How Music Builds Memory And Momentum In Art

One song can pull you back to a room you haven’t seen in 30 years, and that same song can push you into the studio with a totally different kind of courage. Nathan Terborg and Ty Nathan Clark go all-in on the music that formed their taste and still shapes their creative process, from early mixtapes and older-sibling tape raids to the ritual of Tower Records, used CD bins, and the album art that taught us as much as any design class.

We trade stories about the records that became emotional landmarks, the soundtracks that acted like secret portals to new bands, and the way certain albums become permanent studio companions. Ty shares how the Basquiat film soundtrack helped reroute his path as an artist, and we dig into the very real chain reaction of influence, like Jeff Buckley inspiring Thom Yorke’s approach on Radiohead’s work. Along the way we hit The Crow soundtrack, OK Computer awe, deep-cut favorites, and a few “no shame” listens that still surprise people.

Then we bring it back to craft: how to build a studio playlist with intention, how to match music to the energy you need, and why silence can be the most powerful tool when you’re trying to hear what the work is asking for. If you’ve ever wondered how music and creativity connect at a practical level, this one is a blueprint you can actually use.

If it resonates, subscribe to Just Make Art Podcast, share it with an artist friend, and leave a review so more people can find it. What album changes the way you make work?

Make sure to follow us on Instagram here:
@justmakeartpodcast   @tynathanclark   @nathanterborg

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Transcript

Why We’re Talking Music

SPEAKER_00 0:03

Alright, welcome to today's episode of Just Make Art Podcast. My name is Nathan Treborg. I'm here with my co-host, Ty Nathan Clark. How are you, Ty? That's me. That's definitely you. Uh this is gonna be a little bit of uh we're gonna have some fun today. Unlike our other episodes where we're super serious. Yeah, so serious. We were just so after our last episode where we discussed Cameron Crow's book, The Unco, is it Uncool? The Uncool. The Uncool, which was heavily focused on the impact of music in his life and his family's life. After we got done recording that, we spent another 45 minutes talking music. And uh and I was just thinking, you know, and we were we were discussing what's our next episode going to be about, which just to give you guys a peek behind the curtain, that's pretty much how we roll. What should we talk about next?

SPEAKER_01 0:47

We've got a long list of even though we have a long list of things on our on our Google Doc, we end up going, but what about oh, I just saw this video. What about this? Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 0:57

For sure. And to be brutally honest, a lot of the things on our long-term list require a lot of homework. A lot of homework. And this one does not. Uh so we're gonna talk about the impact that music has had just on our lives and uh and continues to have in our in our studio practice today.

SPEAKER_01 1:12

Yeah, this is uh, you know, I have to kind of this is about studio tunes and music that's kind of inspired us and kind of moved us along because you know me with music like this could be a hundred thousand hour episode if we were just covering all kinds of things. I I've always kind of labeled myself as a self-proclaimed music historian or collector in a way, you know, self-proclaimed, because it annoys the hell out of some people sometimes.

SPEAKER_00 1:38

You're you're an Uber nerd when it comes to music. I mean, I think I'm probably in the 95th percentile. You're in the 99th percentile when it comes to music.

SPEAKER_01 1:44

I have reined it in for this episode as much as I can, but the last few days I have been scouring things and putting ones that are more important rather than just the the plethora of things, you know, with a nice three amigos quote there after I watched a Martin Short documentary last night, which is absolutely fabulous, by the way.

SPEAKER_00 2:05

Is it it's in it's in our it's in our cue.

SPEAKER_01 2:07

It is one of the most beautiful love stories of a marriage, of a father, but also of a group of friends, legendary group of friends. Yeah, right? Like it is, so I highly suggest that for anybody, even if you're not a Martin Short fan, like it it just there were moments that you're like, this doesn't exist like this anymore, does it? It's just beautiful, beautiful.

SPEAKER_00 2:32

Yeah, yeah. That's awesome. All right, I'm uh I'm excited to watch that. So listen, if you're uh if you listen to this podcast for art and only art, just probably skip to the next episode. This is gonna be mostly music related. Ty and I just telling stories. But if you want to hang around, here we go. Where do you want to jump in, Ty?

Childhood Gatekeepers And First Tapes

SPEAKER_01 2:49

I mean, I let's let's jump in early. Let's go back to being kids. You know, I think of you know, music has so many different factors, right, that are kind of involved in it. You've got the cool factor, you've got the underground factor, you've got the pop top 40 factor, right? You've got all these things. You've got what your parents listened to or your grandparents that you may have liked or not liked, but that does kind of shape, you know, an early road. And I kind of want to go back to like that kind of cool factor, you know, thing when you're kind of that older sibling of a friend or a friend's dad who was like at Woodstock, you know, and had the record collection type thing. And I remember going back to my my buddy Josh Pack in fourth and fifth grade. Um, God rest his soul. We lost Josh, I think maybe nine or ten years ago to brain cancer. Just a wonderful soul. But his brother Jesse was, I think Jesse was probably four or five years older than us. So he was in high school, but he was that early, that goth industrial kid that you didn't know many back then when you were in fourth or fifth grade, right? So Jesse had the uh safety pins, 40 of them all the way up his pants, you know, pegged with Doc Martin's and always wore black and had dark hair and wore eyeliner and painted his fingernails. Well, Jesse's music collection, I couldn't tell you who any of these bands were at that time. Wow. But we would sit in our room, Josh and I, we'd go in and sneak his tapes, and we'd bring them into Josh's room and we'd sit there. And Josh was one of the first entrepreneurs I'd ever met because he was the guy that went to uh Sam's club and bought blowpops in the buckets, and then he'd sell them at school for a quarter.

SPEAKER_02 4:27

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 4:28

Right, and make money. But what we'd do is we'd take all of Jesse's tapes from the cure to skinny puppy, I mean, all these Susie and the Banshees, and we would record them because Josh had the dual cassette thing. So we recorded them, but his dad had a business, so we'd go up to his dad's business and we'd photocopy the cassette liners. And that's how we started our tape collections from Jesse Pox stuff. So was that that in color? Did you photocopy color? No, they were black and white. I don't even know if cover photocopies were like you had to be big, you had to be like IBM or somebody to have those back then. This was like 1986, yeah, you know, and so but that kind of was like my artistic music beginning. It wasn't the top 40 radio bands, these were like the fringe bands, you know, that post-new wave, post-punk, uh, industrial goth stuff that you know just had this really cool like setting in of of things. So then what that did is when I would go to uh Tower Records or these other record stores around the listening stations became different. You could go grab a tape and go put it in and try it out, right? They had those things that were just insane. But what about you like thinking back to that time?

Big Brothers And Grunge Era Bonding

SPEAKER_00 5:45

I was the big brother in that dynamic, and and my little brother, it's funny, we were we were on a camping trip a couple years ago, and he said something which was both incredibly complimentary and also a little bit hurtful, which he said, I think I think the biggest impact that you had on me as a bigger brother was all the music that I got access to at a young age, you know. So it's like, oh, that's cool. That's actually not also cool, but it was some five years older than than than my brother. Yeah. And and I got into shoplifting CDs, I think probably about like as a sophomore. That was the first time I got arrested, was for and I got I got pretty good at it anyway. I had a lot of CDs is the point of that of that story. And so, you know, so when I was just really getting into music, we talked about this, I think, in the last episode a little bit around Pearl Jam, but it was, you know, a lot of a lot of the Seattle, you know, grunge scenes. So, you know, the the Nirvana, Mother Lovebone, Temple of the Dog, Allison Chains. Uh uh, he he always tells a story the first time I played Nine Inch Nails for him. And um, and that actually he got really into uh it sort of that industrial sort of heavy metal heavy metal vibe. Uh I gave him his first tool CD, you know, so that was yeah, it's it's I think about just the the it was fun to be the big brother. I kind of wish I would have had one because that would have you know set me on that path a lot sooner than it was. I mean he was here in the stuff when he was like whatever, 10, 11 years old. Yeah. Um that I that I just heard, you know, whatever, a year, a year or so previous. But that's the first thing that comes to mind. And then, you know, referencing back to our last episode with Cameron Crowe's story, um, how much of his experience with his sisters uh centered around the music that they listened to, the music that his sister, uh his big sister exposed him to, uh, that beautiful story around the Beach Boys album that his sister, who took her own life, had ordered that it arrived after she passed away. I mean And it was that message.

SPEAKER_01 7:38

It was like a for him, it was the it was the I think I'm trying to think of what he said. It was like the record came in the mail, and I opened it up and I went to put it on and I was looking at the songs, and I went, This is her, this is her suicide note, the message to me. Because she didn't have a suicide note or leave anything behind. Yeah, and he went, This is her telling me. Yeah, this is her sharing, you know. I don't know, it's just but that's music. I think that's that beautiful thing. We have those friends or those siblings or things that were the bond is even tighter because of the music. In junior high, I had friends like that, and we would sit, and most of them had older siblings, so we would just sit and listen to the siblings' music, and then that would form us, you know. And then MGE, of course, for me was massive because it was all music videos, but we'd stay up late to watch the 120 minutes and you know, the rock shows and things that were catered to us. And I think back to even in high school, there was a little there was a record store called Nancy's Records in Auburn, and that's where we would get all of our music. And so my buddy Ben and I, when our friend Charity started working there, right? That was it at that point because she could put on anything we wanted to hear for us to check out, and that was right at the start of Grunge, right at those things. And my disc man, right? My walkman was on my side in junior high. I had my walkman with my tape on my side. Everywhere I went, it was on. Yeah, yeah. And I remember the headphones would always like break, so I'd have to tape together the cords so that it would kind of, you know, where it was disjointed inside. And then with my disc man, I'd wear them out like crazy, have to hit it because it'd be skipping and stop it from skipping, and you're always buying batteries. But it was like everywhere I went, violent femmes, psychedelic furs, new order, joy division, all these like those bands existed for me when I would make art, but then all of a sudden, grunge era came in, you know, just swept in with Nirvana and Pearl Jam and Mud Honey and the Melvins and you know, all the smashing pumpkins. All of a sudden you're like, wait, what? This fits, but it doesn't fit. Right. It's got a mix of all these other things. Um, I'm celebrating it on video if you guys are watching. I had some fireworks go on behind me.

SPEAKER_00 9:47

Good for you. So it's funny, I gotta I gotta speak

Bedroom Headphones And Mixtape Magic

SPEAKER_00 9:51

on this real quick. I'm thinking now about you just connected something for me. So as a as a parent now of teenagers, well, our oldest is 20 now, but um, especially our youngest who's uh who's 17. The uh the escape to the bedroom, which unfortunately now involves mostly doom scrolling on TikTok. Yeah, but back in the day, it was the headphones. It was just listening to music because there was no device with a portal to everything in the entire universe for us to just become completely enamored by. So yeah, just how many, how many uh hours spent in the bedroom, headphones on, just you know, staring at the ceiling.

SPEAKER_01 10:27

Sad, all you know, broke up with the girlfriend, or she the girl won't pay attention to you, so you're listening to the cure's pictures of you over and over and over and over, you know.

SPEAKER_00 10:39

I uh so Pearl Jam's Black, that song is undergoing a renaissance. It's a phenomenal song, but I don't know if you just think there's so many reels about it. It's just one, it's like become a become a thing. But anyway, I saw a I saw a some live concert footage from I think this year, where the crowd is just whatever, 60,000 people strong, just singing every every single word. But that's one of those like long for somebody who doesn't absolutely leave you back. I had so we had bunk beds. I shared a room with my little brother. I was on the top bunk, big bro, you know, no big deal. But we had a kind of a built-in bookshelf uh in the wall next to my bed. So I had all these shelves where I could keep all my my music and my little journals where I'd so you know, I'd listen. You talked during the last episode, or maybe it was afterwards, but rewriting lyrics, you know, or or writing poetry or or things like that. I also remember even so before the advent of the compact disc, and before I even got my first few, you know, cassette tapes, I would listen to my favorite radio station. And I got really good at you know how you just make your own mixtapes based on you know, so you'd hear the first bar of a song you wanted to get, and you're like, boom, got it. Yep. Just like the excitement of like, I now have that song to play whenever I want. It was so exciting, so fun.

SPEAKER_01 11:59

Man, you know, that you saying that, you know, about disappearing to the bedroom, you know, not to sound like a grumpy old man or anything in my 50s here, but it it's like, man, the magic of going to Tower Records, the magic of going to the record store to buy the music, to invest in something that you know, you wash 10 cars in order to go buy that CD or that tape, you know, you mowed some lawns, like to earn. But there was something about, I mean, for me growing up in California, right? We had Tower Records everywhere. And so walking in to that, seeing that sign with the red letters, like to me, that was going to Disneyland.

SPEAKER_00 12:43

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 12:44

And there was honestly, there was nothing more and because it wasn't just about the music, it was about everybody else you saw in there. Yeah, like all the different styles. You had the skate kids, you had the punk kids, you had the mods, you had the goth kids, the industrial kids, you had just awkward kids, you had band kids, you had everybody was in there looking for their music, you know, and then when CDs came into play regularly for everybody, then listening stations started where you could go in and they would have the specific albums. You could listen to the whole thing. I would spend hours, if not days, listening to everything before I made my purchase. And then something magic happened. Used CDs and used tapes. Everybody started buying back what people didn't want it and reselling them. That's when it happened. That's when I just went gangbusters because $3.99 for that used CD instead of $9.99, I could buy three of them.

SPEAKER_00 13:44

Let me ask you this, Ty. How many CDs could your CD wallet hold that you had in your car? How many of the CD wallets?

SPEAKER_01 13:56

So I had I had the big square ones that were about this big that held. So four or four wide. Sure. Yeah. And you know, they end up about this thick. So I probably, I don't know, had 10, 12, 13 of those. But those were just my favorite CDs. Right. All the other ones were still in the cases and stacks, you know. I still have them, by the way. They're upstairs.

SPEAKER_00 14:18

I do too. I do too. Tell me if this is true for you. So it started off as being very meticulous around having the album artwork, you know, the the the behind the CD. Right. And you know, they'd be or organized by genre or by artist. And then over time it you had three, four deep, and you just had to kind of rifle. That's that's how it started and how it, you know, how it turned out. But that was the that's when you couldn't afford a new case. But back exactly. Back to your um, yeah, it was harder to steal the the cases than it was the CDs themselves. The the experience of investing in an album is so and this has been discussed, you know, a lot by by other people, but every time you know I I hear it kind of brought up, it's like there's no investment anymore, you know. And again, I wouldn't, I wouldn't trade the access to you share a band with me. I can listen to their entire catalog that moment. Yeah, it's awesome. Yeah, of course. Like it's it's great. But the downside is that there's just you're not invested. I mean, when you you're talking about mowing lawns, so I mowed some lawns. My first first job, I think I was in third grade. I rode my bike down to the local golf course and I said, Hey, I want to, I want to find one of my friends was uh he had a job, quote unquote. He was an independent contractor. We were not employees, but it was a quarter for every good condition, decent golf ball that we could find. So I would go trudging through uh basically the entire perimeter of the of this golf course through the ditches and just you know pull golf balls out. So a CD was roughly, you know, probably 50 or 55 golf balls that I that I had to find, you know, which was probably about four hours of work. Because you'd find some that were just trash and that they weren't, they weren't gonna buy them back from me. But it was an investment. That's the point. It was something that was like that was real dirty ass trudging through the mud, you know, coming home needing needing two showers just to be able to come to the dinner table of of work. So you better believe I was gonna listen to that thing 40 times through, front to back, before I ever uh set it aside and decided this really isn't for me. So the the decision on the front end was it was significant, right? Like it was like, okay, I got enough for two CDs today. What's it gonna be? And this goes back. So you're talking about the experience of going into the music store. This is where the album art, the music videos. So we were I'm not gonna say we were poor, but uh we couldn't afford cable, let's just put it that way. So my only MTV my only MTV consumption was when I was over at over at friends' houses. But the the image of a band presenting themselves in terms of their music videos, but also the album artwork was huge as well. Like what's what's gonna get your attention to even pull you in to consider, hey, should I should I check this one out? You know? Yeah, good times.

Tower Records Culture And Identity

SPEAKER_01 17:02

Talking about record stores and things, fast forwarding a little bit here. I I applied to Tower Records for a job, I don't know how many times. I don't know why I never got it. I well, number one is probably the most competitive place to work back in the late 80s, early 90s for anybody that like liked music, right? Everybody's applying. But I remember in college, my first few years in Stockton, California, Tower Records is where I spent my time. If I wasn't on the basketball court because I played college basketball or in art classrooms, I was at Tower Records. Like those were my three like go-tos. And I would change my look all the time when I went into Tower Records to try and fit what they would hire. Because they knew me because I was buying CDs, I was at the magazine rack reading all the magazines with my journal, making notes on bands I need to check out. Because that's how I found out it was I wasn't on the internet then. Nobody was. The World Wide Web wasn't like something you just went and checked stuff out. So it was magazines, it was MTV, it was hearing the artists talk about artists they like, right? It was going to a show and seeing an opening band that might be something later, or they weren't, but you bought the album anyways because you enjoyed them. And I remember, I mean, I'd walk in with my disc man, like I said, and you know, I'd change my clothes, I'd fill out an application, or hey, do you did you guys see my application yet? No, we need we I think we lost. I mean, you'd fill out another one, but man, I wanted that freaking job at Tower Records so bad. It was a badge of honor. Did you ever get in? Never did. Wow. I probably applied majority of college time at Tower Records. Never got in. Maybe I was too tall.

SPEAKER_00 18:42

It's funny you talk about how you would dress, dress different. Now, now I'm thinking back to high school and how I played all the sports, but I also was art club, you know, theater, uh choir boy. Uh as much as I cared about sports, you know, growing up, choir was the only thing that I was all state in. Funny, funny and funny enough. Yeah, so in in in school, you know, I don't know about you, but I had I was one of those I didn't I didn't fully belong to any one you know sort of core clicker group, but I I migrated between a bunch of different ones. So with the jocks, I was always the one that was, you know, looked a lot more, dressed a lot more alternative or you know, whatever, whatever it might be, because that was the crew that I was going to concerts with, not the not the guys from the football team or basketball team, you know. So it's funny.

SPEAKER_01 19:26

Yeah, my I think let's see, those first years in college that were not good personally for me. Scott Wyland was like the guy who I wanted to look like more than anything, Stone Temple Plite sleeper. So I I had pink hair, I had blonde, I had bleached hair, I had my cutoff fur jacket with cutoff sleeves, flannels, you know, Doc Martins, and I my the guys on my team. I was my first year there, I was one of three white guys on the team. And what was popular at the time, real world had just started on MTV. And Puck, they my nickname was Puck. He was the alternative guy on the real world, but all of my friends on my back, that's the only touch of reality of somebody who was alternative in look, right? Could be for them. So they either called me Puck or Green Day because Green Day Dookie was really big at the time. So, but yeah, that's that was my goal was to look like Scott Wyland as much as possible.

SPEAKER_00 20:25

One of the most charismatic front men ever. I mean, just just just oozed rock star. Yeah. Unfortunately, he didn't escape the grasps of addiction. So this is a wild story.

When A Song Holds A Death

SPEAKER_00 20:38

I don't think I've ever told you this, uh, even off off air. Uh so when he passed away, this would have been maybe like 2016, 2017, maybe. So he was in Minneapolis for a concert. And it came up on my whatever, I saw it online, and I was like, oh man, you know, so just I mean, just bum one of your one of your rock heroes dies, especially that way. I mean, and recovered myself, it always like just hits me even harder when because I've a lot of personal friends that have known through recovery that have lost their life to overdose. And so when somebody who you admire from a distance, it's just like, God, what what else could they could they have done? And and especially with within the context of his career, I mean, it was he made a fraction of the music that he would have otherwise because it it completely blew up their their ability to tour and to and to make to make new music. So I'm looking at the photograph he overdosed in his in his tour bus, and I look at the photograph, I'm like, and I see what's in the background, and I'm like, wait a minute. And I walk to the uh window in my office and I look out in the parking lot, and his tour bus was parked in the parking lot of where I I was officing at the time. And so, like, I know I could walk you there right now, but I know the exact spot that's where so when when Leo was a pup, we'd go on our little, you know, walks around the building and stuff, because he'd always be at work with me. And I mean, that was wild. Wild, you know. So I walked out there and just like sat and like I mean, of course, they had it that they had it all roped off because they weren't sure what the circumstances of his death were crazy. Yeah, just wild. I was just yeah, anyway.

SPEAKER_01 22:13

Yeah, it's the the memories, the gosh, the places that it takes you back, you know, is that's the power of music. I know Cameron talked about that in the book a little bit, how it's happy, sad, and like all these different emotions, but the perfect song takes you exactly back to the place, to the time, to the moment, to the people, to the smell, like all of those things. And I think that's what I treasure so much. Talked about my Tower Records love in college. Later on in college, my roommate, my buddy Micah, who you've met, who I played basketball with. We went to Tower Records Hollywood probably every other weekend, every weekend in LA because they had albums and things that nobody else had. It was kind of first releases, indie things would show up there. And so we would go up and see shows in Hollywood, but Tower Records on our way home, you know, because they were open until I think two in the morning. So everybody was there. So you may see somebody too. Right. You may see somebody random that's that's there hanging out. And I was on a full basketball scholarship and in art school, but I took out loans as an idiot to buy music with. So I didn't have to pay for my school or my living or any of that stuff, but I took out loans anyway and Pell Grants and all that stuff just literally so I could buy music. And I paid for that with interest for years upon years when I didn't need to, but man, I had a damn good record collection.

SPEAKER_00 23:36

Yeah. Speaking on uh paying for things for years, how many times did you sign up for the CD clubs?

SPEAKER_01 23:43

I did that three times before I got beat to a poll.

SPEAKER_00 23:46

I had collections after me at one point because I signed up with different phone numbers and different names to get to the club. 12 CDs for a penny. Yeah. And then $200 later. Yeah. Columbia gosh. You know, you're talking about happy sad, and we just think about STP uh Sour Girl from their album number five, which I think is the last studio album that they recorded together. That is one for me that every time I play that. I gotta be, and we'll get into this in a little bit here, probably if we can get past our our is this still the intro?

SPEAKER_01 24:18

This is yeah, we're still just still the intro.

SPEAKER_00 24:21

This might be the episode. Yeah. There's certain songs that just hit me so hard emotionally. I have to be intentional about when I listen to them, especially in the studio. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, 100%. So let's wrap up uh part one. We'll we'll we'll we'll come back to that. So part one. So just the music um role that music has played in our lives.

College Radio DJ Life And Demos

SPEAKER_00 24:43

So now I'm in college and um I was playing football. Uh my roommate, Teddy Bear, Ted Manderfeld, shout out Ted. He was majoring in music, he's a phenomenal like concert pianist. In fact, he's still that that's how he makes his living. He's uh uh he's uh half of a dueling pianos uh duo that tours the country and it's awesome. But so we we go in there to the radio station, and uh you know, we you see a flyer on campus, like, hey, want to be a radio DJ, have a show, you know, come come by this meeting. And so Ted and I show up, you know, and they knew that we were on the football team, and they were like, I mean, just the the initial look, right? Because like everybody who was in who they look like they belonged in a radio station exactly. And here hear a couple of dumb jocks show up, they're like, Yeah, I think we're I think we're all full. So we got denied the first year, and but we just kept after it. So finally in our sophomore year, we got a chance to to uh to do it. And now that I'm thinking it probably was it was so much fun because we got, I mean, so Cameron Crow talking about all the all the demos that that radio station would have. We got a ton of different demos, and that's how I got exposed to a bunch of sort of more fringe bands that I wouldn't probably have been exposed to otherwise. That's so one of my more obscure bands that I just love, love, love is Luna. Have you ever heard of Luna?

SPEAKER_01 25:59

Yes, mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_00 26:00

Yeah, oh my gosh. So when the Days of Our Nights came out, that was one that I think I might have just stole that one. I don't know if that was available for, but it was again like it was what nobody nobody missed it. But so Ted and I had this radio show and we would record every single episode, and so we would take the cassette tape back to our room and we'd like listen back. We were both very much in love with the sound of our own voices.

SPEAKER_01 26:20

Yeah, did you guys have a name for your show? We we did.

SPEAKER_00 26:25

So music talks or no, I mean, so we had a little bit different tastes, but the theme was offense and defense. There was gonna be I was a defensive end. I'm trying to remember what position Ted played. I think he was a defensive back or a or a or a linebacker. Anyway, we were known to be the ones that would talk way too much. We were both very much in love with the sound of our own voices. Yeah, uh fast forward. Just play some music, just play some music, man. But it was it was it was so so fun. I remember one we were so excited about it. I remember that one time I was um I was uh hanging out with this girl that I was that was really, really enamored by, and um, we were just hanging out in her dorm room, and thinking I'm gonna be smooth and that this is gonna be a flex. I'm like, hey, you want to listen to our last show? She's like, sure. So I played it. So I played a tape of our show. Just being completely unaware. I finally, after about half an hour, I realized she was just like, What are what are we doing? Uh that might have been the last time that we hung out. But anyway, was that a fan of the race? But it got it really expanded my music collection and it totally exposed me to bands that I wouldn't have uh wouldn't have heard of otherwise for sure.

SPEAKER_01 27:33

I am so jealous that you had that experience because I remember I was probably fourth, maybe fifth grade. I'm trying to think of when Pump Up the Volume came out with Christian Slater, one of my favorite films of all time. He's the underground pirate DJ. And ever since then I wanted to be a DJ. Or once Gross Point Blank came out, I wanted to fall in love with a DJ who looked just like Minnie Driver when I walked into the old, you know, and the scene where he's driving past where she's the DJ of the radio station when he comes back home and she's in there on the mic and he can see her through the window. I always had that dream of small town, there's the cute DJ that looks just like Minnie Driver.

SPEAKER_00 28:16

And but that what a Hold on, what's the other what's the other C-Sack movie that High Fidelity? There it is. Yeah, High Fidelity Championship. I thought that's what you're referring to at the end of the year.

SPEAKER_01 28:26

It's the based on the Nick Hornby novel of the record store, which is one of my top five favorite books and films. Yeah. For sure. Yes. Yeah.

Raves Turntables And A DJ Alias

SPEAKER_00 28:37

So then I get into uh when I really started partying and uh when things got got really really out of control, so I got really into the rave scene. So that's what introduced me to electronic music. And so the closest I ever got to performing, and for those of you listening, I'm using air quotes here, but performing music. So I uh I got really excited about it. I bought a couple of turntables, a mixer, and I started to spin records in it. At this point, I had I had uh been kindly asked to leave the first college I was going to and move back to Minneapolis and got really into sort of the uh the the rave scene. And uh so my DJ name was Jaffy Ryder. And if you get this literary reference, I will be blown away. But it's from uh a very well-known author from one of his, well, yeah, probably one of his better known books as well, Jaffy Ryder. So Jaffe Ryder was a character from the Dharma Bums by Karowak.

SPEAKER_01 29:28

Never read Dharma Bums.

SPEAKER_00 29:29

Oh my goodness. It's probably my favorite Karowak book, actually, being being in college. That was just so that was my that was my my DJ. I still have some flyers with my with Jaffe Ryder on it.

SPEAKER_01 29:40

My brain right now can only picture you in the rave scene as, and a lot of people are gonna know this. The German Viking rave video from that's how I picture you in the rave scene. Shirt off, cut off shorts, moving the dude who shouldn't be there and getting him out of the way. One of the best videos ever. The German Viking in that all time.

SPEAKER_00 30:05

Yeah. No, I was I I didn't look anything like the German Viking at that time. Nope. Super strung out, super skinny. I had my uh le Bray pierced right here. I had my tragus pierced on both sides, I had three earrings on on each side. I had uh hair down to about here. Yeah, uh, you would not have recognized me. Uh quite the quite the phase. So before we get into actually talking about music in the studio, is there anything else you want to talk about?

SPEAKER_01 30:34

Yeah, I just want to, yeah. Well, no, let's let's jump into mute like art, music, studio, like influential. And I've I've got a fun jumping off point that I can run

Basquiat Soundtrack Sparks A Shift

SPEAKER_01 30:46

into. So it's 1996. Um, this is my third year, first year in art school, because I transferred from a junior college to uh where I played basketball in LA. And I went home and I was hanging out with my friend Charity, who worked at Nancy's Records back in the day. So I went up to her loft in old town Auburn and we were hanging out, and she goes, Hey, have you heard this soundtrack yet? And this is something we always did. She and my my best buddy Ben, we uh we just spent hours upon hours listening to music. And she's like, Hey, have you heard this album? I'm like, What is this? And she's like, Oh, it's a soundtrack for a movie that came out this year, and it's insane. I know you know the artist. And I was like, Well, what's the artist's name? And she said, Boschiat. And I was like, actually, I've heard of him, but I don't really know anything about him. And it was a soundtrack for Julian Schnabel's film for Bosquiat. And this soundtrack blew me away. It it was kind of I went back to school, I had I got the CD, I went back to art school, and this is what when I was there, I couldn't stop listening to because it had, I mean, a lot of Julian Schnabel's friends in there, but just songs like It's All Over Now, Baby Blue by Van Morrison, Hallelujah, covered by John Cale, which I think is the best cover next to Jeff Buckley's of Hallelujah, which is Leonard Cohen's song. But it had the pogs, Tom Waits, Gavin Friday, um, Bowie. I mean, it was just insane. And then, oh gosh, what's that? Public image, and then there's a song by Brian Kelly called She Is Dancing, which is like you said, that song of uh Stone Temple Pilots, it just hits you in a very deep way. Like this album continues to like have importance in my life throughout time because Schnabel becomes my favorite artist at that period in time. I just thought he was a director back then, you know. Because like I said, this is '96. So the internet, I think, just came into the universities, the world wide web, around that time. And so what's up?

SPEAKER_00 32:39

There's a book. I have I meant to text you about this recently. There's a book I'm reading right now that you will absolutely love. Okay. It's not really art-related at all, but it's called The 90s. Okay. By Chuck Klosterman.

SPEAKER_01 32:51

Yeah, I've read every one of his books except for that one. But he's so you will love an idol of mine.

SPEAKER_00 32:57

You will absolutely love this.

SPEAKER_01 32:58

If you guys haven't read Chuck Klosterman, start buying his books and reading them. Like they're his fictional and non-fiction books are all phenomenal.

SPEAKER_00 33:06

His writing style is is incre is he's got a very unique voice, and it's just so we won't do a podcast on it because it's very it's there's very little art, but very culture, a lot of cultural references. But he talks a lot about the advent of the internet and the ripple effect that that had, you know, when it was first coming about, you know, and then this is anyway with Bosquiat's novel, right?

SPEAKER_01 33:24

If if I wasn't in New York, or if I wasn't going to major galleries or getting art news at that time, you would not have heard about these people unless somebody told you about them. Right. Right? It was all somebody told you. So that's when I switched from sculpture and ceramics to painting, like that album. Because that's when I found Basquiat. So then I found his work, and then that switched everything. I I literally went dumpster diving because I then watched the film and I was like, I that's who I want to be.

SPEAKER_00 34:01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 34:01

And I would, I would graffiti campus, I would do, I had my own Samo quotes all over campus. I mean, I literally I started wearing uh jackets with paint on them, like suit jackets around, old suit. Like I just switched from who I was to that, like overnight. And so, but then when I was in Pooch uh Pooch Cove with some of our artist friends for a residency a few years ago, we watched the Bosquiat film. And it was such a fun experience because had Moxa and Bonnie and Allison, Audrey, Gianna, and Francis all there in the room while the bulb was dying on the projector. And so every probably 10 minutes it would cut out and we'd have to restart it. So in that time, I would get up in front of the screen like I was at a film festival, and I would explain all the things that Schnobble's doing with the film and what he's trying to say with these scenes and how the music influenced it. So it was this really cool experience. But then you know what we listened to the whole rest of the time? That soundtrack. Everybody had that soundtrack on and was listening to it in their studios painting. Then this morning I get a message with that group on WhatsApp, and it's Gianna and Bonnie are at Gianna's studio in the Netherlands in Harlem, Netherlands, and they're painting together and they're listening to the Bosquiat soundtrack. So it's like, right, the the importance of some of those things that continues to create the deep moments and story throughout your life as an artist to me are priceless.

Soundtracks As Music Discovery Machines

SPEAKER_00 35:30

So when you say soundtrack, so a couple things on that. Soundtracks were a phenomenal way to get news introduced to new music, new bands, right? That you know, because again, you buy that thing, you're listening to all those. You better believe, you know, and you're gonna get exposed to, you know. So the first soundtrack that comes to I'm I'm sure that I'm sure you'll remember this one. It was the the soundtrack for the crow.

SPEAKER_01 35:51

Oh, I have it on my list here. One of the best.

unknown 35:55

Yep.

SPEAKER_00 35:55

All right, I got it pulled up. So The Cure, Stone Temple Pilots, Nine Inch Nails, Dead Souls, one of my favorite Nine Inch Nails uh songs of many. Yep. Rage Against the Machine, Violent Femes, Rollins Band, Helmet, Pantera, For Love Not Lisa, uh, The Jesus and Mary Chain. I mean, yeah, just phenomenal, phenomenal soundtrack. So my buddy Josh. Did you want to do a whole soundtrack section?

SPEAKER_01 36:18

Oh, yeah. My buddy Josh was the guitar player for For Love Not Lisa, by the way. Oh, really? Yeah. No kidding. I mean, Helmet, Miltoast, like that album, Rollins band. I mean, dude, it was insane.

SPEAKER_00 36:32

This was so this was a soundtrack that specifically introduced me to Rollins. Yeah. Like, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 36:38

Yeah, if you didn't grow up a punk kid, which no on here, but I did, like, you wouldn't have known Black Flag and Rollins Bang and those things moving on. But yeah, but that cure burn, that song. So that came out, and for my senior, I had a senior film project in art school, and we use Burn as the opening for our film, which I'm still trying to find on VHS. I'm still trying to find it somewhere in my boxes.

SPEAKER_00 37:06

That's a that's a mega cure song.

SPEAKER_01 37:09

It can't rain all the time. Tell me you didn't cry to that at some point in your life. The last song on the entire soundtrack.

SPEAKER_00 37:15

For sure.

SPEAKER_01 37:15

Of course.

SPEAKER_00 37:16

Yeah. Of course. Were they gonna remake that? And now we've got to talk about Brandon Lee. All right, fine. Okay.

SPEAKER_01 37:23

But yes, I mean soundtracks, you know, the Breakfast Club soundtrack was always a favorite of mine as a kid. That album. Uh, I think probably my the soundtrack next to Basquiat that hit me the hardest was a natural Boring Killer soundtrack. Oh that one was brilliant. I mean, and it introduced me to the Pakistani artist Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, who ended up doing a lot of stuff with Peter Gabriel around that time as well, who was one of my all-time favorites too. But that soundtrack is out of this world.

SPEAKER_00 37:55

No, I've got to look at it. Oh wow.

SPEAKER_01 38:00

Damn.

SPEAKER_00 38:01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 38:01

Leonard Cohen, um Cowboy Junkies, L7, Patty Smith. Yeah, I saw L7. L7 is one of my favorite concerts I've ever seen.

SPEAKER_00 38:14

All right, here's an underrated soundtrack. Yes. Uh do you remember the movie The Last Action Hero?

SPEAKER_01 38:18

Yeah, of course.

SPEAKER_00 38:20

Okay. That soundtrack slapped. ACDC, Allison Chains, Mega Death, Queen's Right. I'm not a big metal guy, but Def Leopard, Anthrax, Aerosmith, another Allison Chains, Cypress Hill, that Cypress Hill track, Cock the Hammer. So good. Another great show. Tesla. Anyway. All right. This concludes our soundtrack section.

Radiohead Jeff Buckley And Studio Nights

SPEAKER_01 38:40

Okay. I want to jump into a band that you and I both love and that influences our studio practice in a very big way for both of us. And we've talked about them a lot before, but I think this will be a good jumping off point to studio work. Okay. This was 1995. And one of my buddies, who is a little crazy, Chris, comes flying into our uh apartment late one night, Micah and I, and my buddy Ben. Um, no, Ben wasn't there yet. It was Mike and I, and comes flying into our apartment late at night, like he would usually do. And I mean, it was probably like one in the morning or something, and he's just yelling, dude, just got back from Tower Records Hollywood, and I saw this band play, and they freaking crushed. You know the song Creep from Pablo Honey? Yeah, that's the band, Radio Head. They just released their new album, The Benz. You're gonna flip. And he bought the album, so we sat up and listened to it. And now, Radiohead was big but not massive yet at all at this time. Sure. That was their first time ever playing at Tower Records in the US. I think they had toured a little bit in the US with Pablo Honey, but not it wasn't a major tour, just like a few places. Everybody knew Creep, and that was about it. And we had the album, we listened to it in high school, but we really kind of skipped to Cree. And then anyone could play guitar. Those were kind of the two songs we would listen to, and then we kind of get to everybody else. Yeah. So at the same time, Chris goes, listen to this album, but you have to check out this other guy named Jeff Buckley. He goes, If you really want to get depressed and make good work, listen to this album, Grace. And at the time, I did not know the correlation between Jeff Buckley and Radiohead and the album The Benz and Jeff Buckley's Grace. So, anyways, we would listen to those two albums in my studio on campus. I had an art studio that I was the only person that had an art studio in campus because we bought a new warehouse building that we're converting into a different campus at the university, and they stored all the track and field equipment in the gym in there. Well, there was this whole empty chain fence-linked indoors place where they kept all the track equipment. Well, I asked, hey, can I use that as my studio for some my senior show? They said, Yeah, and gave me 24-hour access. Yeah. My friend Chris's parents had the largest choral group in Southern California, and he kept all the concert speakers and all the equipment at his apartment. So we set them all up in my studio, these half-stack concert speakers, set up the stereo system, everything. And he would sit and play guitar and bass, and we would have the Benz on and we would have Jeff Buckley Grace on while I would work on art for my senior show.

SPEAKER_00 41:21

It was please, please tell me that the high jump mats were available to just Oh, I would sleep on them. Yeah. Nothing better. We had a high jump mat.

SPEAKER_01 41:31

We had the big Gatorade bottles that we would fill with urine because there wasn't a bathroom. So we'd fill those with urine, and some of that might have made it in paint to see what that would do as a you know, as a medium. But there was I found this quote, because you and I were talking about this uh uh recently about I was telling you about the Benz and the influence of Jeff Buckley on that. So I did a little research. So this is from Tom York, the lead singer at Radiohead. Jeff Buckley gave me the confidence to sing in falsetto. When we were recording fake plastic trees, we went to see Jeff Buckley play live at the garage. He just had a telecaster and a pine of Guinness, and it was just fucking amazing. Then we went back to the studio and we decided to try an acoustic version of fake plastic trees. I sat down and played it in three takes and then burst into tears afterwards, and that's what we use for the record. But he said if he wouldn't have seen Buckley play, it wouldn't have given him the confidence to use his falsetto voice.

SPEAKER_00 42:32

And what would Radiohead be without Tom's falsetto?

SPEAKER_01 42:35

I mean, think about when we're talking about influence.

SPEAKER_00 42:38

Yeah. Right?

SPEAKER_01 42:39

And it's like as an artist, you go see something and you come back home from the museum show or the gallery show, and you're so inspired, and you're like, they gave me permission to go do that. Yeah. Like that's such a beautiful story. I'll send you a clip of him talking about it. I have a clip from YouTube as well of Tom.

SPEAKER_00 42:55

I will watch it.

SPEAKER_01 42:55

So Radiohead, right at this point, started to become for me like a massive influence in making music. And it was everything about radio heads, willingness to change, willingness to evolve, to try new things and not be afraid of these, because here we are. The Benz is everything. And then in 1997, Jesse Pierpoint, Jesse, if you're listening, I love you, buddy, walks into art class and goes, dude, the new radio head album came out. Let's put it on. Okay, computer. It was night and day from the Ben. It was so night and day. And we sat there and we listened to it in art class. We had it on while we were all working. And I remember just going, my jaw was dropped. It was just like, let's make some freaking art, dude. Let's go. It was just insane.

SPEAKER_00 43:51

So again, being significantly younger than you, obviously I already listened to the bands, but that when that one was released, I was, I want to say, a Sophomore in high school. And so we I grew up in I grew up in a small town. So the nearest mall was about a half hour away. And I think I bought two or three CDs that day, but I'm sitting in the back of our Dodge Grand Caravan, wood panels, two younger siblings in front of me. I'm in the far back, right? I'm I'm kicking up sideways, kept putting up my feet, you know, distancing myself as much as possible from everybody, from my family, put it in my disc man and listen to that or most of it on the drive home. And from the very first track, I was like, what is this? Yeah. And this is all I want to listen to the rest of my life. And to be fair, I mean, you know, we've talked already had a bunch on these, on these, on these podcasts for the reasons that you just outlined. Because we are such big fans of their of their willingness to continue to evolve and go completely different directions as they have continued to for the duration of their career. But that was one of my probably my most impactful concert that I ever went to. So I went and saw them for the OK Computer concert at jealous. And even at that time, it was a pretty small little theater. Maybe, yeah, maybe 3,000 people, something like that. But seeing that in person, shout out Eric Walker, my buddy, one of my only friends who was into them at the time. And boy, that was just I mean, we we drove home in silence. I was like, hmm, that was that was a life-changing moment. I knew it at the at the time that that was like a life-changing, you know, moment where you're like, wow. Just, just absolutely, yeah. Uh, I can't even put it into words, but I'm super grateful I got to see them during that time. And I'm I'm happy to say that of the many bands that I've successfully gotten my youngest daughter, she's the music note of our of our family, of our kids anyway. She loves Radiohead. And so when it came out that they're likely going to be touring North America next year, we're like, we're going. Closest city, we are doesn't matter. We're going 100%. I will be sure. I will be maybe I'll join you. Yeah, let's do it.

SPEAKER_01 45:56

Yeah, that'd be awesome. Would be. Well, I think sharing those experiences with friends and people is just incredible. And just the memories that that holds as we've talked about memory. You know, I I've mentioned my buddy Micah quite a few times because he's we've been

OK Computer Awe And Live Shows

SPEAKER_01 46:10

music partners forever. So there was a band when we were in college, he was my roommate. And so he had to deal with all the artsiness of me all the time. Like, hey, here's a video camera. I have a video camera for the month for postmodern film class. Um, let's go to Hollywood and interview people. So I actually have a few of those tapes of us like interviewing people outside Maryland dancing concerts or outside the Viper room in Hollywood and all these places, like because we're trying to find our heroes, and then but I'm just like out there rolling, he's rolling with the camera, and I'm just walking around talking to people and interviewing them and man on the street stuff, and my hair is like this tall. And but there was a band that we found in LA. They actually played at our school there, friends with some friends of ours called The Autumns. Never never blew up, were never massive. They were they were big in LA in the scene for a while, but very lucid, atmospheric, kind of a bit of the cure, later cure, with some of kind of Morrissey vocals, but really obscure in a way, but very emotional. And we went to every show in Hollywood where they played anywhere. And I would always sit in the back with my notebook and I would write poems and journal. And Andrew, the lead singer, I remember, I mean, he was just so he was always laying on the ground singing and just weeping through songs, and it was that at that time for me too, just I need music with such heavy emotion. The pop song doesn't do it for me. I need the depth, I need the artistry wrapped up in it. I think that's why David Bowie is so huge for me, which I haven't talked about yet at all. But one of those, you know, there's those obscure bands who never really make it. Feelings. Yeah. Sorry, feelings that have such an impact, but the autumn's I definitely're on Spotify. They're on, I definitely suggest people listen to them. But that's probably the band outside of Radiohead. I mean, I can list hundreds that I listen to regularly. But the Autumns is one that for since I heard them, they they have a part in my studio, even to today.

SPEAKER_00 48:14

Who is your most listened to on Spotify? What's your number one artist on Spotify? I don't even need to look. I I I already know, but I mean I wanted to ask you first.

SPEAKER_01 48:27

There's so many. I it's probably Bowie or Pearl Jam. Anyway.

SPEAKER_00 48:33

My wrapped age last year was 86 years old. And that is almost entirely because I've been listening to a lot more jazz the last couple years than I ever had before. So Miles Davis is my number one uh most listened to jazz artist anyway. But my number one artist every year for the last probably 10 years has been the national. Oh yeah, I could have I could have picked that for you. That the national as an adult, right? So I mean, you know, that we're talking about some some bands that really impacted us in those formative years, right? Like in a lot of people our age, if we're being honest, not whatever, but most people kind of get locked into the genre or era of music when they're coming of age. When we we are coming of age ourselves, right? So adolescents, teens, early twenties. But the national is a band that uh I am just yeah, I every I've seen him, I don't know, probably 10 times now, flown to Chicago to see him, flown to see him at Red Rocks. Like that's that's absolutely my number one because Matt's lyrics, he writes one of my favorite writers.

SPEAKER_01 49:44

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 49:44

So good. And yeah, I I could talk about the National for an entire podcast, but it'd be probably pretty boring to uh all but maybe 0.2% of our listeners. Okay, we're gonna do we're we're gonna do a section on I'm gonna call it guilty pleasures. I mean, we're both at a point where we don't feel any guilt for the things that we love at this point, but things that would nothing we've probably talked about at this point would really surprise anybody that knows us even a little bit, but I'm gonna end up sharing some that we'll definitely what what are your top ten? Apparently, my number one most listened to song is Elastic Heart by Sia.

SPEAKER_01 50:26

You know, that's a fantastic song. It's an awesome song. I love it. I'm a massive Sia fan. Sia's phenomenal. She is phenomenal.

SPEAKER_00 50:34

And then we get into Your Mind Is Not Your Friend by the National.

SPEAKER_01 50:38

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 50:39

Uh oh, here's a band that I that I came across a couple of years ago, and they're they're now probably top two or three. They were like my I think my number two listened to band last year, Nation of Language. Have I gotten you on them yet? The Nation of Language.

SPEAKER_01 50:53

Yeah. Oh, I've loved them

Obscure Bands That Hit Hard

SPEAKER_01 50:55

for years. They're so good. Of course you have. I've been on them for a while. Of course. You know, Sia. Did you ever listen to Zero Seven?

unknown 51:03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 51:03

Or Massive Attack? You know that's Sia. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. A lot of people don't know that because they only know new Sia, but don't know that just the indie influence that she's had.

SPEAKER_00 51:14

Zero Seven was another was another one that came in during my my college DJ days that I uh uh helped myself to. Yeah.

unknown 51:21

All right.

SPEAKER_01 51:22

So what are my oh, you want mine? Wait, did you give me all ten? You said C. No.

SPEAKER_00 51:28

Okay, so then we get into uh Leaving New York by REM, one of my all-time that's a that's a top 10. Top 10. I listen to a lot of REM. I've I I love, love, love REM. Uh let's see, Wolf Like Me by TV on the radio. One of my favorite bands. That's one of my like, let's let's get the juices flowing and and uh and get fired up. I need my girl by the national.

SPEAKER_01 51:48

Then we get into Are you skipping some here because you're afraid to share them?

SPEAKER_00 51:53

Well, I'm just it's because it's not this can't be right. I think this is so part of it, I'm I am scrolling through. You're absolutely right. You uh you absolutely called me out on that.

SPEAKER_01 52:02

Well, if you have kids that have ever used your Spotify, it can get cloud.

SPEAKER_00 52:06

That's what it is. That's exactly what it is. So this is uh sort of an eclectic. My my wife loves the 80s, so she's all about all about the 80s music. Okay, so one of mine though is uh A Million Reasons by Lady Gaga.

SPEAKER_01 52:17

Fantastic song. Yeah, it's heartbreaking.

SPEAKER_00 52:19

So I mean, there's some songs that come on that when they come on, my whole family. If I'm with my family or anybody, they know I'm singing along, doesn't matter where we're at. That's one of them for sure. Another one is Like a Prayer by Madonna. Yep. I'm singing every lair, I don't care where we're at, I'm singing every lyric. It doesn't matter if we're at Target, if we're at a restaurant, everyone's hearing it. I don't care. But our uh so Ella, our youngest, she um she did a musical showcase recently. She was performing at a at a little bistro, and she didn't tell us which song she was gonna do. And so she gets up there and uh her first her first song, she goes, This one's for my dad because he loves this song so much, and she sings a million reasons.

SPEAKER_01 52:59

Oh, that's awesome.

SPEAKER_00 53:00

Were you balling? Of course. I'm just like so good. I'm proudly, proudly weeping. Just like I was just like, oh, that was that was amazing. Yeah, give me some of yours. I'm gonna scroll down and find the ones that are actually mine.

SPEAKER_01 53:13

Here are my top ten. Sweet Jane, Cowboy Junkies is number one. Then Public Image, with that's on the Bosquiat soundtrack, their song from Public Image Limited, which is uh Johnny Rotten from The Sex Pistols. Remnant in Pictures, Mimicking Birds, it's a cry song. Oh Sweet Nothing by Velvet Underground, All My Friends by L C D Sound System, Medicine by Daughter, that that song destroys me. I Am Piano by Peter Broderick, that's a sing along for me. Rock and Roll by Velvet Underground, Feel the Pain, Dinosaur Jr. And then The Exploding Boy by The Cure, which is my theme song. My personal theme song. And one of my favorite walking songs. Because we've talked, I have a soundtrack. I have a walking soundtrack for when I get off a plane at the airport.

SPEAKER_00 53:59

You've got a soundtrack for everything. You give off main character vibes no matter where you are.

SPEAKER_01 54:04

I have to have a soundtrack when I'm going places. I put on my walking, it's for when I'm walking places.

SPEAKER_00 54:09

That's funny.

Spotify Wrapped And Guilty Favorites

SPEAKER_00 54:10

I'll round out my list here. So Still on Fire by Trenton Moller, who's an electronic producer. Amazing. Fruit bats are another one of my most listened to albums. You don't know the Fruit Bats.

SPEAKER_01 54:20

No, I know the Fruit Bats, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 54:22

Gallwing Doors is probably my favorite Fruit Bats song for sure. Then we get into some hip hop. I got some Kendrick in here. You're probably more of a Drake guy, I would imagine. Definitely not. And then like a bunch of national songs after that. It gets it gets pretty uh, yeah. I mean, they are uh without with a my number one. Yeah. Finder by Moderat. Moderat's another electronic producer that I've got to do. Tom York's got some great songs with him. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And then a bunch of L C D sound system as well. I'm wearing my L C D sound system shirt today. Welcome back to town. I've got my Ziggy in a couple months. Ziggy Stardust shirt on today. Heck yeah. All right. So speaking of soundtracks, let's get into um, you know, so one of the things I want to talk about that that I think does relate to art a little bit is I think just the the value of understanding what we need, you know, from an energetic standpoint at different phases in the studio, right? So there's different maybe moods that we're trying to tap into or just a level of of energy. And so I created some different, you know, sort of subcategories. We've talked about a bunch of these, you know, already, but I think one of them, one of my categories is sort of my get after it, you know, sort of be bold. Um, you know, so for me, I love hip hop. Um, I mentioned Kendrick already, prof is another one of my guys. He's a he's a Minneapolis, Minneapolis rapper that I love. And then you know, getting back into some some old school, you know, 90s stuff with Wu Tang and Tribe, obviously, and and some of those. But those would be kind of in my like, you know, be bold, get after it, like, hey, I'm I'm feeling I I need some juice, you know. And then I listen to, I still love electronic music, so I listen to a lot of mixes as well. So Carl Cox is probably my number one favorite DJ and producer, and uh another another guy that's uh a little bit newer, Frankie Waugh, is an English um uh producer in DJ that I absolutely dig as well. So I really I really enjoy listening to continuous mixes. Um, and that would kind of go into the sort of the flow category. That's also what I love about jazz. I guess I'm covering two categories at once here, but like I think there's something to be said for times in the studio where I definitely want to tap into the feels, you know, but there's others where I just want a more sort of consistent level energy as opposed to I think some music affects us so deeply emotionally. I personally can't, I can't go there and stay there for you know seven hours straight, right?

SPEAKER_01 56:44

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 56:45

And so part of it is I guess I'm I'm touching on a bunch of different things here, and then I'll just let you pick up wherever you, wherever you feel led. But it's it's being aware of okay, what am I trying to communicate with the work and what music taps me into that particular vibe or feeling or energy? And then it's also having something ready, you know, to know like, all right, this is this is where I want to be, this is what I need energetically in this moment, and then tapping into that.

SPEAKER_01 57:11

Yeah, I mean, I I spend maybe as much time researching music and finding music as I do making art in the studio, to be honest. Um, because it's that much, it's my muse, you know, and so and so there's really nothing held back for me music-wise, like all tastes, all styles, and I'm always constantly searching. I mean, into this way back in the day, even when I don't know if you ever used all music, was kind of uh it was a an online system of bands that sound like bands and genres and finding new music. So what I would do, this is this is when the iPod first came out, and I had yeah, and I had burned all my CDs and I put them all on my iPod, right? And then you're like, oh, you can actually use this thing called iTunes and put music on there. But then Napster came out, and then I was just burning stuff like crazy and stealing music, you know, like like wildfire and making albums. But I would go to All Music and I'd go I'd type in the Smiths, and then I'd find all the bands that were influenced by the Smiths sounded like the Smiths. I would just journal all these bands' names and I'd go find them and listen and figure it out. So I do that today with Spotify. Same thing. Yeah, right. And so I'm constantly discovering music, but I create playlists all the time for emotions, or I create a playlist where every body of work I do has a specific playlist to it. And so I'm working through that the whole time. And it's different. Some are classical, some are jazz, some are older music,

Matching Studio Energy With Playlists

SPEAKER_01 58:39

some are newer music, some are punk, some are, you know, new wave or whatever. It just it's all over the place. But it is, there's an importance there for me. And honestly, it's really weird because this year I've been painting more in silence than I have to music in the past. And so I may be creating the playlist and listening to it while I'm working on other stuff, but then when I'm working, I've all of a sudden settled into this moment of silence. So the music still inspiring me because while I'm setting up or getting ready or making notes on what I want to work on or my ideas, I'm listening to music and I'm creating music to go with it. Yeah. And then all of a sudden I'm making art. It's just what is fitting in the moment for some reason. But I just needed silence. I've just needed some silence this year.

SPEAKER_00 59:25

It's funny you say that. I think I I've been doing that a lot more lately as well, and we haven't talked about it off-air or anything like that. But that's that's something that there's, you know, when we talk about listening to the work, the work doesn't necessarily speak to us audibly very often. But there's a lot of value in not having any other inputs, right? Yeah. To be to be open to receiving and having those conversations with the work or having conversations with yourself, which I do a ton. That that's I've I talked about this in a couple episodes ago, but I found that to be a super valuable exercise where I'm just talking to myself out loud. I I noticed this a few years back when my my oldest was doing some studio assistant work for me a few hours a week here and there, and and I would just be talking through with her my next steps on all these different pieces, none of which was she was she gonna do. Ultimately it led back to, hey, if you could sweep the back and organize these materials. But she's like, hey, she actually asked me, she's is it helpful for you to just, you know, like talk to me about all these things? Uh, do you need do you need me to say anything or you want to write them down? I'm like, no, actually, I just I guess I just needed to hear myself say it out loud. So being an external processor, working in silence and just talking to myself out loud about the work, because I found that my internal dialogue is much more negative by default, unless I'm intentional about it, but it's much, much less so when I'm saying it out loud. It's much more sort of you know productive and useful when I'm saying the things out loud, what I'm thinking about next steps, you know, for for any given piece. So silence is is absolutely a beautiful, beautiful tool for that. I also listen to a lot of binaural beats. I've got an app called brain.fm that has a bunch of different different frequencies and yeah, yeah, on top of different sort of just chill, relax, different beats and and music and things like that. But I really love that because I think I found out about this uh initially quite a while ago when I was trying to find different ways to deal with my you know, ADHD and and and inherent inability to focus on any any task for for any amount of time, apart from the ones that I want to hyperfocus on. Um but I so I I found that I find that to be very, very useful as well to kind of get into an easy flow and if I need to sort of like pull myself in and you know get my version of focus, you know. It's funny you're talking about Napster though. So LimeWire was was what I used the most. And when when I realized I and at this point when when LimeWire came out, I had I had retired um from shoplifting, physical, physical music, but I was like, oh, I can just steal music from my from my house. And uh boy, that became a whole obsession of just like how much of this can I know collect and just input in the city. I was ashamed and not ashamed all in the same.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:16

I I had two really good buddies, they're actually my best friend's little brother and his buddy or two of my best friends too. FBI showed up at their door. No way knocked because they were downloading software as well. Okay, yeah, and selling and reselling. So they basically had FBI show up and said, Give me your stuff. No kidding. Yeah, and that that that was you're like, oh, maybe I can get in trouble for this.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:42

I felt really bad about it, but not bad enough to stop doing it.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:46

Yeah, well, I still bought albums, I still went to concerts, I still bought the gear. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. That's how I justify it. As you were talking about that, like Bach has always been that for me. Box cello suites have always been one of those go-tos for me when I just really need that complete focus, complete everything evaporate, and it's just always been a go-to to just throw that on. Or Vivaldi,

Focus Tools Silence And Binaural Beats

SPEAKER_01 1:03:12

there's certain classical artists that have kind of jazz. We've talked about jazz quite a bit, has been that for me as well. But box cello suites have always been a very centering thing for me that just kind of refocuses me and gets me back on track at times.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:26

All right, Ty. So before we wrap up, I gotta share this with you. This this just came in the mail yesterday, and so I'm excited to, for those of you watching on YouTube, this is the album cover. This is the second album cover. Where, yep. So the artist, his name is Chaos Log, and his label is erratic pattern. So it's they're out of Berlin. It's uh melt your face off techno. But just the feeling of you know, seeing my artwork on an album. This is the the first, the first uh time they used my work was uh a couple years ago, something like that. That one already hangs on my wall, and this one will as well. But it's just it's so cool to see you know artwork by by Nathan Trebor. I mean, it's just it's just so cool. Pretty great, you know, because you know, you just think about all back to the uh experiences of album artwork. And we talked about this, I think maybe it was offline, maybe it was during our episode. I can't remember when we stopped recording it when we were and when we didn't, but just like you know, the experience of of of reading the lyrics and looking at all the album artwork and how the visuals connected to the music itself. Yep, was just was just incredible. Like I still, you know, Nine Inch Nails is one of my another one of my my uh my top you know 10, 20, 20 bands I listened to still. And uh I'll never I think it was the fragile when that came out. Um the album artwork, the photographs. It's influential in your work, yeah. It stuck with me in a in a in a big way. So yeah, so to see my work on uh on an album is uh super super cool.

SPEAKER_01 1:04:53

Yeah, talking about like that. So my uh brother-in-law and sister-in-law, my niece and nephew were here over Memorial Day weekend here in the States, and we were sitting at the table, my nephew and my brother-in-law Lamar and I and we're hanging out, and I was like, Oh, you gotta see these albums that my buddy Jeremy got me for my 50th birthday that he just brought me a year and a half later. Yeah, yeah. And so it was the it was Smashing Pumpkin's greatest hits, like two record album. These are records, vinyl, by the way. And I don't know how he remembered that I love the band Bad Brains, the punk band. And it's a two-album live in Washington, DC on vinyl, uh Bad Brains. And so I I put Bad Brains on for my nephew and and my uh brother-in-law, and I was like, Can you tell anything different about these guys? Because most people won't know that they're African American. Like, there's not many black punk bands that exist. There are plenty of bands that have had like a guitar player or a drummer, you know, a band like Turnstyle today that's massive that I love. And you know, you've got like the Vernon Reeds, like the guitar. Heart living color, like rock bands and things, and there's a few and far between, but a like literal freaking hardcore punk band that just shreds that people skate to, like, and then I opened up the album and they were like, What? That's in that's amazing. You know what I mean? It's like those things to me are just incredible. Like to be and then so then my nephew's like looking through and looking at all the pictures and look, you know, checking, but it's so much physicalness involved in that that to me just adds even more luster, story, legend than play. Look how many plays that has. I must be a good song. There's no like figuring it out, you know. Like I don't know. I can I can complain all day about things I miss because I also embrace the new in major ways.

SPEAKER_00 1:06:50

So right. Well, speaking of album, album art, I think that's that's one thing that you know, there's there's some musicians, uh, some some musical artists that have maintained a consistent aesthetic throughout their career, many of whom have worked with the exact same designer or artist for all of their albums, right? So, like I think nine-inch nails is is one is one of those tools has got a very specific, you know, aesthetic. I think they worked with the same artist, you know, the the entire time. Um I'm trying to think of who oh, Radiohead, of course. Absolutely. There's there's many, many others, but you know, there's something else to be said for how the how the visual has evolved and continues to, but still sort of on brand, you know, for their for their look, you know? Yep, absolutely. Well, let's wrap up, Ty. This has been fun again, as we say a lot. This has been fun for us. Hopefully, it's been fun for the handful of you that made it to the end of this episode. But I think if we were to put this in in any any version of a tactical tip, it would just be be in tune to how your entire practice affects you, but specifically with all of your inputs. You know, we've spoken about music specifically today, but how everything that you're consuming affects your work, the way you work, the energy you bring into your work, the emotions, you know, whatever it is that you're trying to communicate with what it is that you're making, and be intentional about it. You know, pay attention to how things affect you and be proactive about setting, or in some cases, if you're like us, having to shift or, you know, change the mood that you're in to accomplish what you're attempting to accomplish during that particular, you know, session in the studio or whatever it is that you're trying

Album Art Vinyl And A Full Circle Moment

SPEAKER_00 1:08:26

to do.

SPEAKER_01 1:08:26

Well, and for us, like this episode is really a reflection of how we how you and I also kind of search for things and ideas to kind of drive where we could go with our work, right? We're we're always on the hunt. Artists as kind of mental collectors, so that we have ideas to create work from. So whatever it is for you, I mean, it could be anything, but for us, music is a very big part of that. So, and we're always paying attention, can take you back. If you're searching for something to make work on, you always have memory. And for me, what's the one thing that drives memory more than anything else? It's music. So it's just being a tune, like Nathan said, and always trying to find like what are things that I could build work upon. How do I find them and how do I locate them? Just keep your mind always going and write those things down so you don't forget.

SPEAKER_00 1:09:12

Yeah. Love it. That's all I got. I'm gonna go listen to Mr. Music. Me too. I'm gonna listen to uh to Grace today. I'm gonna listen to Mr. Buckley.

SPEAKER_01 1:09:19

That's I'm gonna listen to start to start to finish. I'm gonna listen to the new broken social scene again because it's phenomenal.

SPEAKER_00 1:09:26

Is it?

SPEAKER_01 1:09:26

Yeah, it's so good.

SPEAKER_00 1:09:27

Okay, so good. Yeah. All right, that'll be next up. Awesome. Well, listen, thank you for joining us for today's episode of Just

Inputs Intentionality And Final Takeaways

SPEAKER_00 1:09:34

Make Up. Just make stuff. Just just make. See you guys. Bye.