's the moment
• 1:13:12
  Speaker 4: I wanted to be a drummer. I heard that record
• 1:13:14
  Speaker 4: and I got my pillows out and I put my
• 1:13:17
  Speaker 4: headphones on and I played along to that over and
• 1:13:19
  Speaker 4: over again, and it's it's I think, a really essential
• 1:13:23
  Speaker 4: American recording. It shows a connection between three things. One
• 1:13:31
  Speaker 4: is that it was the pop music of its time.
• 1:13:34
  Speaker 4: It was what was on the radio, it was what
• 1:13:36
  Speaker 4: people were listening to collectively. Secondly, it was incredible musicianship.
• 1:13:42
  Speaker 4: And on this record, you've got, you know, twelve minutes
• 1:13:44
  Speaker 4: of people. There's only the first few minutes of that
• 1:13:47
  Speaker 4: song that is arranged, and then that they jin Krupa
• 1:13:52
  Speaker 4: just didn't want to stop, so the song ended and
• 1:13:54
  Speaker 4: then he brought it back in and they were like,
• 1:13:56
  Speaker 4: all right, let's go. And it has I think, exceptional soul,
• 1:14:00
  Speaker 4: incredible dynamic, and it's what happens when a large group
• 1:14:04
  Speaker 4: of people really listen to each other, which I think
• 1:14:07
  Speaker 4: anytime you're in an improvised music situation any more than
• 1:14:12
  Speaker 4: four people gets pretty dicey, you know, because he starts
• 1:14:18
  Speaker 4: stepping on each other's toes. But this is a group
• 1:14:19
  Speaker 4: of I don't know, twenty thirty, I don't know. I'm not
• 1:14:21
  Speaker 4: sure how big this big band was. But they were
• 1:14:23
  Speaker 4: locked in the whole time. There's no oops or restarted,
• 1:14:27
  Speaker 4: like wow, that was clumsy moment. It's just incredible. So
• 1:14:31
  Speaker 4: peak musicianship. It was what was popular. It was the
• 1:14:34
  Speaker 4: music of the time, and it was dance music. I
• 1:14:37
  Speaker 4: think that's so cool that those three things came together.
• 1:14:40
  Speaker 4: And I think that that happens that other times. It
• 1:14:41
  Speaker 4: happens in the seventies, right, we have like Soul Train,
• 1:14:44
  Speaker 4: you got Ohio Players and earth Wind and Fire. You've
• 1:14:47
  Speaker 4: got the best music and it's dance music and it's
• 1:14:50
  Speaker 4: the best musician Yes, it's popular anyhow, So sing sing,
• 1:14:53
  Speaker 4: sing with a swing. Gingkroup on drums, I mean, Jen
• 1:14:56
  Speaker 4: Krupa invented eye hats. He was the one who came
• 1:14:59
  Speaker 4: up with the idea of having two tunable tom's. We
• 1:15:01
  Speaker 4: wouldn't have the drum kit without him, you know.
• 1:15:04
  Speaker 2: So also a showman like no other Oh.
• 1:15:08
  Speaker 4: That's right, God, yeah, yeah, that and so that was
• 1:15:12
  Speaker 4: big for me because it made me want to be
• 1:15:14
  Speaker 4: an entertainer above all else. Like him, he was the
• 1:15:17
  Speaker 4: most entertaining showman. Yeah, and he was cool. Yeah. So
• 1:15:21
  Speaker 4: Sing Sing Sing is number one. Number two, I'm gonna
• 1:15:24
  Speaker 4: go with Vespertine by B York because it's the song
• 1:15:31
  Speaker 4: that I listened to whenever I left home. So whenever
• 1:15:34
  Speaker 4: I was eighteen years old and I moved away from
• 1:15:37
  Speaker 4: Missouri and moved to Nashville for that first year of
• 1:15:40
  Speaker 4: my life and lived with my roommate David. And David
• 1:15:44
  Speaker 4: it could not have been more different from me. He
• 1:15:46
  Speaker 4: didn't like any of the music that I liked. He
• 1:15:48
  Speaker 4: was all Enrique Iglesias David. It was all David ever
• 1:15:54
  Speaker 4: did was he repaired cars, and we both worked together
• 1:15:56
  Speaker 4: at this church, and I loved him. I loved David,
• 1:16:00
  Speaker 4: and sadly David passed away. He died in a motorcycle
• 1:16:02
  Speaker 4: crash a few years after that. So I have this
• 1:16:05
  Speaker 4: time of I would go to sleep listening to Vespertine
• 1:16:08
  Speaker 4: and Kida. So those are two records. I'll just drop
• 1:16:10
  Speaker 4: two and three at once. I'm gonna put I'm sorry,
• 1:16:15
  Speaker 4: I'm gonna do this, but I'm put more than five records.
• 1:16:17
  Speaker 4: I'm gonna I'm gonna lump two and three together with
• 1:16:19
  Speaker 4: another record, which is the Cigarros self titled record.
• 1:16:24
  Speaker 2: Because that, yeah, that that there smethan gianglar.
• 1:16:29
  Speaker 4: However, you say that one, the one with the baby
• 1:16:31
  Speaker 4: on the the angel Fatus on the cover, that that
• 1:16:35
  Speaker 4: record is that changed my life. That was like the
• 1:16:38
  Speaker 4: moment that the world turned color, you know. And I
• 1:16:42
  Speaker 4: and I was at Tower Records at night at the
• 1:16:46
  Speaker 4: listening station, and I remember I just stood at that
• 1:16:48
  Speaker 4: listening station for the whole forty minutes. I listened to
• 1:16:51
  Speaker 4: the record from start to finish, and then bought it.
• 1:16:53
  Speaker 4: But that was the year of my life, living alone
• 1:16:55
  Speaker 4: for the first time, with my roommate, working at this church,
• 1:16:58
  Speaker 4: working at a restaurant, drumming a lot. And the three
• 1:17:01
  Speaker 4: records I listened to over and over again every night
• 1:17:03
  Speaker 4: were Cigareros Vespertine, which I think is Vespertein is incredible songwriting.
• 1:17:10
  Speaker 4: I think it's just peak. It's amazing songwriting. It's the
• 1:17:15
  Speaker 4: most beautiful record, and it's the most cohesive record, you know, Matt,
• 1:17:21
  Speaker 4: most production on it is incredible. And kid A kid
• 1:17:24
  Speaker 4: A was just I've never heard anything like that before that.
• 1:17:26
  Speaker 4: That wreck still sounds like fut Yeah, that's it was
• 1:17:29
  Speaker 4: prophetic sonically, you know, it's like ahead, so kid A
• 1:17:33
  Speaker 4: Vespertine Cigros. Along with that, I'm just going to say
• 1:17:38
  Speaker 4: the work of DJ Shadow if I could put two
• 1:17:41
  Speaker 4: of his records at number four, Intotroducing E N D
• 1:17:44
  Speaker 4: T R o UD how you say, introducing but spelled
• 1:17:47
  Speaker 4: within at the front came out in nineteen ninety seven
• 1:17:51
  Speaker 4: and it's just this timeless, perfect instrumental record made out
• 1:17:57
  Speaker 4: of all samples of vinyl. He's one of the kings
• 1:18:01
  Speaker 4: of create digging and of a culture that's before you know,
• 1:18:05
  Speaker 4: pre at least Internet like pre m P three's, you know,
• 1:18:11
  Speaker 4: pre pre whosample, dot com, pre Serrato. It was an
• 1:18:16
  Speaker 4: analog record of MA made on a sampler, made on
• 1:18:19
  Speaker 4: an NPC out of you know, out of vinyl, and
• 1:18:24
  Speaker 4: the way he handles it is with such respect and
• 1:18:27
  Speaker 4: love for the records he's sampling. And there's this documentary
• 1:18:31
  Speaker 4: called Scratch where he talks about his approach to sampling
• 1:18:35
  Speaker 4: and what is sampling has a spiritual practice for him. Essentially,
• 1:18:39
  Speaker 4: he's real, it's real deep with it. Then, along with
• 1:18:42
  Speaker 4: that is the Uncle record You and Kali that he
• 1:18:44
  Speaker 4: did with James Levell. That's the one that has Rabbit
• 1:18:46
  Speaker 4: in Your Headlights on it by Tommy. Yeah, okay, awesome.
• 1:18:49
  Speaker 4: So put up put that the work of DJ Shadow
• 1:18:52
  Speaker 4: at number four, especially his first two or three records,
• 1:18:54
  Speaker 4: but introducing in particular lastly, I could say I put
• 1:19:00
  Speaker 4: for his head interesting choice, yeah, for sure, because there's
• 1:19:04
  Speaker 4: this and it's this. It's not the records. I mean
• 1:19:07
  Speaker 4: the records, yes, but it's the live DVD that they
• 1:19:10
  Speaker 4: did at roseland I just didn't know drums could sound
• 1:19:14
  Speaker 4: that good in a live context. And then the just
• 1:19:18
  Speaker 4: the power of the strings and horns on on those songs.
• 1:19:22
  Speaker 4: It's unreal like. And that's that's another that's emulating sample
• 1:19:27
  Speaker 4: based music. So oh, I feel like I'm going on
• 1:19:30
  Speaker 4: and on.
• 1:19:31
  Speaker 2: No, I've done. You've done absolutely perfect, Darren. You don't
• 1:19:36
  Speaker 2: need to apologize.
• 1:19:37
  Speaker 4: Thank you.
• 1:19:41
  Speaker 3: So all right, let's move on. What do you want
• 1:19:43
  Speaker 3: to plug? I know you're doing all these really interesting projects.
• 1:19:46
  Speaker 3: What what do you wanna talk about in the life
• 1:19:49
  Speaker 3: of Darren King that you want to like? Hey people,
• 1:19:51
  Speaker 3: this is what I'm up to. This is what you
• 1:19:52
  Speaker 3: should check out two things.
• 1:19:54
  Speaker 4: I'll plug thick audio dot com. Man plug two or
• 1:19:57
  Speaker 4: three things thick audio dot com. If you are a
• 1:19:59
  Speaker 4: beat maker producer, I am. Next month. This is the
• 1:20:02
  Speaker 4: first all announced that I'm releasing my first contact uh
• 1:20:06
  Speaker 4: synth or. This this contact sample library that I've been
• 1:20:09
  Speaker 4: working on for months, and it's this very cool thing.
• 1:20:12
  Speaker 4: It's called freak fr EQ. It's this plug in where
• 1:20:15
  Speaker 4: you can drag and drop your own samples into it
• 1:20:17
  Speaker 4: and run them through all these crazy effects and modulations.
• 1:20:22
  Speaker 4: It's a very me kind of instrument and I'm so
• 1:20:24
  Speaker 4: excited to give it to people and you know, share it,
• 1:20:27
  Speaker 4: and so thick audio dot com, especially if you use Contact,
• 1:20:32
  Speaker 4: I think you'll dig it. And Stacey's music is soucre
• 1:20:37
  Speaker 4: s u c r e like French for sugar. I
• 1:20:40
  Speaker 4: love her voice enough that I married her and so
• 1:20:44
  Speaker 4: set out and then in the in the the weeks
• 1:20:48
  Speaker 4: and months that come, I'm going to be releasing more
• 1:20:50
  Speaker 4: music under the name d K the Drummer.
• 1:20:54
  Speaker 2: I always thought you should have called yourself yas King.
• 1:20:58
  Speaker 4: Yeas King is is that what yasified comes from?
• 1:21:02
  Speaker 2: I think so like yas King like that, I think
• 1:21:06
  Speaker 2: that sounds supposed to go.
• 1:21:07
  Speaker 4: It must be I'm gonna I'm gonna release let's do
• 1:21:10
  Speaker 4: a record. No, never mind, all.
• 1:21:16
  Speaker 1: Right, anything else you want to plug?
• 1:21:17
  Speaker 4: Oh, Mason, you know, I mean I've been working on Uh,
• 1:21:20
  Speaker 4: I've been working on this other project. I wondered if
• 1:21:22
  Speaker 4: you would want to be a part of it. I
• 1:21:24
  Speaker 4: feel like you be candidates calling it the Sounds of
• 1:21:26
  Speaker 4: Shane and and it's basically it's a record.
• 1:21:30
  Speaker 2: Where Mason talking or yeah.
• 1:21:33
  Speaker 4: Well, a group of men together we are we we
• 1:21:37
  Speaker 4: are either castrati or just in a in an extreme
• 1:21:40
  Speaker 4: state of sexual repression. And then and then, you know,
• 1:21:43
  Speaker 4: after a year of of denial of all earthly pleasures,
• 1:21:48
  Speaker 4: we just allow whatever sound comes out of us, whatever
• 1:21:52
  Speaker 4: utterance or or sound. And then we're gonna record that
• 1:21:57
  Speaker 4: have a show speak kind of an art experiment with
• 1:21:59
  Speaker 4: the Sounds.
• 1:21:59
  Speaker 2: Of I think that's already an album. I think that's
• 1:22:03
  Speaker 2: every other song off the Double Fantasy record from John
• 1:22:06
  Speaker 2: and Yoko.
• 1:22:09
  Speaker 4: We're just gonna roll around, you go back to my roots.
• 1:22:13
  Speaker 1: That's just that's how Tom York sings.
• 1:22:16
  Speaker 4: Mm hmm.
• 1:22:17
  Speaker 2: That's that's that's not too far off, man.
• 1:22:21
  Speaker 4: I can't can you imagine? Can you imagine if that's
• 1:22:23
  Speaker 4: the sound if Tom York's, if you had Tom York's voice,
• 1:22:26
  Speaker 4: I would be like, I'd be insufferable. If I sang
• 1:22:30
  Speaker 4: like that, I'd be singing all the time. Everything I'd
• 1:22:33
  Speaker 4: sing to you would be I'd be horrible.
• 1:22:37
  Speaker 1: It'd be like in court, like just singing to the
• 1:22:39
  Speaker 1: judge like.
• 1:22:42
  Speaker 3: Not.
• 1:22:48
  Speaker 4: I just wonder, what is it like being Tom York's kids,
• 1:22:52
  Speaker 4: like hanging out and you're like, that's Tom York into
• 1:22:54
  Speaker 4: my house and that's my dad. Unreal.
• 1:22:57
  Speaker 2: They probably don't think anything of it. They were probably
• 1:22:59
  Speaker 2: just was like, God, he's a loser, just like just
• 1:23:02
  Speaker 2: like everyone else's kids do. Wants to get to a
• 1:23:04
  Speaker 2: certain age. You know.
• 1:23:06
  Speaker 4: I'm fascinating. So one of my things that I've learned
• 1:23:08
  Speaker 4: that makes me happy is this to put my headphones
• 1:23:10
  Speaker 4: on at the grocery store and instead of listening to,
• 1:23:14
  Speaker 4: you know, whatever, get on you see and listen to
• 1:23:17
  Speaker 4: what I want to listen to, you know. And the
• 1:23:20
  Speaker 4: other day I was I was in a radio head
• 1:23:21
  Speaker 4: mood and I'm I'm pretty okay computer on. That was
• 1:23:25
  Speaker 4: my first time I heard it was okay, computer Stacey
• 1:23:30
  Speaker 4: is bens on. But I was in I was. I
• 1:23:35
  Speaker 4: was just and it was shuffle playing, you know, Radiohead,
• 1:23:39
  Speaker 4: and all of a sudden, fake plastic trees. Is that
• 1:23:41
  Speaker 4: the name of it came on? Yeah, And I'd never
• 1:23:44
  Speaker 4: really listened to that one from start to finish, but
• 1:23:46
  Speaker 4: I was just there at the grocery store looking at
• 1:23:47
  Speaker 4: all the people listen to the fake plastic trees and
• 1:23:50
  Speaker 4: that Oh it fits so good, it felt right, Oh yeah,
• 1:23:53
  Speaker 4: all of us sad.
• 1:23:55
  Speaker 3: You should see their Glassonbury performance of that song. I
• 1:23:58
  Speaker 3: think it was like two thousand and three, and Johnny Greenwood,
• 1:24:01
  Speaker 3: their guitarist, just goes wild, like flailing across the stage,
• 1:24:08
  Speaker 3: just like on the guitar solo part.
• 1:24:11
  Speaker 1: It's like, absolutely incredible.
• 1:24:14
  Speaker 3: I really wish that was like, that's a song where
• 1:24:17
  Speaker 3: I wish that type of performance would have been captured
• 1:24:21
  Speaker 3: in the studio, because that's what that song deserves in
• 1:24:24
  Speaker 3: a studio type of recording.
• 1:24:28
  Speaker 4: It's so good. I got to go to the longest
• 1:24:32
  Speaker 4: radio Head concert of all time. I think I was
• 1:24:34
  Speaker 4: at attendance at it, which was bonn if I remember correctly,
• 1:24:37
  Speaker 4: I think I remember reading that that was one of
• 1:24:39
  Speaker 4: it's not the longest set they've ever played, is Radiohead Wow,
• 1:24:44
  Speaker 4: and they crushed it. We played earlier in the day
• 1:24:48
  Speaker 4: and a little Tiny Tint. It was our first time
• 1:24:50
  Speaker 4: playing Bonnaroo, and then it was Beck and then Radiohead
• 1:24:54
  Speaker 4: Yeah Wow, And Beck played Creep that night. He's like,
• 1:24:57
  Speaker 4: they're probably not gonna play this, so he did Creep,
• 1:25:00
  Speaker 4: which I think is a gutsy move.
• 1:25:01
  Speaker 2: No, because Radio Ahead hates the song Creep. So I
• 1:25:05
  Speaker 2: bet they talked about it beforehand, and I bet that
• 1:25:07
  Speaker 2: was like, I like Creep, They're like, you sing it?
• 1:25:10
  Speaker 4: Then? Yeah, I think he probably I would hope he
• 1:25:14
  Speaker 4: got permission. But either way, that's that. That was a
• 1:25:16
  Speaker 4: gutsy move. People loved that. What what a set? I've
• 1:25:20
  Speaker 4: seen ready had a few times. What a what a show?
• 1:25:24
  Speaker 3: That's That's one of the bucket lists artists I want
• 1:25:27
  Speaker 3: to see live. I haven't seen Radiohead live, but they're
• 1:25:29
  Speaker 3: definitely on the on the same top five bucket list
• 1:25:32
  Speaker 3: for bands I need to see live before I die.
• 1:25:34
  Speaker 4: Who else do you mind?
• 1:25:35
  Speaker 3: If I ask oh Man Cigaros and specifically I want
• 1:25:39
  Speaker 3: to see Cigarros in Iceland? Uh a round trip tickets
• 1:25:45
  Speaker 3: from Minneapolis to Iceland, or like because we have a
• 1:25:47
  Speaker 3: director is super cheap, and so that's like a lifelong
• 1:25:51
  Speaker 3: dream and they just haven't really done anything for close
• 1:25:53
  Speaker 3: to ten years now, and I desperately want to see
• 1:25:56
  Speaker 3: them play in Iceland.
• 1:25:58
  Speaker 1: Uh so they're up there, got them? I don't know.
• 1:26:01
  Speaker 4: I've looked out to see them several times. And the
• 1:26:05
  Speaker 4: best I happened to live in when I was living
• 1:26:08
  Speaker 4: in New Orleans pre Katrina like that two thousand and
• 1:26:10
  Speaker 4: three to two thousand and five, six seven time it
• 1:26:15
  Speaker 4: was two and five Katrina, I think so, yeah, I
• 1:26:17
  Speaker 4: was two to five. It was this sweet spot what
• 1:26:21
  Speaker 4: is an exciting time in music? And all those bands
• 1:26:25
  Speaker 4: came through and most of them played like the House
• 1:26:28
  Speaker 4: of Blues or the twy Ropa and I saw Cigarros
• 1:26:31
  Speaker 4: at the House of Blue Small Club and it was
• 1:26:34
  Speaker 4: the best show in my life. That was it. That
• 1:26:36
  Speaker 4: was the most transformative. That was it. Yeah, I'll never
• 1:26:40
  Speaker 4: forget amazing.
• 1:26:41
  Speaker 3: Yeah, anyway, those definitely would be up there, for I'd
• 1:26:44
  Speaker 3: have to look at like my whole like artist discography
• 1:26:47
  Speaker 3: to see, uh you know who else would be included
• 1:26:50
  Speaker 3: on that. But those those are like the two that
• 1:26:51
  Speaker 3: come to mind. Radio had in Cigareroes. For sure, I would.
• 1:26:54
  Speaker 1: Want to see live and I just have it yet.
• 1:26:57
  Speaker 3: Well, Darren, thank you so much for adding a little
• 1:27:00
  Speaker 3: bit more about all the music that you've been a
• 1:27:02
  Speaker 3: part of, you know, since the very early beginnings when
• 1:27:05
  Speaker 3: you're doing worship music to ursuit to mute math, and
• 1:27:08
  Speaker 3: then all the really cool collaborations and all the other
• 1:27:11
  Speaker 3: cool projects you've been up to. Again, you've been an
• 1:27:13
  Speaker 3: artist that has been a part of Colonize lives for
• 1:27:17
  Speaker 3: at least fifteen years, if not longer, and it's so
• 1:27:21
  Speaker 3: it's so cool to chat with somebody who, even though
• 1:27:23
  Speaker 3: you don't really know us super well, you at least
• 1:27:26
  Speaker 3: have been a part of our lives and really shaped
• 1:27:28
  Speaker 3: us to who we are today. So thank you so
• 1:27:30
  Speaker 3: much for all the music you've made throughout your life,
• 1:27:33
  Speaker 3: and also we're really excited for all the other cool
• 1:27:35
  Speaker 3: shit that you're up.
• 1:27:36
  Speaker 1: To in the world.
• 1:27:38
  Speaker 4: Thank you. That's really kind of you. It's been an
• 1:27:40
  Speaker 4: absolute pleasure to chat. We all hope we get to
• 1:27:43
  Speaker 4: do in person sometime and kick it.
• 1:27:44
  Speaker 2: Yeah, sure, supper, I say, Las