Latest / The Other 22 Hours / Yancey Strickler on artist power, interdependent networks, and a zip file worth thousands.

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Yancey Strickler on artist power, interdependent networks, and a zip file worth thousands. · The Other 22 Hours

0:00
[SPEAKER_03]: We still treat, as a society, as an economy, what we do is this weird sideline blip, like side hustle thing.
0:07
[SPEAKER_03]: In reality, it is at the center of our economy, is at the center of culture, it's at the center of power, and the systems just don't match it yet.
0:16
[SPEAKER_03]: You make us as creative people, more capable, give us more tools, let us act as real entrepreneurs and not infantilize us with BS tools like we can do well.
0:30
[SPEAKER_02]: We often define artists by their output, their records, books, movies, and the times they're on stage.
0:36
[SPEAKER_00]: But the art is made in the quiet, the struggle, and the mundane, the hours that no one sees.
0:42
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm McKayla Ann.
0:43
[SPEAKER_02]: And I'm Erin Kaffer-Hase.
0:45
[SPEAKER_02]: This is the other 22 hours.
0:47
[SPEAKER_02]: An exploration of the creative life lived in between.
1:04
[SPEAKER_02]: this week we're doing something a little bit different and this will be the first installment of a series that we're calling our reissue series in which we dig through our archive of the past three years and select some of our favorite conversations that we'd like to share with you a new.
1:17
[SPEAKER_02]: Even though we're highlighting a handful of conversations here, please note that we have 160 other conversations with musicians and non musician artists alike, all of which are valuable in their own right.
1:28
[SPEAKER_02]: So if you're driving or maybe mowing your lawn, please take a second to scroll through our feed and find some other conversations that resonate with you.
1:35
[SPEAKER_02]: Additionally, you can head to our YouTube channel where we've taken every single conversation and grouped into playlists that are curated based on topic.
1:43
[SPEAKER_02]: So if this conversation resonates with you, please note that there are lots of other conversations just like it waiting for you over there.
1:49
[SPEAKER_01]: And today's first episode features our conversation with Yancy Strickler that we had back in October of 2025.
1:56
[SPEAKER_01]: Yancy Strickler is a writer and entrepreneur that co-founded Kickstarter, Meta Label, the creative independent, and now artist corporations.
2:06
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, and you might be saying that October 28, 25 was not so long ago, but we chose Nancy for two reasons, one being his ethos and everything we talk about in this conversation is the nucleus of our show in which we really explore how to create a sustainable career based on your creativity and every one of Nancy's endeavors that Michaela just listed is geared towards doing exactly that.
2:28
[SPEAKER_02]: Additionally, in this episode, you'll hear him talk about how artist corporations is pushing for solid legislation in a state that is quote unquote artist friendly and since then they have succeeded and just last month in June of 2026 Colorado passed and signed into law the Colorado artist company act.
2:48
[SPEAKER_02]: which creates a new type of LLC that allows creators to attract investors while legally guaranteeing they retain at least 51% ownership and total creative control over their work.
2:58
[SPEAKER_02]: As the ANC mentions here, what we have is extremely valuable, but us as independence, we don't have access to capital.
3:05
[SPEAKER_02]: And we're actually pretty great business people.
3:07
[SPEAKER_02]: So, congratulations to our discorporations on planting a solid flag in Colorado, and please enjoy our conversation with the ANC's trickler.
3:19
[SPEAKER_01]: Thank you so much for being willing to chat with us.
3:22
[SPEAKER_01]: When I saw your TED Talk, I'm gonna admit I was ignorant of everything you've done up until this point.
3:27
[SPEAKER_01]: And then when I found even more about you, I was like, oh, this is like ideal for what?
3:32
[SPEAKER_01]: We like to center in this conversation.
3:35
[SPEAKER_01]: I'd love to hear just for our guest as well, a little bit of your background of you are a writer, but then what inspired you to want to create these other endeavors that we'd also love to hear about Kickstarter, the creative independent.
3:48
[SPEAKER_01]: Bentoism, and now A-Quars.
3:51
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, thank you for the invitation.
3:52
[SPEAKER_03]: I really appreciate it.
3:54
[SPEAKER_03]: And really my story starts with being the son of a musician.
3:58
[SPEAKER_03]: My dad is a lifelong musician.
4:00
[SPEAKER_03]: He's a folk artist and country rock bands.
4:03
[SPEAKER_03]: didn't make it worked in a record store when I was born growing up his job as as a traveling waterbed salesman and he would bring his guitar with him on the road.
4:12
[SPEAKER_03]: And so I grew up seeing the creative life as like a very natural thing because my dad played all the time and practices in our house like very much a part of life but also seeing how peace meal it was and it's like your grateful when you have a gig or get paid in some way often it's just about doing it
4:32
[SPEAKER_03]: I knew that there was a dream for that to have been his entire life that did not happen.
4:38
[SPEAKER_03]: And I was brought up playing music with him, like I was supposed to make it where he did not.
4:44
[SPEAKER_03]: I could tell I was supposed to, and I just wasn't as talented as him as a player.
4:49
[SPEAKER_03]: But had a great, you know, huge passion for music and all of that.
4:52
[SPEAKER_03]: I was made music but I was more of a writer and my path ended up being writing about it initially for pitchfork in the late 90s and then the village voice and all weeklies all around the country and just love discovering things, love introducing people to think just like what I'm most passionate about.
5:11
[SPEAKER_03]: And I moved to New York to do that and had day jobs in like radio and started
5:21
[SPEAKER_03]: Had my day job, and then had all my side gigs, which made no money, but we're just at what was fun.
5:28
[SPEAKER_03]: And one of those came to be Kickstarter.
5:30
[SPEAKER_03]: One of those was through a new friend I'd met, who had a wild idea for a platform where you could propose an idea, a creative idea, and the public could choose whether or not you were greenmutt.
5:41
[SPEAKER_03]: You know, that project, demanded skills I'd never had before learning business, learning what entrepreneurship was, like a lot of growing up.
5:48
[SPEAKER_03]: But I really see like the trajectory and even to the things I'm doing now, they start with being just what my challenge of experience was and what was natural to me.
5:57
[SPEAKER_03]: And certainly through Kickstarter saw over and over how say successfully funded project would change someone's life financially emotionally in terms of credibility to their community of like your real,
6:10
[SPEAKER_03]: And as the creative practice and creative life has grown, like so many people is a crazy step, 48% of Americans have an active creative practice.
6:18
[SPEAKER_03]: Music, writing, or making art.
6:20
[SPEAKER_03]: Half of Americans.
6:21
[SPEAKER_03]: And the internet creates this interesting thing, where you can try to make your side job, your job.
6:27
[SPEAKER_03]: You can turn your hobby into money.
6:29
[SPEAKER_03]: You know, be careful what you wish for, but that path is available.
6:32
[SPEAKER_03]: And then the truth is, a lot of us are making things appreciated by lots of people that for the outside world might not appear like much.
6:39
[SPEAKER_03]: but within our communities they're really meaningful.
6:42
[SPEAKER_03]: There's often a lot of money or support more than you would expect that exists just because of love and just people are appreciate.
6:49
[SPEAKER_03]: And we still treat as a society as an economy.
6:54
[SPEAKER_03]: Treat what we do is this weird sideline blip like side hustle thing.
6:59
[SPEAKER_03]: in reality, it is at the center of our economy, is at the center of culture, it's at the center of power, and the systems just don't match it yet.
7:09
[SPEAKER_03]: And I see in that gap in injustice, but I also see in that gap a huge potential, because I don't think that the saddest quote was due to any specific maliciousness, it's just like the conditions were different before.
7:22
[SPEAKER_03]: And you make us as creative people, whatever our practice, make us more capable, give us more tools, let us act as real entrepreneurs and not infantilize us with BS tools like we can do well.
7:35
[SPEAKER_03]: I feel like I have an appreciation of where we are and where a lot of us as creative people find ourselves and I just have such a confidence.
7:43
[SPEAKER_03]: that what we do is worthwhile that we're hugely appreciated by many people and that we can build on that into a more economic sustainable existence.
7:53
[SPEAKER_03]: I didn't know that's what my life would be about, but that's turned out to be what it's about.
7:58
[SPEAKER_03]: And yeah, I'm grateful for it.
8:01
[SPEAKER_02]: one thing that really attracted me to your work and your viewpoints on all of this is that there's this weird dissonance between the public perception of what you know and i'll just use the music industry as an example of like a successful musician you know you think of like Taylor Swift Beyonce Elvis all of these people have millions of dollars and so people are like oh they don't need help those people don't need help the vast majority 98% of musicians are blue collar you can consider
8:26
[SPEAKER_02]: Like you said, there is no system in place.
8:28
[SPEAKER_02]: It's basically like turning to some kind of beverage company.
8:32
[SPEAKER_02]: And it's like, once your Coca-Cola, then will help you.
8:35
[SPEAKER_02]: But until then, good luck.
8:36
[SPEAKER_02]: Maybe get a day job.
8:38
[SPEAKER_03]: It's funny even for people at, say, that beyond, say, level, a Taylor Swift has been specific things.
8:43
[SPEAKER_03]: But like, royalties are a take goodness for anyone who gets them, you know, they're an ongoing income revenue stream that is so critical.
8:51
[SPEAKER_03]: But like if you look at, say, hypnosis or black rock or these private equity firms have been buying songwriting credits.
8:58
[SPEAKER_03]: They view songwriting as like an intellectual property like gold or something that they can put on their balance sheet.
9:04
[SPEAKER_03]: They can put in their financial models.
9:05
[SPEAKER_03]: They can borrow money against it.
9:07
[SPEAKER_03]: They can capitalize that because they exist in a system that that's how they see things.
9:11
[SPEAKER_03]: That same opportunity is actually not available to the artists themselves.
9:15
[SPEAKER_03]: The people who make the work.
9:17
[SPEAKER_03]: platforms can turn the value of art and to stock that they sell and use to make more money on, same with publishers or record companies, same with these investors buying things now.
9:27
[SPEAKER_03]: Literally everyone in this situation is able to access capitalism.
9:32
[SPEAKER_03]: using this creative work with the exception of the artist.
9:36
[SPEAKER_03]: Even for someone at the level of Beyoncé, your royalties are just like an income stream that passes in versus as a if you look at a corporation, like you can use as an asset that you can capitalize, that you can raise money again, like there's all sorts of things that you can do.
9:49
[SPEAKER_03]: There's just a mismatch of how we understand what that is to where a financial party's allowed to view one way, but the actual producer of the work is not.
9:58
[SPEAKER_03]: And a lot of that, as I really started to think about this, comes down to, as boarding as it sounds, corporate structure, where these companies exist as sea corporations, which is an entity that allows you to issue shares and exist on the stock market and taken money from capital markets.
10:17
[SPEAKER_03]: Not things I'd ever think I would talk about, by the way, before.
10:19
[SPEAKER_03]: But the weird turns my career took.
10:22
[SPEAKER_03]: But like companies can do that.
10:24
[SPEAKER_03]: As an artist, there is no such mechanic.
10:27
[SPEAKER_03]: Through this artist corporation's site, more than 3,000 people have filled out this long form about what their situation is.
10:33
[SPEAKER_03]: And half of the people who've written in have no structure at all, no corporate entity, which, to me, just means it's a side business and they're probably making less than...
10:41
[SPEAKER_03]: 10 grand a year or something, and it's divine.
10:44
[SPEAKER_03]: For the people who have an entity, do about half of those people, about 40% are in LLC.
10:50
[SPEAKER_03]: And then the rest is like rounding air between lots of different types of forms.
10:54
[SPEAKER_03]: And as an LLC, it's a legal shield.
10:56
[SPEAKER_03]: It's a basic financial instrument that's pretty flexible, but it's complicated to set up, not easy to administer, doesn't have ownership the way you do in other sorts of instances.
11:05
[SPEAKER_03]: And like raising money, doing things like that, that normal businesses do that business
11:10
[SPEAKER_03]: Those are not things that are available to artists.
11:13
[SPEAKER_03]: So, you know, I've been working for the past year on this new structure called an artist corporation or an acorp, which is like an LLC or an S-Corp or a C-Corp is a legal designation.
11:24
[SPEAKER_03]: It's a new type.
11:25
[SPEAKER_03]: You have to pass a law to make that happen.
11:28
[SPEAKER_03]: We're working on passing a law in a specific U.S. state that will be
11:32
[SPEAKER_03]: Strategically valuable for artists and as we a great first place to get started, and it will allow, as an artist as a creative business, for you to register yourself as an artist corporation on both the creative person and I'm an entrepreneur, it allows you to take in both for profit and nonprofit money.
11:49
[SPEAKER_03]: It allows you to protect your IP, have your work owned within this container of your acorp.
11:55
[SPEAKER_03]: It allows you to, if you wish, issue shares, which you could do as collaborators, so if the three of us are partners equal equal great, we all own one third of this and there's like actual paperwork to prove that and the event that some financial event happens, it all is clear what's meant to happen and it can do things like give you access to health care, pull together with other acorps.
12:17
[SPEAKER_03]: and it's just creating a very basic form, really taking parts of what exists already and reconfiguring them and saying this is a special category of work.
12:26
[SPEAKER_03]: These are people that create huge amounts of value.
12:29
[SPEAKER_03]: These are people that are currently blocked from capitalism.
12:31
[SPEAKER_03]: This is a structure that reflects
12:33
[SPEAKER_03]: All the different income streams that are the reality of being a creative person, or profit, non-profit, royalty, streaming, merch, like all the massive things that we all deal with.
12:43
[SPEAKER_03]: And it recognizes those and says all of these things together, this has real value, this has equity, this is something that can grow.
12:50
[SPEAKER_03]: And so we have great legal experts writing this with us and making the case to politicians who are very receptive.
12:58
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I mean, it, for anybody that's watching this on YouTube later that you can see the McKay on our just nodding the whole time because it's like, why doesn't this exist?
13:05
[SPEAKER_02]: We live in Nashville.
13:06
[SPEAKER_02]: We live in Tennessee.
13:07
[SPEAKER_02]: The music industry is a seven billion dollar industry in this state that is not a small industry and really there's not much of this available.
13:16
[SPEAKER_02]: We both have LLCs and I admittedly like just set up an LLC last year.
13:22
[SPEAKER_02]: I did it to be able to access capitalism for tax purposes for all of this to be able to have more capital to have more legitimacy in the eyes of the system that we live in and it has blown my mind how many people be it other musicians and peers or friends are outside of the music industry that the response to me setting up an LLC has been kind of like is that legal like you're doing some shady tax stuff and like I have a business.
13:46
[SPEAKER_02]: I own in run of business.
13:47
[SPEAKER_02]: I can imagine that on top of having to present and grow this idea of an acorp, legally, there's also a public perception that you're trying to go up against here as well.
13:57
[SPEAKER_03]: certainly for, you know, if you're a musician or a filmmaker, depending on your practice, like every industry interaction you've had has probably been somewhat adversarial, you know, whether you realize it or not, you're navigating a gauntlet of needing to protect yourself in your interests.
14:12
[SPEAKER_03]: And I've been going around the country meeting with artists at every level of their careers and hearing from them, and here are too many stories of people of
14:22
[SPEAKER_03]: Let me walk you through what it took to get out of that, or I'm not out of that.
14:26
[SPEAKER_03]: And just like horror stories that a lot of what these artists were wanting to hear in these face-to-face conversations was like, is this actually safe?
14:35
[SPEAKER_03]: How do you protect my safety?
14:37
[SPEAKER_03]: So much of us are just trying to get to the point where we can get our shot, the people who got that and got their shot are like, yo, that was like, I got done dirty, you know, and so so I think those sorts of questions that we have, they come from a scarcity mindset, they come from mindset if we assume we're being abused by deals that we sign because we often are.
14:57
[SPEAKER_03]: one of the most famous people in this industry said to me that the entire structure of all the label studios publishers all of it, it all exists to hide from the artists the true value of their work.
15:11
[SPEAKER_03]: That is the only reason the system makes it.
15:13
[SPEAKER_00]: I just got chill.
15:14
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, me too.
15:15
[SPEAKER_03]: Because the true value of the artist's work is as intellectual property, that's how we describe it now, but as a renewable, again, financial terms, renewable asset that keeps generating things, will continue to have relevant, staying power, whatever.
15:28
[SPEAKER_03]: The entire goal of this system is to own and control those things.
15:32
[SPEAKER_03]: and to do all sorts of weird deductions is possible to ensure that they're getting 85 cents of every dollar.
15:37
[SPEAKER_03]: And that's what the terms say they're supposed to get.
15:39
[SPEAKER_03]: They're getting even more than that, of course, in reality.
15:41
[SPEAKER_03]: And that is existed because early days of every industry, these gatekeepers, that was how anything got out into the world.
15:48
[SPEAKER_03]: Pre-internet, the line between mainstream and underground was like,
15:53
[SPEAKER_03]: Grand Canyon chasm difference, you know, it's not like today where if you're in the year whatever it doesn't make a big difference back then it made a really big difference.
16:01
[SPEAKER_03]: And so they could set these sorts of tools, right?
16:03
[SPEAKER_03]: They could set these rents and like what choice is an artist have?
16:07
[SPEAKER_03]: And because so few people actually were practicing artists, oh, okay, some rich people got less rich than they would have before.
16:15
[SPEAKER_03]: A few people got exploited like what's the big problem?
16:19
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, it sucks for them.
16:20
[SPEAKER_03]: Like maybe it's a society we wouldn't care that much.
16:22
[SPEAKER_03]: But now you have 48% of Americans have a practice.
16:26
[SPEAKER_03]: Being a creator is the most desired profession for people into the age of 25.
16:31
[SPEAKER_03]: AI is just going to make a lot of what are currently jobs just input output, which is ultimately going to make personality, identity, voice, those sorts of qualities where I think we as creative people are especially skilled.
16:46
[SPEAKER_03]: I think that just becomes more important.
16:49
[SPEAKER_03]: and Mr.
16:50
[SPEAKER_03]: Beast Berger's or something or maybe a extreme version of this, but I can imagine the future where A-Corp's are competing with C-Corp's for being like, what type of community economy do you want to live in?
17:01
[SPEAKER_03]: Like, what's your brand of capitalism?
17:03
[SPEAKER_03]: Is it supporting other artists?
17:05
[SPEAKER_03]: No matter what they do, or is it more traditional style of old school corporate capitalism?
17:09
[SPEAKER_03]: Like, I can see how if we as creative people are placed in the driver's seat if we have a table of our own, not just a seat at the table.
17:18
[SPEAKER_03]: You know, I think the outcomes began to look quite different.
17:21
[SPEAKER_03]: And a part of this does need to come with a lot of education for us as creative people.
17:26
[SPEAKER_03]: I mean, I got it through starting a business.
17:28
[SPEAKER_03]: Like, I had to learn these skills and I'd always been terrified of money growing up.
17:32
[SPEAKER_03]: To me, it's like money and culture, like, opposite into the room.
17:35
[SPEAKER_03]: And you care about one, you can't care about the other.
17:37
[SPEAKER_03]: But find a lot of my friends are raised with a similar sort of ethos and mindset.
17:42
[SPEAKER_03]: It doesn't serve you well.
17:43
[SPEAKER_03]: It is good to be educated.
17:44
[SPEAKER_02]: It is good to know how to handle your business.
17:47
[SPEAKER_03]: The what I hope for is one where we as artists and creators and musicians were making a better living from our work.
17:53
[SPEAKER_03]: We are investing in each other.
17:55
[SPEAKER_03]: You know, one of the great things of old school Silicon Valley is that when people would make it, they would invest in like the next generation of people.
18:04
[SPEAKER_03]: And that's how you create just these massive amounts of wealth over time.
18:08
[SPEAKER_03]: It's just let's just reinvest in each other and let's build out our universe and that's the path I imagine.
18:13
[SPEAKER_03]: You know, where Tyler the creator is putting checks in to young artists and helping them put out their first singles and is like not exploiting them the way that say a traditional, you know, but was thinking about them as this is a younger version of me.
18:26
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
18:27
[SPEAKER_03]: So I think that's the culture that we could create together.
18:30
[SPEAKER_02]: Hey, just a quick pause from this conversation.
18:32
[SPEAKER_02]: The other 22 hours is an independent production built entirely on the idea that these quiet, honest conversations matter.
18:38
[SPEAKER_02]: The best way to support our work is simply to share it, so if you can think of one person who would appreciate this show, please pass it along.
18:44
[SPEAKER_02]: And if you haven't yet, please follow our show on your listening platform of choice or subscribe to our channel on YouTube.
18:50
[SPEAKER_02]: It's a small action that we say massive difference for us.
18:53
[SPEAKER_02]: Thanks for being here.
18:54
[SPEAKER_02]: Let's get back to our conversation.
18:58
[SPEAKER_01]: We are in our late 30s.
18:59
[SPEAKER_01]: We met in music school in New York City.
19:02
[SPEAKER_01]: We went to the new school.
19:03
[SPEAKER_01]: And we've had this path where in our 20s, we went on tour a lot, we played in bars, we partied all this stuff.
19:10
[SPEAKER_01]: And then in our 30s, we're married.
19:12
[SPEAKER_01]: We started having children and Aaron built this recording studio.
19:16
[SPEAKER_01]: He shifted from being a touring drummer to being a producer.
19:20
[SPEAKER_01]: And we both started shifting our mindset of like, oh, we're building businesses.
19:26
[SPEAKER_01]: We are artists and creatives, but we have to get serious, especially bringing children into the world, like we have to like pay for daycare and like all this stuff.
19:34
[SPEAKER_01]: And I had been releasing records.
19:36
[SPEAKER_01]: I had a record deal with the indie label.
19:39
[SPEAKER_01]: And around this time of having kids, I started to rethink the structure and started to get mad.
19:47
[SPEAKER_01]: that I wouldn't have my life's work given to my children, even not even like for a monetary reason.
19:52
[SPEAKER_01]: And it's taking me a process I got out of my deal, and I'm not even sure when this episode's going to air, but it's taking me a whole emotional process to get to the point where I'm going to do a Kickstarter to fund my next record.
20:04
[SPEAKER_01]: I want to own everything.
20:06
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, I had this idea of, whoa, we could build this whole thing.
20:10
[SPEAKER_01]: And the stereotype is pretty true, not an aging white dude who owns the company who owns a million masters of albums that people put their blood sweat in tears to.
20:22
[SPEAKER_01]: We could do this.
20:23
[SPEAKER_01]: But the emotional work to get to the point where I believed that I had any power 10 plus years into my career is really difficult.
20:32
[SPEAKER_01]: At the end of your TED talk, you say, artists don't need pity.
20:35
[SPEAKER_01]: We need power.
20:36
[SPEAKER_01]: And I'm so curious how we can convince ourselves to know that we have power, even if we might not feel we have leverage yet because so much of this business of the music industry is being told, you can't do it alone.
20:52
[SPEAKER_01]: you need the gatekeepers, you need a record deal, you need a booking agent, you're not going to be able to build anything if you don't have an agent, you need all these other people.
21:02
[SPEAKER_01]: So how can we convince ourselves that we have the potential to gain leverage, but that we already have the power even when we don't have
21:12
[SPEAKER_01]: the big income, the big following any of that stuff because how do we believe that creating art is meaningful and essential and not a narcissistic luxury?
21:24
[SPEAKER_03]: Well if I knew that I would take that pill every day.
21:28
[SPEAKER_03]: Last one, yeah.
21:29
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, yeah.
21:30
[SPEAKER_03]: It's a tough one.
21:32
[SPEAKER_03]: I want to hear more about your feeling of powerlessness, but just to speak to it just for a little bit.
21:36
[SPEAKER_03]: If I look at my emotional experience, like when I was a writer early on, like I would have loved to have written for Rolling Stone or, you know, New York Times or whatever.
21:46
[SPEAKER_03]: There's like 20 outlets.
21:47
[SPEAKER_03]: I would have done anything to have my name and it never happened and that to me felt like,
21:52
[SPEAKER_03]: That's the door that will lead to everything I wanted and I didn't get it.
21:55
[SPEAKER_03]: Now, like, if one of those places asks me to write for them, I actually don't know if I would do it.
22:01
[SPEAKER_03]: Because now, I have found a greater source of strength in like peer legitimacy.
22:08
[SPEAKER_03]: Maybe it's that the gatekeeper approval people.
22:12
[SPEAKER_03]: They are later adopters.
22:13
[SPEAKER_03]: They are not original thinkers for the most part.
22:16
[SPEAKER_03]: They are looking for what's already happening.
22:18
[SPEAKER_03]: And the sort of value in the sort of approval that matters most to me is like what my peers think.
22:25
[SPEAKER_03]: And a lot of the thinking that led to the creation of the project metal label that I do now is about how the start of indie record labels are different scenes really began by artists sort of legitimizing each other, almost like a Ponzi scheme of reputation,
22:38
[SPEAKER_03]: It's an A-frame.
22:39
[SPEAKER_03]: We build a house together through just we do things with each other and there's like a collective power that comes out of that.
22:45
[SPEAKER_03]: So what I think is that we don't need the approval of people from above.
22:50
[SPEAKER_03]: They're going to come too late to the party and they're going to be kind of lame and like we'll use them if they're useful to us.
22:55
[SPEAKER_03]: But I think what's really valuable are just these interdependent networks among people like us of like fellow artists, fellow people.
23:05
[SPEAKER_03]: And I think that is the path.
23:07
[SPEAKER_03]: to making our own forms of legitimacy, our own types of institutions.
23:11
[SPEAKER_03]: We throw our own one day festival where we build the bill and everyone looks amazing.
23:15
[SPEAKER_03]: You know, we all get to be on the Coachella poster.
23:17
[SPEAKER_03]: Like, we do those things ourselves and people are gonna like follow.
23:22
[SPEAKER_03]: People are gonna chase.
23:23
[SPEAKER_03]: Like, people don't know what they want.
23:25
[SPEAKER_03]: What, you know, they say we create those things and it brings the energy to us.
23:28
[SPEAKER_03]: So I feel like it is not that we could do it on our own, but it is that we can do it collectively on our own.
23:37
[SPEAKER_03]: In a positive way, we're thinking about like YouTube, YouTube starts, who puts up videos on YouTube?
23:41
[SPEAKER_03]: I don't mean this unkindly, but losers, people who can't get on TV or whatever is like who's on YouTube.
23:46
[SPEAKER_03]: But you know what, there's a lot more of us than there are people who can't get on TV.
23:50
[SPEAKER_03]: And over time, we come to be as a mass, something even bigger, and something that then the people who are legitimate and who before would have looked down on this now are trying to get in the same space because there's been a new system of legitimacy created that bypasses these existing, whatever.
24:05
[SPEAKER_03]: So I just think that it's not alone, but there is a degree of cooperation and co-alignment that I think we all benefit from, and that right now is informal.
24:15
[SPEAKER_03]: and a lot of peer relationships and it's like how good a person are you.
24:18
[SPEAKER_03]: It's like how good your network your community is.
24:21
[SPEAKER_03]: But I think that is a source of market power, that is a source of creative power, that is a source of emotional confidence.
24:28
[SPEAKER_03]: I think those are things that are within our grasp.
24:31
[SPEAKER_03]: You know, I personally had just went through experience of being extremely creatively burnt out four or five years ago for very similar reasons to these things and feeling extremely isolated.
24:40
[SPEAKER_03]: And ultimately, in trying to understand that, created a project that produced a very different situation for myself.
24:46
[SPEAKER_03]: Now, I'm in many such groups and I do my own things, but I'm also probably half my time.
24:51
[SPEAKER_03]: I'm collaborating with other people on projects, and it's quite nice.
24:54
[SPEAKER_03]: But when you say you felt powerless and then you felt powerful, can you talk about ways that would show up or like what you think about what moments you think about when you think of that emotion?
25:04
[SPEAKER_01]: Even when I think about it right now, it feels like my mind is, you know, singing through examples of how I have felt powerlessness in the music industry.
25:13
[SPEAKER_01]: It feels factual.
25:15
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm like, no, I don't have any power in this.
25:18
[SPEAKER_01]: because I signed a indie record deal in 2019 and put the record out and so I got financial support and industry like affirmation the back room stuff that you're left out of when you don't have the label support of like we can get this with YouTube radio stations will listen to us more to actually listen to your music and I saw the positive come from that.
25:44
[SPEAKER_01]: I saw gaining an audience, I saw radio support, then selling more tickets.
25:50
[SPEAKER_01]: I signed with a big-time booking agent who booked my heroes and then had access.
25:57
[SPEAKER_01]: And my experience was that was all well and good, except I didn't own my record.
26:03
[SPEAKER_01]: You don't realize the ways that actually can impact you in your real life.
26:07
[SPEAKER_01]: down the line because I'm like, well, it's okay that I'm on my record because maybe half as many people would have heard it if I had owned it and released it myself.
26:15
[SPEAKER_01]: But now, my vinyl is out of print and the record label will not reprint my vinyl.
26:21
[SPEAKER_01]: My operation depends on my vinyl sales when I go and play shows.
26:26
[SPEAKER_01]: It's a drop in the bucket for them so they don't want to reinvest.
26:29
[SPEAKER_01]: But it's a portion of my income that I rely on.
26:33
[SPEAKER_01]: My agent, when I told him I was pregnant, dropped off.
26:36
[SPEAKER_01]: Told me how hard it was going to be, stopped answering emails.
26:39
[SPEAKER_01]: I didn't get festival bookings and tours.
26:42
[SPEAKER_01]: Those are the instances of like, well, where is my power?
26:45
[SPEAKER_01]: If the person that is able to get me work is no longer interested and that work won't listen to me.
26:55
[SPEAKER_01]: When I email them, they're not going to respond.
26:57
[SPEAKER_01]: But when my agent emails them, they'll respond, and now that agent is like, you're pregnant, you're not aware of the investment anymore.
27:04
[SPEAKER_01]: So those are all of the experiences that I think what happened from me, eventually it was like, fuck it all, I don't care.
27:13
[SPEAKER_01]: because I got to the point where I would rather sit at home or honestly what I think happened.
27:21
[SPEAKER_01]: Erin is a good motivator and a problem solver and reminder of all these things.
27:27
[SPEAKER_01]: I went and started playing house concerts.
27:29
[SPEAKER_01]: In my earlier life, I would have thought that would look like I wasn't a legit artist.
27:34
[SPEAKER_01]: If I was going to play house concerts, I needed to be playing certain clubs and working with certain promoters, you know, all that stuff, but I would go play house concert and be like, wait, I'm making more money and there's less hands taking from the pie and these are fans.
27:50
[SPEAKER_01]: There are people here.
27:51
[SPEAKER_01]: Why does it matter that these people are supporting my music in the living room versus in a club?
27:56
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm just going to the source.
27:59
[SPEAKER_01]: And that all kind of shifted my mind that actually kind of re-inspired my earlier ethos when I was just starting out.
28:06
[SPEAKER_01]: I used to think of it that as a failure.
28:08
[SPEAKER_03]: Totally.
28:09
[SPEAKER_03]: I know exactly what you mean.
28:11
[SPEAKER_03]: And I wonder if part of it is maybe you needed that experience of you get the label deal, you get that you're able to be disillusioned to like be able to appreciate it, because otherwise that might have always seemed like the golden ring.
28:25
[SPEAKER_01]: 100 percent.
28:26
[SPEAKER_03]: This is, I think about this quote from Kirk Cobain all the time where he talks about how by far his favorite time in Nirvana was the year before never mind came out and they were touring an event around the country and they could feel that the music they're making was good and that people loved it but like no one quite knew yet and he's like if I could have just stayed in that
28:50
[SPEAKER_03]: And there's such a tendency we have to rush past the early start because we're in a rush to get big.
28:57
[SPEAKER_03]: I think of like, when you have a birthday party at the beginning, it's like, maybe only your two closest friends are there.
29:04
[SPEAKER_03]: And you're glad to see them, but you're also like, what if no one comes and you're all stressed and like, you're not appreciating the two of your best friends are there with you right now.
29:12
[SPEAKER_03]: And eventually, everybody shows up and when they do, you're like, oh my god, I'm so stressed, I can't even talk to anybody, this is too much and, you know, and it's like, that's fame, that's a creative career.
29:24
[SPEAKER_03]: And it's hard because we have egos, we have expectations, there's so many things that drive us.
29:30
[SPEAKER_03]: I ran a tiny label, like digital only label, back in the day where I would go to see bands it shows and I would find their CDRs and I'd be like, hey, let me put it online for you and I'll like get you a pitchfork review, whatever, and took no ownership, they got all the money, like it was just because I enjoyed doing it.
29:45
[SPEAKER_03]: Several of those bands went on to get corded and one band, the rural Alberta advantage, who still played today, great band.
29:51
[SPEAKER_03]: They had made like 60 grand selling their first EP, like online with me.
29:56
[SPEAKER_03]: And labels were, according to them, like sub-pop, saddle-creak, all these things we had a South-by-South-West experience where they played their Ken shows, and I'm there with them the whole time.
30:04
[SPEAKER_03]: All the labels are there, it's the whole deal, and we were looking through these deals together, and it was clear that they were going to make less money on all these deals than they were with me.
30:13
[SPEAKER_03]: But...
30:14
[SPEAKER_03]: what the three of them spoke about was signing a deal with say to their parents or their spouses were legit.
30:22
[SPEAKER_03]: We have made it.
30:23
[SPEAKER_03]: And for them at that moment, having been making music forever and satisfying that emotional need getting over that hurdle was the most important thing.
30:33
[SPEAKER_03]: and I thought they were totally right to do so.
30:35
[SPEAKER_03]: I saw it.
30:36
[SPEAKER_03]: I absolutely saw it and like understood that.
30:39
[SPEAKER_03]: There's a degree of calmness that gives us that we may be find as temporary.
30:45
[SPEAKER_03]: But like I would love for everyone to be able to have that part of our ego satisfied enough.
30:50
[SPEAKER_03]: to just let us appreciate what we actually have.
30:52
[SPEAKER_03]: Because often, I think almost always we have more than we realize.
30:56
[SPEAKER_03]: And now what we believe will be our salvation is just another gate, and it probably has more tradeoffs than we realize.
31:03
[SPEAKER_03]: But it's hard living in a culture and an information environment where you're constantly comparing yourself.
31:08
[SPEAKER_03]: And of course we all have such dreams for what we do.
31:11
[SPEAKER_03]: Why else would we be here?
31:12
[SPEAKER_03]: We're really good at tying ourselves in, not so I think.
31:15
[SPEAKER_01]: funding is the big thing as well, legitimacy and the connections, but funding.
31:20
[SPEAKER_01]: And because signing a record deal is a different kind of debt versus if I took out a loan or racked up some credit card debt to support what I need to to like put a record out or to the Kickstarter.
31:34
[SPEAKER_01]: And that's a whole other thing also having the emotional stance to believe that you are worthy enough to ask people and it's not embarrassing to do a Kickstarter.
31:42
[SPEAKER_01]: But a record label, we don't see that in the same way because they're not gonna come collecting from us.
31:48
[SPEAKER_01]: But there's all this money spent on my account that also I don't even know what spent a lot of times.
31:55
[SPEAKER_01]: What publicist is taking someone out to a fancy dinner and that's charged to my account and that's that much more money that needs to be recouped before I see a percentage of the net profit.
32:05
[SPEAKER_01]: So you just kind of can put it away.
32:07
[SPEAKER_01]: So that's been an interesting part of like how can artists create more financial freedom and not get tied up into these very veiled deals that also a lot of artists don't share deals with each other.
32:20
[SPEAKER_03]: Oh for sure.
32:21
[SPEAKER_01]: I had a friend send me her record contract because she was like, I believe we need to know this stuff.
32:26
[SPEAKER_01]: And then all of a sudden we're revealing like, oh wait, you just did like a seven year license.
32:30
[SPEAKER_01]: What I feel like a dumb ask is I signed an in perpetuity ownership and then having to grapple with that.
32:38
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, well, maybe I wouldn't assign that if we knew more culturally with each other.
32:42
[SPEAKER_03]: For sure.
32:43
[SPEAKER_03]: I was at a dinner to a list of fine artists represented by the same gallery.
32:48
[SPEAKER_03]: They just start talking about their structures or the deal.
32:50
[SPEAKER_03]: They discovered it widely, different financial arrangements, everything.
32:54
[SPEAKER_03]: And we're just flabbergasted, but they could not believe it.
32:57
[SPEAKER_03]: We as artists created people entered these arrangements of the real disadvantaged, you know, they could always pass on you and pick the next person.
33:04
[SPEAKER_03]: They make sure you know, like all of these things are tilted in very specific ways.
33:09
[SPEAKER_03]: You know, I think that everyone is still going to have their own self-interest in these situations.
33:14
[SPEAKER_03]: The world I envision with an acorp would be say in that instance if you had had an artist corporation for yourself and you're like,
33:24
[SPEAKER_03]: We'll make an A-Corp to represent this new record.
33:26
[SPEAKER_03]: You can invest what you would have done in advance.
33:28
[SPEAKER_03]: You invest to pay for the production of that from that point on.
33:31
[SPEAKER_03]: I own 70% of the record.
33:33
[SPEAKER_03]: You own 30% because that's what we need to go shade in this.
33:36
[SPEAKER_03]: And this just exists in perpetuity.
33:38
[SPEAKER_03]: And this is how we'll structure things.
33:40
[SPEAKER_03]: But it allows for the idea of there to be not like you are extracting your post-recoup earnings.
33:47
[SPEAKER_03]: But there is a shared upside and a project that you are co-creating
33:54
[SPEAKER_03]: Record labels are like banks for musicians, movie studios are banks for filmmakers like a lot of their power does come from money and does come from the terms they extract as a result of that.
34:06
[SPEAKER_03]: I think in an A-Corp world, my hot idea is that I think there's an A-Corp bank, like I think there absolutely needs to be a bank that is loaning money to artists like the right term, you know, it's like our bank.
34:16
[SPEAKER_03]: a co-op bank that's ours, a credit union sort of thing that is filling those gaps, a thing that's absolutely going to happen.
34:24
[SPEAKER_03]: And, you know, within what we made it medallable, like advances recoups are such great tools.
34:29
[SPEAKER_03]: So we built that system so that anyone could use it.
34:32
[SPEAKER_03]: So that like,
34:33
[SPEAKER_03]: Us is a group of people, if we're going to help you put out your record, we can advance you $5,000, and that money comes back automatically through sales, and it's fully transparent, there's no weird accounting, you click some buttons on a website, you know, you could see your balance, but like those instruments, those tools are useful in themselves, and they don't just have to come from the entities who've done it the past, and there's even a world in which we can be doing it for each other, I think, maybe not the same scale as, you know, a giant, giant record or something, but you can get pretty far.
35:03
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, the more I hear you talk about acorps and again, just relating it to the music industry that we know, I'm hearing a lot of parallels in essence to the union, to collective bargaining strengths and numbers, but more capital facing rather than being our advocate to the people that are the gatekeepers to capitalism.
35:19
[SPEAKER_02]: So, I'm interested to hear your take on then this collective push and ownership and autonomy.
35:26
[SPEAKER_02]: How does that then deal with the, in this decade, the K Keepers to the public, being Spotify, Apple, YouTube that actually get our art out there?
35:36
[SPEAKER_03]: I confess to not having a super insightful take on, like, streaming media, how that looks differently.
35:43
[SPEAKER_03]: I'm not sure.
35:45
[SPEAKER_03]: But I do think that we have to keep making the case and we have to keep creating new and interesting reasons for people to directly support and engage with the artists.
35:52
[SPEAKER_03]: Ultimately, a little bit, we have to compete with the existing platforms who may be offer convenience and exchange for meaning and so we have to offer meaning and maybe it has a price tag and we make it as convenient as we can, but like it's something different.
36:06
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, we do still face the distribution challenges of we're still moving through these larger systems.
36:12
[SPEAKER_03]: I just have this faith that as we begin to build more cultural capital and energy together, which I think is what's been happening online the past five years, post-COVID, especially, that we are maturing as a group that the things people are doing is are becoming more and more
36:35
[SPEAKER_03]: I don't know, I think we are breaking new ground and that a world in which a group of artists, operating a group chat, make projects that generate a lot of financial success and because of a model that others can follow, I just think that we're capable of creating those things.
36:52
[SPEAKER_03]: I look at what's happened through Medellable and I think we've been a good example of fans will pay directly for things.
36:59
[SPEAKER_03]: You know, we've had 25,000 collectors have bought a piece of
37:03
[SPEAKER_03]: work on metal label in the past year, like $650,000 worth of transactions.
37:09
[SPEAKER_03]: And a lot of my writing and experimenting last few years has been trying to release work in ways that are not just fitting into platform molds, like last year I released kind of a multi media essay as a limited edition zip file that like made several thousand dollars, you know, it's just so weird people had to try.
37:31
[SPEAKER_03]: massive channels we all have to move through, but I think we continue to be innovators, we continue to be the people that are coming up with things like we can create new lanes somehow.
37:41
[SPEAKER_02]: I think by having these conversations and you know by people like yourself that go out and they're TED talks and you share these ideas because I think amongst artists and creators this is kind of just like a oh duh.
37:52
[SPEAKER_02]: But these gatekeepers like Spotify, YouTube Apple, et cetera, like it is essential to their own survival to keep the illusion that they are the only ones that can help us.
38:02
[SPEAKER_02]: They're the only ones that offer us this path.
38:05
[SPEAKER_02]: And so they spend millions of dollars towards us, you know, like on a business to business level to keep us thinking that that is the only path.
38:13
[SPEAKER_02]: Because as soon as we start having these conversations and start like realizing that our prison only has three walls and we can just turn around and walk out, then all of a sudden we have the power.
38:22
[SPEAKER_03]: I know there are some legal limitations to collective bargaining among musicians for specific reasons of like a jukebox law or something.
38:31
[SPEAKER_03]: Someone mentioned this to me before, but like certainly in a world of acorps, something like a joint musician boycott of a platform is actually easier to imagine, because it's not about a divulge artist making a choice, it's like, hey, it's
38:45
[SPEAKER_03]: business, you know, we're all deciding to make this choice because we believe these terms don't work for us and we're working for this school and like the difference of the B2B customer being an individual who they know has no say versus the B2B being a client of which they have to be quite anxious about what they think the same way they are as the major labels that definitely creates a very different dynamic.
39:08
[SPEAKER_03]: Right now, corporations having larger amassed accumulations of power and artists being little vulnerable nodes, you know, that's just going to keep being the bulldozer against the field of daffodils or whatever.
39:23
[SPEAKER_03]: Like it's just hard for us succeed.
39:26
[SPEAKER_03]: But if we show up in a form that they have to respect, that has real power, that works the way the rest of the world works.
39:33
[SPEAKER_03]: You know, I'm inclined to think that there are different outcomes that can happen.
39:36
[SPEAKER_01]: I do feel like there is desire for change, brewing.
39:41
[SPEAKER_01]: There's lots of artists.
39:43
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, even Taylor Swift talking about Master Ownership and different bands taking their music off a Spotify.
39:49
[SPEAKER_02]: But even somebody like Evan Hohner, I'm not sure if you know who he's a younger artist kind of in the Americana song, and I understand who he's actually the youngest artist.
39:57
[SPEAKER_02]: We've had on here because we like to have people that have,
39:59
[SPEAKER_02]: had both the ups and downs, but he became TikTok famous and was able to convert that into live audiences.
40:05
[SPEAKER_02]: He got seven figure label offers from every label in Nashville, and that's confirmed by a friend of ours who is a VP of ANR at one of these labels.
40:15
[SPEAKER_02]: He's like, yep, we all offered him seven figures plus, and he turned it down.
40:19
[SPEAKER_02]: He was just like, I'm already making this money.
40:21
[SPEAKER_02]: You want me because I'm doing this, and he started his own label called Cloverdale to help other artists.
40:25
[SPEAKER_01]: which is similar to what you're talking about like a collective, they aren't like a business structure that's offering a large advance but they're collaborating together so they're then like sharing and spreading the word of each other's music by being featured on each other's songs and feeding the algorithm.
40:43
[SPEAKER_01]: So it's like I see the change happening.
40:46
[SPEAKER_01]: There's so many more.
40:47
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, we're about to interview a band that's like headlining Madison Square Garden and Hollywood bull and their press releases all about how they are independent now and they are not within the label structure.
40:59
[SPEAKER_01]: But the challenge is also all of the tools that we use to communicate, to find out about each other, like the ways that I found out about you is Instagram.
41:10
[SPEAKER_01]: I think about it all the time.
41:11
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm just like every mode, my iPhone, to even like talk to people.
41:16
[SPEAKER_01]: It feels like every single channel is run by an evil corporate overlord.
41:29
[SPEAKER_03]: I don't know what to do about that.
41:30
[SPEAKER_03]: There's a book, All the Kings, Men, Robert Penn Warren, it won the Pulitzer Prize in 1920s, and it's like a fictionalized account of Hughie Long, who's the governor of Louisiana.
41:39
[SPEAKER_03]: So he's like a crooked boss type of politician, like a raft, a lot of doing things, and there's this incorruptible doctor that he's just trying to get to.
41:46
[SPEAKER_03]: And he says, so, hey, I'm gonna build you that world's best hospital here in wherever it is.
41:51
[SPEAKER_03]: This tiny tent of the world's best hospital just take the money.
41:53
[SPEAKER_03]: And the doctor's like, no, I will never take your money.
41:56
[SPEAKER_03]: and the Huey long character says, the world is made up of shit, and it's the job of some people to turn shit into something good.
42:04
[SPEAKER_03]: I've come here with shit.
42:06
[SPEAKER_03]: I'm offering you a shit, and you are refusing the offer to turn it into something good.
42:10
[SPEAKER_03]: That is like what the universe doesn't like, something like that.
42:14
[SPEAKER_03]: And I wouldn't take in the money if I'm the doctor, I'm stubborn in that way and those sorts of guys, but I think about that idea of
42:20
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, what does it mean to try to make something that's shit and to make it something that does truly serve what we wish?
42:26
[SPEAKER_03]: And I think that's kind of what's incumbent on us now.
42:28
[SPEAKER_03]: I've like, we have to enter these spaces.
42:31
[SPEAKER_03]: I try not to, but I have to.
42:33
[SPEAKER_03]: And I need to use it for my own reasons.
42:35
[SPEAKER_03]: And I need to use it for my own values.
42:37
[SPEAKER_03]: And I have to be careful because these systems are more powerful than me.
42:41
[SPEAKER_03]: And I know what they do to me.
42:42
[SPEAKER_03]: But how do I feel like I'm using them
42:47
[SPEAKER_03]: I have like my inner core of the people on planning projects with and we have our group chats and we have our works bases and then every now and then we venture into the outside world with the release, you know, it's like, all right, we're get our coats on, you know, let's go, everyone get ready and you go out together into the world whenever at Medellable we put out a project, always write in our chat, ask to risk holding hands, like we're all holding hands as we do something so you're not alone.
43:13
[SPEAKER_03]: So you go out in public, you put your thing, you all astroturf plus one each other, you know, we're all, we're all trying to elating our message.
43:22
[SPEAKER_03]: And you hope it goes well.
43:24
[SPEAKER_03]: Probably you always end up slightly disappointed because we dream big, which is great.
43:29
[SPEAKER_03]: We shouldn't judge ourselves against our dreams, nor should we discount our dreams, you know?
43:33
[SPEAKER_03]: And then we get to do it again.
43:34
[SPEAKER_03]: There's a line from Virgil Ablow, one of his books, where he says, looking back at the one thing I realized, was that no work was better than the chance to make a new one.
43:42
[SPEAKER_03]: That's the infinite game of art, you know, it's not a finite game with winning or losing.
43:46
[SPEAKER_03]: It's just continuing to do it.
43:49
[SPEAKER_03]: My father, not getting the record deal, he wanted, but still playing music all the time, playing music to this day.
43:54
[SPEAKER_03]: The best guitar player has ever been today, you know, aged 75.
43:57
[SPEAKER_03]: That is winning.
43:58
[SPEAKER_03]: He loves music as much as he ever has.
44:01
[SPEAKER_03]: But culture doesn't say it like that.
44:02
[SPEAKER_03]: It doesn't feel like that.
44:04
[SPEAKER_03]: But...
44:04
[SPEAKER_03]: You know, when I was growing up, I probably had like 70 peers who I thought of as like, I'm in competition with these people, and I lost for many of those years.
44:12
[SPEAKER_03]: Like, I was like, whatever, I should have the weirdest name.
44:14
[SPEAKER_03]: But then over time, it's just, well, who loves it and is still doing it?
44:17
[SPEAKER_03]: And that's really what matters.
44:18
[SPEAKER_03]: So I think that those cycles of being with my people, my friends, being in my rehearsal space, making things together, enjoying being dazzled by what's possible.
44:29
[SPEAKER_03]: The things that happen that you don't know are going to happen.
44:32
[SPEAKER_03]: You venture into public, really, really hope this is the one.
44:35
[SPEAKER_03]: Everyone gets exactly the way, you know, probably does more than you think, but you can't take the compliment, you know, whatever.
44:41
[SPEAKER_03]: And we repeat, as long as we get support ourselves doing it, that is a great life.
44:45
[SPEAKER_03]: You talk about the battle of enough feeling like whatever, just ego.
44:49
[SPEAKER_03]: These are the places I go without.
44:51
[SPEAKER_03]: Let me just be with other people.
44:52
[SPEAKER_03]: Let's just let it be fun.
44:54
[SPEAKER_03]: And then I'll get to do it again.
44:55
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I love that.
44:57
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, that's so beautiful.
44:58
[SPEAKER_02]: It's a great kind of closure to our conversation.
45:01
[SPEAKER_02]: We like to ask one kind of final question, which in a sense to me kind of sits solidly in the realm of bentoism, which I know we didn't get into.
45:10
[SPEAKER_02]: We'll put a link to it in our show notes because it's on the really resonates.
45:13
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, I hope we get a chance to talk about that more at a future time.
45:17
[SPEAKER_02]: But it's a question of something that somebody has said to you along the way they continue to resonate and inspire you going forward in the work that you do.
45:27
[SPEAKER_03]: There's so many, I don't even know where to start.
45:29
[SPEAKER_03]: I'm just going to go at the first clear when they came to mind, which is something I read, not something I specifically sold, but there's a essay by CS Lewis called the Inner Ring.
45:39
[SPEAKER_03]: And he talks about how, in our life as a writer or as an artist of any type, we spend all of our days thinking about and longing for this Inner Ring of the people most in the know, the people, the top of whatever our practice or profession is,
45:56
[SPEAKER_03]: thinking what will the inner ring want from us and how do we get in and everything we do is aspiring to do that.
46:01
[SPEAKER_03]: But then one day maybe we arrive in this inner ring and we discover a couple things and for one we discover that these are not the people we thought they were that it is political is not for reasons of truth and beauty like we thought it is for all sorts of other reasons that are not what we wish.
46:16
[SPEAKER_03]: And we also find that for that inner ring, there's an even farther inner ring that they all aspire to, and that they look to.
46:23
[SPEAKER_03]: Within that inner ring, there's another and so on.
46:25
[SPEAKER_03]: And he says, the quest for the inner ring will break our hearts until we break it.
46:31
[SPEAKER_03]: And the way we break it, it's to stop aspiring for the inner ring.
46:35
[SPEAKER_03]: And instead to aspire for the only thing that matters, and that is to be a master crafts person and whatever we do.
46:41
[SPEAKER_03]: And as a craftsperson, your name will not be celebrated, your name will not be known except by the other craftspeople who know how quality work is made.
46:48
[SPEAKER_03]: And if you do those for long enough, you find yourself in something that looks like an inner ring to the outside, but in actuality something different.
46:57
[SPEAKER_03]: You will find yourself in a group of friends.
46:59
[SPEAKER_03]: all people who appreciate the work who know what it is to make it and are there to do it for the right reasons and you discover that is the only ring that really matters.
47:08
[SPEAKER_03]: The quest for the inner ring will break our hearts until we break it.
47:12
[SPEAKER_03]: I have to tell myself that all the time because those are the voices of comparison, those are the voices that discount the things that are unique about us that look wrong from another angle and we often look at ourselves at least charitable light.
47:27
[SPEAKER_03]: Similar, there's a Jimmy Buffet line I always think about.
47:29
[SPEAKER_03]: He said, they used to tell me I was uncategorizable and now they tell me I'm a category same vibe and so there is just a degree of you could call it stubbornness, you know, you could call it.
47:42
[SPEAKER_03]: Being insane like there's a lot of things that you can call it, but I think the people who you know know how to find their voice Know how to be confident and know how to not run from it We are all capable of that and a lot of it is just about how generous we are with ourselves Yeah, the inner ring be where the inner ring and that's why I I mean I do think about peers, but these are not the people on top peers.
48:05
[SPEAKER_03]: I think about her people like who do I respect?
48:08
[SPEAKER_03]: You know, and like, yeah, I want to be in a place in mutual respect with people I see as being an integrity and I want to imagine they would look in my actions and think I respect the way that person, you know, that to me is if I'm orienting towards that I think I'm probably doing okay.
48:22
[SPEAKER_01]: That was really beautiful.
48:23
[SPEAKER_01]: I honestly felt like crying.
48:24
[SPEAKER_02]: I was like, I got my reading assignment for this evening.
48:28
[SPEAKER_01]: This whole conversation feels really grounding in a purposeful life.
48:34
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, also you are actively trying to create tangible ways to help people live that purposeful life, which is really incredible.
48:43
[SPEAKER_01]: We live in the society we live in, so we need things to survive.
48:48
[SPEAKER_01]: And sometimes I think the way of the artist is like wishing we didn't have to.
48:52
[SPEAKER_01]: And I love that what I'm hearing from you is just like such a,
48:56
[SPEAKER_01]: a deeper regard for one while prioritizing this central need for the other, not putting your head in the sand, and wanting to really serve and help communally, which is incredible.
49:09
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, and I should mention like all these projects are with so many people, like I have amazing collaborators and all these things that make it not only possible, but fun, and you know, being a part of a conspiracy plot with a group of people you love and respect, I mean, what's more fun?
49:24
[SPEAKER_03]: So, yeah, I mean, I think there's many moments of doubt.
49:27
[SPEAKER_03]: It's constant doubt.
49:28
[SPEAKER_03]: You step back and I think, as I hope you do, you feel grateful for the commitment that you're been able to make in your life.
49:35
[SPEAKER_01]: Man, you're strong.
49:36
[SPEAKER_02]: The answer, thank you so much for making time this morning to sit with us and to just share your viewpoint and your experience and your wisdom.
49:42
[SPEAKER_02]: It's been incredibly enlightening.
49:44
[SPEAKER_01]: Thank you.
49:44
[SPEAKER_03]: So, grateful.
49:45
[SPEAKER_03]: I'll come down to Nashville.
49:46
[SPEAKER_03]: Let's hang out.
49:47
[SPEAKER_01]: Yes, please.
49:48
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm sure I'll hit you up later.
49:49
[SPEAKER_01]: I'll be like, can we have you on just to talk about bentoism, I'm sorry?
49:53
[SPEAKER_01]: So we'll definitely be in touch.
49:55
[SPEAKER_01]: Thank you so much.
49:56
[SPEAKER_02]: Thank you, folks.
50:00
[SPEAKER_02]: We know your time is valuable and we're grateful you chose to spend this hour with us.
50:04
[SPEAKER_00]: If this conversation resonated with you, know that it is just one of many.
50:08
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50:23
[SPEAKER_00]: McCurson, and many others.
50:25
[SPEAKER_02]: This show is produced by me, Mary Chaffer Hayes, with help from a Kayla Anne.
50:29
[SPEAKER_02]: And all the music he hears written, performed and produced by me as well.
50:32
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50:39
[SPEAKER_02]: Thanks for being here.
50:41
[SPEAKER_02]: We'll see you next time.