The Healthier Home Studio Podcast

AI is changing everything. The most future-proof studio skill is... (featuring Toby Loyd)

• Chris Graham • Season 1 • Episode 8

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HypeMiC-2:

Today I have an amazing conversation. I want to share with my new friend, Toby Lloyd. He is a producer. In New Zealand, he has worked on all kinds of huge hit movies. but then pivoted to focus just on producing records in the studio, primarily with female artists. And so that brought up a great conversation I think it's important to realize that as AI. Grows and gets better every month are certain jobs in the studio that are going to stay AI proof. And one of those jobs, in my opinion, perhaps the most AI proof job there is, Not mixing, not mastering, not engineering, but producing. There will always be a market for people who can create collaborative projects. Between artists As we think about what is the healthiest version of a studio? What is the absolute. Best version of you. Making art in your studio, trying to connect with other people. I think that means leaning into our producer skills These skills are so valuable and so transferrable. And so on that note, Please enjoy my conversation with producer extraordinary and all around. Great guy, Toby Lloyd.

Toby:

What are you eating?

Chris Graham:

Noodles. Buttered noodles.

Toby:

dinner of champions.

Chris Graham:

Sorry, I'm running late.

Toby:

Good.

Chris Graham:

it's a long story, I just bought my dream house, it's a cabin, on a farm out in the country and there's a paved, 18 mile long bike trail. And, I ordered electric scooters, and uh, I just got back from my first solo scoot. It was awesome.

HypeMiC-1:

But my scooter battery died. The bike trail. I'm still kind of getting used to how much range I have with these things. But man, they're so fun. It is my new my favorite thing to ride electric scooters down this long country bike trail by my house.

Toby:

That's incredible. That's the dream right there. my partner definitely wants to live in the city, and I'm like, man, I want to go country. I'm just, I'm obsessed with nature, where we live right now is on the base of the mountain that looks over top of Wellington, which is the capital of New Zealand. I hike that a couple times a week, with my kids often. And when you get up there and it's just like nature and forest and wind blowing in your face, it's like you, it's very hard to feel depressed when you're on top of a mountain overlooking, the south island of New Zealand and the north. it's it makes you feel alive. It makes you feel grateful.

Chris Graham:

I don't have any of that grandeur here, but the bike trail goes through just a rolling country. So think like Hobbiton, I live in Hobbiton. It's just rolling, hills and sometimes you'll see, le several layers of row hills off in the distance as you're riding down the bike path. And it was just, it's fun man. But yeah, so I'm, kinda long story short, just kinda re-envisioning, You know what, what I was trying to do before with the six figure Drumm studio, which is just teach people about, how to do this and be free to make music for a living. but now I'm on the other side and I'm, I'm realizing there's a lot I wish I knew when I was doing that podcast. when I started to take my mental health seriously and started to meditate and, just really start taking care of myself, all the things I was good at, I got way better at right away. it was like I wasn't multitasking, on all this bullshit in my life anymore. And I believe that's the biggest lever in everyone's studio business growth I think people are much more interested in some fancy businessy marketing thing that will immediately get me one more client, So I'm trying to kind of balance those two things.

Toby:

No, that's great. But you're right. like it's the most important thing.'cause it's all good and well to use marketing to get the clients, but actually, if your mental health isn't in check, you're not gonna keep the clients.

Chris Graham:

that

Toby:

lifelong clients is what you're after, right? You're not just after snicker bar clients that turn up and do a song and then move on. you want the full like 10 course meal. You wanna be able to like wine and dine them and have repeat.

Chris Graham:

Snicker bar. I love that, man. we've hung out before, but, we're recording. for the sake of everybody else, Just tell me a little bit more about what you do, what your story is, how you met Billbo, Baggins and everything.

Toby:

Yeah. So yeah, I'm a music producer, Score Mixer. I've had a really privileged career of working on Avatar two and like the Hobbit films and a bunch of wildly successful films. and I worked at Peter Jackson's, film facility, park Road Post in the sound team there. So in, in working there, I got to work with multi academy award winners. like one of my workmates, he mixed like Jurassic Park and Titanic. And one of my other workmates, he was the guy that mixed, empire Strikes back, so I got, a very privileged, career of being able to work with these amazing people. basically the way that I got that job was, I wasn't the most talented engineer. I wasn't, the smartest, smartest tool in the shed. the one thing I think I had was I had a good attitude and I was like really eager to do the hard thing, And so when I was studying audio engineering, there were way more people that were far more talented than me. and when, tutor told us that probably none of you guys will ever work in a recording studio that lit a fire under my ass. And I was like, I'm gonna, don't tell me what I can't do. this was the greatest thing. Like he, I think it was the best thing he could have said. And to be honest, like I ended up doing some tutoring years later, and I told my students the same thing, because this industry is hard. This industry is very hard. And if that comment is gonna dissuade you from following this career, then you're probably not gonna make it. Whereas if that comment actually makes you wanna work harder and prove somebody wrong, you've got what it takes to actually make it in this career.

Chris Graham:

you have what it takes. so we're partway through your story here, I want to put a pin in this concept, because I think we should come back to it later. because this idea of. Do you have what it takes has an awful lot baked into it, right? if you do have what it takes, why do you have what it takes? what's driving you so hard and, you've mentioned The Hobbit and for anyone listening, what you need to know about me is that I'm obsessed with Lord of the Rings and everything around it in the healthiest way. Like it, it's been a really important sort of, guiding light for me. Just the clarity of the story of the Lord of the Rings and the way the, the characters. Come together and then come apart and they go through a hard thing. And the hard thing is what they needed to go through in order to do another hard thing. Like in order to save the day. It was a series of tragedies, each one, enabling them to have what it took when it really came down to it. I want you to finish telling us your story, but this idea of having what it takes, seems to be a really juicy, just sort nugget of healthier home studio, conversation

Toby:

I spend so much of my days thinking about that concept. And when you spend enough time in meditation, you realize that everything's just arising, and you can't control what your next thought is gonna be, otherwise you'd have to think it before you thought it. I have no explanation of why I love music. I have no explanation of why I wanted to be a music producer. I don't know if it was like an ego thing or if it was just I felt a resonance in my body, or as an expression, there was something about music that just pulled me to it.

Chris Graham:

Like a tractor beam.

Toby:

Exactly. And no matter how much, I. I just can't explain it I think when you get to that place of realizing that maybe we don't have the free will, that we think we do, we can actually allow things to unfold as they are and be this antenna for awareness and antenna for source. And so I realized very early on that I just had such a gravitational pull towards music. And not only that, but like when I was sitting there in my class, there was a lot of people that were more talented than me, but maybe they didn't have the work ethic that I had. And again, I can't attribute that to my own ego. I can't say oh, that was me that did this. No, I'm very fortunate that I had hardworking parents that instilled that in me. it was just everything was happening, and I worked really hard. And there was a point in my career where I actually, gave up because I was working around the clock and I was trying to make it happen as a music producer. And I was living in England at the time, in the peak of the global financial crisis. And I was like, it's too hard to make it as a music producer. So I enrolled in a course back in New Zealand, hopped on a plane, and I said to my partner at that point in time, that if one job is advertised back in New Zealand for an audio engineer, when I get back I'm going for it. Doesn't matter what it is, I'm going for it. up until that point, I'd been looking for jobs advertised as an audio engineer for about six years at that point. And they just didn't exist, in my country. And so when I got back, I landed and sure enough, on a job advertising website, there was. Someone looking for an audio engineer on the other side of the country, on the other island of the country. And I called them up and I basically said Hey, I will literally hop on a plane right now and fly up if you give me an interview. And they were like, whoa, damn, this dude's dedicated. he was like, okay, let us talk to the boss and we'll get back to you. Days went by, meanwhile I hadn't heard back from them. So I moved to my new city that I was gonna go and study. Carried my whole life down there. And in my very first class at University for Environmental Management, I got a phone call from the company and they were like, do you wanna hop on that plane and come up for an interview? So I hopped on a plane and flew up and got the gig. And they told me years later that they didn't hire me because I was the most qualified. They didn't hire me because I had the most impressive cv. They hired me because I was willing to hop on a plane from the other side of the country. To them just for a job interview with no guarantee that I was gonna get it. And that was the last money I had. I had no more money than that. That was it. But I was, yeah, but I was so willing because I,'cause I realized that in order to make it in this career, you don't get many opportunities. So the opportunities that you do get, you have to throw everything at them, And'cause that's the thing, opportunities like that don't come along every day. And so with that job, I was basically creating, soundtracks for books, right? So I was, it was an IO company. We ended up doing the soundtrack to the bible, like the whole of the New Testament and like the gospels and and, or all of these, other books and, I ended up through that developing a relationship with Park Road post production, which was Peter Jackson's company, and they wanted to fly me down to Wellington to work from Peter Jackson's company, creating the Bible. This was like our project to, to work with them. And so through that I ended up just doing whatever I could to get along with. all the sound engineers at Park Road post production. And, at that point in time, they were starting to gear up towards the Hobbit. And so I was just trying to sit in the mixing theaters as much as I could, trying to be helpful. And at some point in time this guy that was working there came into my little room that I was working, and he was like, Hey, just to let you know, I'm handing him my notice. if you want a job here, get your CV in today, like before I hand in this notice, get it in. so sure enough, I emailed the head of sound and I just said, Hey, just to let you know, I'm thinking about leaving this company that I'm working for. If anything pops up, let me know. And sure enough, he was like, wow, actually something might have just come up. And, again, like I wasn't the, I wouldn't have been the best candidate as far as like the CV goes. But the thing that I learned about working in this industry is that you can learn the technical skills. you can learn how to do a job, if you are a dickhead in some regards. it's like the, the way in which you present yourself, the way in which you are, the energy in which you create that is more important than the technical skills. Because when you're working 36 hours a day, or 40 hours a day, or 140 hours in a week, your workmates need to know that you're not gonna throw them under the bus, that you're not gonna turn toxic. they wanna know that when you haven't slept for 30 hours, that you've got their back. And so when I was working in the film industry. That was the most important thing when we were looking for new hires was, Hey, is this person actually like a good hang? Do they have, like a good heart? Like we can teach them the technical skills, but are they a good human? And so you'd think it would, you'd think that would be like a consideration for a company like that, but you would think they would more go for the technical skills, right? has this person worked on these giant films before? Have, has this person worked on this mixing consult before? It's no. are they a decent human being? Are they actually a team player? are they gonna help us out when everyone is super, super tired and stressed? And yeah, I, I worked on all the Hobbit films and we were doing 140 hour weeks and, like back to back a hundred hour weeks and sleeping like three hours a night if we were lucky.

Chris Graham:

did they make you skip second breakfast

Toby:

and yeah. Yeah. And thirds. Yeah. It was, no, they catered us. Oh my God. they were forcing us to eat sick and breakfast. It was great. And it's I dunno if you've ever been to that building before, but it's the most beautiful building in the world, And my son was born during the second Hobbit film, for the first month of his life, I didn't really get to see him. I was, sleeping at Park Road in the apartments there, which are beautiful apartments. But I was sleeping there and, not really seeing my son. And when I was growing up, my dad was always there for me. he worked really hard, but I knew that he was gonna turn up to the basketball games. And I just had that dilemma where if I'm gonna work in this industry, that means that I'm gonna have to come to terms with the fact that I'm not gonna be there for my son's basketball games or my daughter's like ballet recital, And so I would be talking to these like Academy Award winners that were my workmates and, They would be constantly saying that same sentiment that they've missed so much of their kids' lives and if they could have chosen a different career, they probably would've. So I was, yeah. So I was building up all of this kind of this kind of thought process and I was starting to struggle a little bit because I love my kids and I wanted to be there for them. And at some point, I worked on this film which was, ended up becoming the highest grossing Chinese film of all time, which is this film called Wolf Warrior two outside of China. No one knows it exists, but at the time it blew Dunkirk outta the box office, and I got pneumonia'cause I was so burnt out and I was wrecked and I couldn't get off the couch. I struggled with fatigue. and just prior to that as well, I had a terrible back. Incident at the gym where I crushed my spine and, that ended up creating a neurological disorder, but like chronic pain condition where I still feel pain to this day, but the injury doesn't actually exist So anyway, I was building up all of this tension and I got to a point where, I was al almost died working in the film industry because again, so burnt out with pneumonia that I was laying in my studio at night and I was looking around being like, what am I doing working in the film industry? I love film, but it's not music. music makes me cry, like very little makes me cry in this world apart from my kids and music. And so I was looking around and I was like, I've gotta, I've gotta find a way to make music happen.'cause if I can make music happen, then I reckon I can be the kind of dad that turns up to the basketball games and, So one of my workmates who I worked with on the Hobbit films, he had, he'd gone off to work in this university that just built like one of the best commercial recording studios in the world. And he called me up and he was like, Hey, just to let you know, we've built this incredible recording studio. It's got, Neve console, it's got an SSL console, like two consoles in this one route. it's ridiculous. 220 square meter tracking room, it's giant. you should come and be the head engineer there. And if I was gonna do that, it was gonna be like gentleman hours or gentlewoman hours, it was gonna be like super casual, And so I was like, okay, like this is my chance to get out. This is my chance to actually be a good dad. and so I left and that was the hardest decision at that point in, in my life. because They're gonna be working on the Beatles documentary,

Chris Graham:

yeah.

Toby:

Which is heartbreaking. And so like the guy that actually the, when I left the guy that replaced me, he was like a, uni student that just came out and, he went on to win an Emmy award from, working in the film industry on the Beatles documentary. And I was like, oh, come on. that could have been me, but, it was worth it because, by leaving that job meant that I got to be the kind of dad that was turning up to the basketball games. And so I lasted about a year and a half working for this university commercial studio. and at that point I was networking with working all those amazing bands to start building up my own. Production clients and then lockdown hit, and I just built this recording studio that I'm sitting in right now. And I realized that at that point in time, I'd had about six months worth of clients. if I quit the job, my calendar's full for six months with projects. And so I sat down and I did the Tim Ferris Fear Defining methods. I dunno if you've ever come across that.

Chris Graham:

Oh yeah. that's why we're talking today as I read a book called Four Hour Work Week, and it ruined slash fixed everything.

Toby:

yeah. And especially the fear defining methods because it's like you think that something's too scary to do, and you do that first page where you define what your fears are, and then you go to the second page and it's okay, what are some preventative measures? And you're like, okay, that's not so scary. Then you go to the next page and it's okay, what's worst case scenario? And you're like, oh, actually that's not as bad as what I think it is. And you go to the last page and it's and what happens if you don't take this action? And you're like, oh, crap.

Chris Graham:

I love that. when you're making decisions around a business or when you're trying to strategize around moving a business forward you look at all of those decisions in front of you. And what you wanna do is called bracketing. Bracketing is exactly what we were just talking about. What's the worst case scenario? And on the other side, what's the best case scenario? Reality is probably somewhere in between and. Almost certainly is gonna be a lot better than the worst case scenario. There's just something about our brains as humans that, especially when the going gets tough, the tough start ruminating about how bad things could actually get going. This

Toby:

Yeah. and that's kept us alive for millions of years. it's, we're it's, biologically wired to look for danger. And the problem is that our subconscious hasn't been upgraded. we're still living on dos brains where we think that stresses that job that we're gonna get fired for. the client that's just doesn't wanna work with us anymore. We equate to that to being a tiger in the jungle, because that's what stress has evolved us to look for, is like actual, like danger. Our life is in threat, but our brain doesn't realize that now we're living in this modern world where there isn't a tiger outside my door. But losing that client in our subconscious, in our reptilian brain. we think that there is a tiger outside our door.

Chris Graham:

To, yeah, totally. I, a good friend of mine when I first started learning about this idea that we have a subconscious and a conscious, we have two minds, essentially. There's two people that live in my head and one of them can like, do math and speak words and stuff, and the other is nonverbal. he doesn't know how to talk. when you've got your subconscious and your conscious battling it out with one another. an old friend one time that explained this to me he said the thing that's funny about fight or flight. and when you're bracketing and you're just obsessed with like worst possible outcome, one of the reasons for that, Our ancestors were anxious, and they survived in a crazy world as a result of their anxiety and got to have kids and yada, yada yada. Here we are, but my friend explained this to me. He said, if you can imagine it's 10,000 years ago, you're walking through the forest and all of a sudden you realize I'm running in a dead out sprint. I'm full blast. What the, oh, I saw a tiger a half a second ago. But your body probably decided to start running long before your conscious mind actually put one and two together and realized, holy crap, I should start running. There's automatic software that runs in the background, I love what you were saying earlier about. People wanted to work with you, they wanted to be sure that if you haven't slept in 30 hours, that you're not gonna turn on them. That you're not just gonna turn into a raging asshole, grumpy, grumpy, grumpy. And that takes a, it takes a really special person to be able to, be that uncomfortable and still maintain kindness and professionalism and skill for that matter. yeah, I love this conversation and I think as I'm, trying to figure all this stuff out on my own.'cause when you really think about it, it's important to acknowledge for your own personal growth and for your own human experience that we don't have a damn clue how the human brain works. how does a song get stored in your brain? What's the mechanism? We don't know.

Toby:

or a thought, it's and that, that's the beautiful thing about meditation. so many people go through their waking life thinking that they are their thoughts, that they truly think that their sense of self is their thoughts, but you can't control which thought you're gonna think next. You know? And when you sit there in meditation and you just watch thoughts arise, the longer that you do that, the longer that you stop associating that with who you are and something that you're just experiencing. And when you're sitting there and you're tired and you're grumpy and you can feel that. Frustration boiling up with enough practice, you can get to that point where you're like, huh, I'm feeling frustrated right now. Let's just meditate on that. Let's just feel that.'cause that's not who I am. That's just something that I'm experiencing. And as soon as you stop associating your feelings or your thoughts with who you are, then you can actually start relinquishing them and being like, huh, that thing that person said is, has triggered me. Okay, interesting. Why? Why is that the case? Because, yeah, like we, we don't quite have the control that we think we do. So when we come to terms with that, when we realize that we don't have the control that we think we do, you know what? It's the greatest gift in the world because not only can we start being kinder to ourselves, because we start going, oh, in that moment that I said that really offensive thing or that stupid thing, I can't change that. It's happened. The past's gone. The past doesn't even exist anymore. The past is just a concept. And even if I rewound time and put every atom and neuron and molecule everything back in the exact same space, it would've played out the same way a billion times in a row. So that's happened. I'm gonna learn from that. I'm not gonna try and make the same mistake again, but I'm also gonna forgive myself for doing it. And also, on the flip side of that, when someone else wrongs you, when someone else does something that hurts you, you can go, huh? If I was raised in their environment with their biology, with every one of their experiences up until this moment, I would've done the exact same thing. So I'm not gonna hate that person. Maybe I'm not gonna be around that person. Sure. If they're causing me harm, I'm not gonna associate with them, but I'm not gonna hate them because if I was born them, I would've been them. And it's the same thing as like hating a great white shark for eating a person. It's like a great white shark is just being a shark, But for some reason, when we associate this concept of will or free will to a person, we think that they could have chosen otherwise. But when you sit there with meditation and you sit there and thoughts arising and everything just happening, you're like, oh, it's all just happening. And they are reacting based on their upbringing, based on their biology.

Chris Graham:

let's add one more piece to this. They're also reacting based on whether or not they have truly invested in this set of skills For thousands and thousands of years across multiple cultures, very similar ideas have emerged about what it means to be human and how you can manage overwhelm and stress and anxiety, and these sort of, strange. Aspects of the human struggle. And I think what's so exciting about this is when you look at the developing science, and psychology, from my perspective, my very limited perspective here. psychology seems to be moving in the direction of stuff we've known for thousands of years. in, in humanity, one of those great examples is that, In a lot of, eastern traditions, you have a third eye, right? This invisible eye in your forehead. And it's like how you see the spiritual and how you see yourself and it's a very metaphysical concept. But then the neuroscience, is that there's something called a medial prefrontal cortex, that's in your forehead. That's pretty much that. It's the same thing that many eastern sort of philosophies have been teaching for a long time. And so it, it's interesting, I look at, my, my experience of learning breath work and learning holy crap, this is the best stuff I know how to do. This solves the most problems of anything, that. I have it's breath work because on the other side of breath work, lies the ability to, Manage the whole of the human experience, emotions and whatnot, I hope. But it also, makes sleep easier and relationships e easier

Toby:

It's all experiential, and I think this is the thing, it's very easy for people to be like, oh, that's all woo. like meditation or breath work or ice plunges or whatever. But you try it and you just, you're like, oh, so one thing that I do every single day, the first thing I do when I get outta bed is have a three minute ice cold shower, And it's hard because we're in the middle of winter right now. It's so cold here in New Zealand. And I get up and I go straight from my bed into the ice cold shower for three minutes. And the reason why that's so important for me is because I've woken up each day and voluntarily chose to do something hard, because then after that, everything else is easy. you'll have a situation in the studio with a client and they may be feeling, I. Triggered by something and it's cool, I've already done something hard today. This is easy. We can work through this. and not only that, but it's a great form of meditation and an ice bath, or a cold plunge because as soon as you hop in there, your subconscious starts going oh, we need to get out of this. We're in danger. But then you can override that and you can go, let's just sit. Are we actually, let's just sit here and notice the sensation of unease. Let's focus on the sensation of discomfort. And then, yeah, all of those business decisions, all of those client interactions, the conversation that's hard with your partner or your kids, all of a sudden that's easier because you're voluntarily chosen to do something hard. Now that is drastically different to, doing something hard that you haven't chosen? But, we're not fixed people. We can constantly change. I'm living proof of that, I'm a music producer that makes a six figure income producing out of my house. And I wasn't the most talented audio engineer or producer in my class, but. I kept wanting to grow. I kept wanting to get better. I kept wanting to do the thing. And yeah, like getting into meditation was one of the greatest things that ever happened to my career. it made me a better music producer astronomically, same with breathwork or cold plunges, or hiking over mountains. those tools helped me that when I came into the studio environment, I was super calm. I've developed this reputation as being a very compassionate music producer. because it's a very male dominated industry, there's a lot of young female artists that don't feel safe in studios. And so I've made a career outta being the safe place for female musicians. So a lot of my artists are female because they know that they can come here. They don't have some sleazy guy they're working with. They've got a guy that's compassionate, emotional, that can, almost treat our, production sessions like therapy, where we can work through these hard emotions without

Chris Graham:

Man. I love that. I'm so inspired. first of all, that's absolutely incredible this beautiful phrase that you just used compassionate producer, woo. That's nice. I have big feelings around, The way we treat women as a society, one of the things I recently learned So walk up to any woman that you know, your mom, your girlfriend, your wife, your daughter, your, say, imagine you're walking alone in the woods, in the deep forest, you're hiking. It's beautiful, you're having a wonderful time. Would you rather come across a bear or a man? And what is so mind blowing about this little thought experiment is I challenge you to find a single woman that will not say bear. They all say bear. and that blows my mind. And it's funny'cause I think through that and I try to think about, okay, what about for a woman that's in my life that I care about family. would I rather her come across a man or a bear bear? A hundred percent. A hundred percent. bear? And that is an important sort of realization, an important perspective to start to understand, what it means to be a man, but also what it means to be a man in the eyes of a woman that. Almost all wars, almost all murders, almost all of the worst crimes in the en entire world. 99% committed by men. So it would seem, it's concerning. And I've got weird feelings about, I'm a man. I'm straight. I like women, but I have some pretty mixed feelings about identifying with men as a whole, the whole team. We don't have a great track record. I think it's important for all of us as men to work through that and to ask at least one woman, that you know, if you're walking through the woods by yourself, would you rather come across A bear or a man. And I think as we start to ponder what that means as men, it's helped me see the world through a much different perspective. to chew on that. And I, and when you say the words compassionate producer, a woman comes into your studio and she's going to be in a room alone with a man who she doesn't know is extremely well. And, she's going to allow this man to give her feedback on whether or not her art seems genuine enough. That takes a pretty safe man

Toby:

Yeah. And it's something that you've gotta nurture. it's a trust that you've gotta build up. And I think there, there almost isn't a problem that can't be solved by better communication, so a lot of the young female artists that I work with, one of the first things I'll say is Hey, do you have a support person that you wanna bring along to the session? Do you wanna bring your mom? You know? And so, you know, even the, the artist that I'm producing today is, young female artist, and her mom comes along to all the sessions and I love it. it's great. And I have a lot of young female artists that do the same thing. They'll bring their mom and it's great, it's beautiful. And, Yeah, that's not something that you can dial in. that's not something that you can just fake. You can't be a sleazy human and be like, I'm gonna be compassionate. The compassionate music producer, people can read in between the lines. They can read the words that you're not saying. And so I think all of that work and becoming, trying to be the best version of yourself, it helps you create the best art. Because yeah, if I've got a young female artist that's trying to bear her soul, she's not gonna be able to do that. If she's feeling like I'm judging her or I'm like, toxic, toxically masculine, and yeah, so allowing your communication to get to a point where you really show that you are empathetic and you really show that you are compassionate because. I've got a young daughter, I've got a 6-year-old daughter and she's one of the most important things in the world to me, as well as my boys, and I want her to be raised in a world that is kind and compassionate. We all have a part to play and we all have to make the world safer for women. We also have to make the world safer for men. when you look at suicide statistics, like it's four times the amount of suicide in men that is in women. And it's eight times the amount of suicide in divorced men than women. And yeah. And so this is a very biologically wired thing that we are realizing these days, is that since the dawn of time. Most societies were polyamorous, right, or polygamous. And they would often be the king or the prince, and they'd have multiple wives. So only 50% of men would ever actually become fathers. Whereas a vast majority of women, not every woman would become a mother, but the majority would. women always had this important part to play. They always knew their, knew that they were valued because they had to look after the children. A lot of men didn't have that. So what ended up happening was men had to find their worth providing for their village, right? They had to go out and hunt. They had to go on, like build. And if there were men that didn't do that, or didn't get the kill, or they didn't, they weren't good with their hands or whatever, often they felt like they were more of a burden to their village. fast forward to today, we have so many young men They don't feel like they're contributing to something.'cause yeah. When you are 18, what do you have to contribute? it's hard to see that potential And we often feel that as, two divorced men, you know, we, we, we come outta that situation. We're like, what's our value? and it's hard and it's so biologically wired. So I think there also has to be a lot of compassion towards young men to realize that we need to find ways to make young men actually feel valued.

Chris Graham:

this comes back to a question that I have been wondering for years and years. I'm curious to see what you think about this. Why do you think that the music industry is, I don't know what the official number is, but let's say 88% men to be really conservative. It's probably more like 98, but let's say 88%. Is that your experience, on the other side of the world And if so, why do you think that is?

Toby:

yeah, it's definitely the experience over here and I think the answer is probably not nearly as complicated as what a lot of people think. There's a, it's twofold. I think one role models, right? look what happened when Meg White started playing for the white stripes. And all of all around the world, there were young female drummers that started, or young girls that, I wanna be like that, And so I think positive role model is having them out there. it means that they feel like they can do it, but I think it actually goes a bit deeper than that. I think it's actually a wiring thing. women are a lot more intelligent than us in so many ways, and they can. They can look at this very hard career and they can go, oh, that's a very risky path. Like in, in order for me to make that's really tricky. So do I want to actually go down that very hard path? Men, we just we're like, oh God, I wanna do that. Let's do that. And it's the same reason why men are so attracted to like bungee jumping or like motocross or formula one racing is because we're not as risk averse. We're just like, we want to take the risk and we just want to go and do the thing. And so I think in a lot of ways men don't realize just how hard this industry is. And if they do, they just don't care about it. They're like, oh, I'll just eat baked beans or whatever. Whereas it's the same reason why in business, if you look at companies that have a CEO that is a female and a CEO, that is a male, a company that is, has a CEO male. They're much more likely to either go bankrupt or make a crap ton of money. Where you've got a company that is run by a CEO, that's a woman, they're much more likely to be very stable as a company. They won't earn as much money, but they're less likely to actually go bankrupt. So it's a very safe bit to have a woman, CEO and it's because they take more safe bets, you know, whereas men are just like, let's like throw it all on red. And it's why gambling, amongst males are so big is because we just, we struggle with that ability to regulate risk.'cause we just, we see the reward. And so I think it's the same thing with music production. As a lot of people go, this is a very tough industry. Is it worth it?

Chris Graham:

I think that, we have a lot wrong in our society, hot take here, and I, this is gonna take a minute, if this is taken outta context, it might be, might sound offensive, but, I promise it's not. It seems to me that society is much more open to listening to a woman express her feelings if she wants to share, this is hard for me. I'm sad, I'm mad, I'm lonely, I'm whatever. She can share that and is not going to be seen as less feminine.

Toby:

Hmm.

Chris Graham:

As a result or less strong in any, in generally speaking for men, and this is especially true for boys, they are not, they don't have that privilege if they share openly or cry on the playground. good luck. Good luck with that social dynamic over the course of the next month in fifth grade, if you cried on the playground and you're a boy, if you're a girl, no big deal, right? And so I think part of this, that's challenging for me. I'm a father myself and, I had somebody, call my kids resilient the other day. And I was surprised that I had a little bit of a challenging reaction to the use of the word resilient to describe my kids, because the word resilient. Is something that we all aspire to, right? We want to be seen as resilient, and kids do too. they will do their best to appear resilient. And there's a big difference between being resilient and appearing to be resilient. And when there's an incentive I took a lot of anthropology classes in college and one of the things they said about men that was so, uh, interesting to me is in every culture, since the dawn of time, men have been obsessed with this idea of potency. This idea of, are you. Half a man, all of a man, or 10 times more of a man than a normal man. And there's this whole gauge that we've got. And when resiliency is something that we all aspire to and that we are mocked as children, if we do not appear resilient, it can be really damaging to a lot of men because they have to push it all down. They have to keep their mouth shut. They have to just kinda lock it all inside. Unless they can play guitar or rap or play piano especially. They can sing and if they can get on a mic, there are all manner of crazy things that a man can get away with saying and expressing so long as there's some melody and some rhythm and some tone, But if a man were just to come out and say, uh. I imagine a really sad country song, but it's just your buddy saying it. he's, and you'd be like, dude, shut, come on. that's one of the toxic traits of males. And I think that for us, culturally speaking that males from western cultures are taught from a young age, You must appear to be resilient. And what that basically means is you must be silent Don't feel your feelings. Your manliness is directly, in proportion to your ability to shut up. And when you build a culture around, male silence. an awful lot of'em, it would appear, turn to the arts, where it is safe to express yourself.

Toby:

Or they turn to anger, they turn to violence, and you walk down any major city at three o'clock in the morning and you see a whole bunch of men that have been pushing down emotion. And I've only got one way to get it out. They don't have a guitar, so they turn to violence. And I think that's our job, right as parents, is to teach this young generation of the upcoming boys to feel safe in their emotion.'cause there, there is a difference between pain and suffering. And I try to teach my kids that it's like, you can feel pain, but to actually sit there and suffer, that's a thought experiment that's sitting there and kind of like, you know, but every feeling is valid and even anger. It's okay, what are some healthy ways that we can actually get it out? Is that sit on a drum kit and just beat the crap out of it, is it sit there and write a poem? Is it to, I do this thing with my middle child. My, 8-year-old, he's autistic. I. And, he, we have this like imaginary stone where we call it his anger stone. And we're like, okay, get all of those feelings, get all of that emotion, everything that you're feeling right now, put it in the stone and now let's throw it at the mountain. And it makes him laugh every single time. And it's not telling him that he can't feel his feelings. It's no, feel them, feel them. Pick them all up and find like an outlet. And, I think you're right. that's what music is. It's therapy. It's people coming in and expressing their soul. And if you are a, if you're a home studio owner and you haven't fostered a safe environment to which people can come and express their emotion, then it's, you're just not gonna get the best out the art. Because as a producer, I can be sitting there and I can hear an artist do eight takes in a row with, nailing the pitch. They're nailing the timing, their tone is great, and I feel nothing. And then you sit there and you're like, okay, What's the song actually about? What? what caused you to write it? Can you imagine where you were when you wrote this? what were you going through? And we sit there and we talk through what they were going through, and they step up to the microphone. And usually that next take is the one, because one, they've warmed up their vocal chords, they've been, focusing on the pitch. But then they focus on the intention. And this is why for me, I'm not worried about AI because you can't define what it is that gives you goosebumps between one take and another. When you know the other take is timing is perfect, pitch is perfect, but it's where you place your in intention. And when an artist places their intention in this. Emotion of a song. It doesn't matter if the tuning's not quite right. Often when the intention is right, the tuning just comes naturally, right? Anyway. But that's what gives you the goosebumps, right? It isn't the perfect pitch. It isn't the perfect timing, it's them feeling their feelings. we're just all vibrating atoms, right? At the end of the day. And when you feel that come through the speakers, it's enough to bring you to tears. And you can't describe why a song makes you cry, right? Like I can hear a single solo piano piece and it can bring me to tears, when someone in my life passes away, I have a very hard time crying because I was raised in a generation where boys don't feel their feelings and boys don't cry. something traumatic can happen and I dunno how to feel, I dunno how to process it, but I can hear a song and it can bring me to tears,

Chris Graham:

Okay, we're all people that work in and around recording studios, that's everybody listening, to your left and right, so to speak. we're all trying to figure out how to have the most incredible mountaintop experiences. And we chase these, we're in this tribe of people that's ah, I need to get the best sounding snare I've ever made. Oh, I need to get the best sounding master I've ever made. I need to get the best mix I've ever made. we're chasing these mountaintop experiences and as we're doing that and trying to figure out, essentially this is like an endurance sport,

Toby:

But the, I think the key right, is we are chasing those peak experiences, but we need to learn how to live on the journey. Because if you are climbing Mount Everest, it takes months to get to the top, right? It takes years to train, months to get to the top. When you get to the top, you are there for five to 15 minutes before it gets too much. And you have to come down. If you are basing all of your happiness on the potential highs, you are not gonna enjoy this industry at all.'cause it's hard. So you need to get to a place where you can enjoy the journey.'cause that's where we live. We live on the paths. We don't live on the peaks,

Chris Graham:

Kobe, the a hundred percent. what you are saying is at the very core of the podcast that I'm trying to create here. And it is this idea that, we have to get to a place where we enjoy the journey. You can make over a hundred thousand dollars a year and love your life if you do it right. Or you can make over a hundred thousand dollars a year in the studio and hate your life and have the worst life of anybody that you know, but with some cool perks, you'll still get some cool perks. But generally speaking, this journey that we're on, if it's a climbing Mount Everest or if it's a running a marathon, A small optimization can greatly extend not just your endurance, but your comfort along the journey. And so it, it's funny'cause, one of the reasons I was so excited to, to hang out with you is you're super cool guy, but I'm also, like I said, obsessed with Lord of the Rings. And so the fact that you've been like in Lord of the Rings world, But when we're talking about this from the Lord of the Rings perspective of okay, we gotta get to Rador. Okay, how much are you packing?

Toby:

Hmm.

Chris Graham:

Not much. Gotta pack light or you won't make it. And in this business, I really, most businesses, as far as I know in this business, like you have to pack light, you have to be agile, and you have to have, these sorts of skills where you can turn on a dime and respond to, oh, shoot, this piece of gear in the studio isn't working. Or, oh, the drummer didn't show up. you're constantly putting out fires. And as you're doing that. Your ability to continue to do that over the long term is the biggest determinant about whether or not you're going to quote unquote make it. And by make it, make it up like you've made up some lifestyle, not that you saw somebody else. I want to be just like that famous mix engineer. I want his exact life. Good luck with that. That probably isn't gonna work. And if it does, I don't think you'll be happy. But if you can create a one of a kind career, then I think that's where things start to get really interesting. And so I, I think to bring our conversation to a close here, what we were, we're talking about here is emotional intelligence. And we used, we talked about this word, resilience, this ability to carry on. and how, it's a tricky word, but I can't help but notice that of all the characters. In fiction, perhaps the character, the characters that demonstrate what we're talking about the best was it's probably Hobbit, right? They go the distance. They continue to love each other over the journey. they are surprisingly plucky and upbeat in the face of danger, and they show up, when the going gets tough. A hobbit is great in a pinch.

Toby:

Yeah. and this is it, right? Like they're not doing it for the fame. they realize that they're doing it for for middle Earth. They're doing it, and they're doing the hard thing, right? In life, there's always two options. You've got the hard thing or the easy thing. And the easy thing is always the skis. There's the easy thing. But actually it's the hard thing. And hard thing is often disguised as hard, but it's actually the easy thing. And that's what the hobbits did. they did the hard thing. The easy thing would've been to stay in the shire, pretend like it's not going on, pretending like they don't have the ability to change the world. The hard thing is to walk into, more door and try and destroy this ring. I. And turns out it's actually long term, the easy thing. They've saved the shire, they've

Chris Graham:

Yeah, I love what you're saying about the easy thing and the hard thing. And I think one of the things that, that's been a guiding principle for me, is this idea you can choose between hard, easy or easy hard. You can do the hard thing first and the easy thing second, or you can do the easy thing first and the way harder thing second. And this is, the basis of character and strength and pluck and hobbit ishness. And I love that. And so Toby, thank you for coming on the show. I was delighted, to hear your story and I'm really interested, in this idea you brought up about what it means to be a compassionate producer. That's rad. thank you so much. Keep keeping on and, I'd love to hang out again sometime. I'd love to have you back on the show someday.

Toby:

Yeah, man. Now there's always more stuff to discuss. Yeah. Thanks so much for the chat. It's been great. And yeah, I love what you're doing here. it's just such an important thing.'cause it's good to focus on the business, but if you don't focus on your wellbeing and your mental health if you are not showing up as the best version of yourself, not just in work, but in life, you're just not gonna get the best outta your art.