Kenny Boothby of Little Kid

Did you guys know my most listened to song on Spotify, all time, is Bastard by Little Kid? I've been looking forward to this conversation for a long time, Little Kid has been one of my favorite bands for a while now but remain mostly unknown. Please go check out any of their albums, my favorite is probably Flowers which has been on rotation for years in my house.

Kenny talks about the the Toronto music scene, creating diy and lofi music, and his relationship to Christianity changing over the years. 

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:25

I forget the name of the band who sings it is, how strange it is, who I should know the name of the song, because I've played in this band with them and I've known Jordan for years. And my wife is in the band, but uh I forget the name of the song, but it's been the uh intro and outro song. It's coming out in an album soon. That's too much information on that. Anyway, I am here today with genuinely one of my favorite artists of the last couple years, at least uh new to me. I guess you've been playing for 15 years at least. Uh Kenny from the band Little Kid. Kenny, what's your last name, man?

SPEAKER_00 0:55

Uh Boothby.

SPEAKER_02 0:56

Boothbeat. All right. I should have looked that one up.

SPEAKER_00 0:59

I've hyphenated recently. Boothby Wilson. I'm not used to saying so that.

unknown 1:02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:03

Is that your uh wife's name? Do you guys hyphenate?

SPEAKER_00 1:05

Yeah, yeah, we hyphenate.

SPEAKER_02 1:07

Nice. Congratulations. Another married uh married rock star, right? We use the term rock star here.

SPEAKER_00 1:13

Yeah, exactly. That's what I would have said.

SPEAKER_02 1:16

Nice, man. And uh yeah, you're uh you're from the band Little Kids. Do you play in anything else or is it just that project?

SPEAKER_00 1:22

Not too regularly. I've I've played in my friend Eliza Niami's band a bit. Um and uh I mean that's the only other really band I guess I've done shows and toured a bit with.

SPEAKER_02 1:35

Nice. Yeah, uh, and you're up in Toronto, right? Yep. Nice. Are you from Toronto or do you move over there? Like are you Canadian by birth or by justice?

SPEAKER_00 1:46

Yes. I'm Canadian by by birth. Uh I mean it's not the worst choice if I if I had got to choose that. I I was I was born in Petrolia, Ontario. It's a small town. Um near Carnia, if anybody's ever crossed the border near Carnia, that's that's uh that's nearby. Uh it's like southern uh Ontario, southwestern Ontario. Um London, Ontario is a near nearby big city. It's about a three and a half hour drive from here. Um but yeah, I grew I grew up uh there until I went to high school or until I graduated high school. I lived around there.

SPEAKER_02 2:24

Nice. Yeah, I mean I uh I wish I knew more about Canada. I've been up to Quebec a bunch of times. I'm originally from Massachusetts, so we did uh Oh yeah. Yeah, going up to uh Quebec for they had a music festival up there a bunch of years back. I can't remember the name of it. The Oceaga is the big one. Maybe. I saw pavement play there, that's all I know.

SPEAKER_00 2:42

Cool, yeah, that's great.

SPEAKER_02 2:44

But uh besides that, I don't know much about uh the you know, Canadian Toronto music scene. Uh uh besides you, really. I didn't even know you were Canadian for a long time after I I I discovered your albums. But uh what's it like up in uh Toronto? What's the music scene like up there?

SPEAKER_00 3:01

I f I feel like I'm not the person to answer that in terms of what's probably cool that's happening right now. Like I think um I mean I shouldn't sell my friends short. I got some great friends who make music here and I do get to go um see some great stuff. Like I I mean just last night I wait two nights ago. Two nights ago I went to a show. Um and uh West O'Lakin was playing They're they're my friends uh from Toronto, that's a great band. And uh Pen Knife, who I'm friends with as well, Toronto people. And then uh uh Horse Named Friday is uh kind of a newer group from Kitchener, which is uh city uh uh I don't know, an hour and a half, maybe two hours from here. Um and they're they're great, they're uh they're like younger people. Um and they're uh cool, like there's like seven or eight of them on stage with all sorts of um instruments and just a real cool vibe. Yeah, so that was great. Um that was the release show. Um But yeah, I think uh I feel like we've been playing shows here for like ten years now, I guess, and uh I think a lot of bands we've played with back then we maybe have out outlived some of them. We still play, but less often. Um and uh But yeah, I mean we it's great. I I mean it's great to have friends who make music and I I do uh love seeing a lot of those friends. Like I mentioned, Eliza uh playing her dance sometimes. I go see her basically anytime I can uh with whoever's playing with her. Um But uh yeah, I feel like I mean most of my friends I feel like in Toronto are musicians of some kind or like in different groups and stuff, so uh there's lots of good stuff. I just think we're like now aging uh a bit, you know. I'm like in my my mid-30s and a lot of my friends are in their early 30s at least, and uh there's probably all this cool stuff happening with people who are like 25 or 20 or whatever that I'm just not invited to anymore, and that's that's just fine. But um I'll hear about it in like another five or ten years or whatever. I'll see it on on MPR or whatever us old people learn mu about music from, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 5:07

Yeah, that's uh that has been a real big thing going from uh you know being one of those guys in his twenties playing the Portland music scene to being a guy now uh uh closer to forty than he is to thirty. And it's just it takes a little bit more effort. I I try to do a uh a decent job of like staying in touch with people that are still playing with things. My friends do a better job of it than I do. But uh, you know, I want to like be, you know, one of those guys that supports the bands that are coming after me, because I remember when we were first playing, trying to find shows, trying to like make a name for ourselves in the scene. It means a lot when anyone shows up to the show. And if it's just people that are younger or whatever, it's like, I don't know, that's just one demographic. I think something can be said about a guy who's been around for a little bit longer. You probably know more about the Toronto music scene than somebody that's just starting out there. So if you go to a show, you like what you see, you might be able to help these kids out uh a little bit more or less. But it does take a lot more effort, just literally for me, just to stay awake past like 11 30. It's time to do that.

SPEAKER_00 6:06

Yeah, I mean that show I mentioned I I I was having a great time, but I I did have to go. It was like a certain point in the night, and I was like, okay, I can, you know, maybe this is the last song. Like, you know, when you start having those thoughts, and then uh then they said we have two more songs, and I was thinking, oh, it's two more, and maybe an encore, and I just don't know if I can I can do it after walk home and I have to get up early tomorrow and stuff, so um it is a bit harder to uh to do that. I I feel like I can get away with it for a night. Uh it's just like I used to sometimes maybe do a couple shows in a week or or uh I mean I s and I still sometimes try to do that, but I just find it really hurts me now. If I have a couple bad sleeps in a row, I just have trouble functioning. But yeah.

SPEAKER_02 6:49

It's rough uh the sleep transition going from you know anything would knock you out to now it's like it's like a whole process. It's a whole thing. What one thing I do like is is when I do go to a show now, if I'm not playing in it and my wife's not playing it, my wife plays in a bunch of music up here too. Uh it's it is nice to be like, oh, we don't have to take anything out of here when the show's over. When the show's over, we can just go. Or like you're saying, if you're tired and they got three more songs left, you're like, I just I gotta go. You can just leave, as opposed to I have to pack the whole drum set up, we gotta put an amp in the car, we gotta make sure it gets out of the car so nobody breaks into the car. That can be, you know, another hour or whatever.

SPEAKER_00 7:24

But uh Yeah, I had a moment like that a bit like this well, like like I'm thinking of a at least a fair bit younger than me band that's pretty cool in Toronto, Cootie Catcher. Like we we played a show with them a couple years ago, and we uh I try to see them when they play, and they had a release show like maybe a month ago, and I had I bought tickets like thinking I gotta go to shows, you know. Uh bought it months months ahead and I and then it the night came and I just was like, I don't know about this, I don't know if I can make it out to this, and then they posted the set times and I was like, they're literally going out at 10 45 and I was like, oh my gosh, that's that's bedtime, like already, and they and they're gonna kick off then. And then um and so I was like, I just think I just have to not go. I tried to just give my ticket to somebody else, but um, but then I I had a real moment when I saw them posting like um after party at the Houndstooth or something, which is this this bar near my place, but it's like uh I I always w if I want to feel old, I go to the Houndstooth, like it's always younger people there, and uh um and I just was like what a different existence I can't relate anymore. They're they're gonna go to an after party after the show. Uh when they're set starting at 1045, it's like, yeah, I can't uh I can't do it anymore.

SPEAKER_02 8:37

But that's uh it's a life I used to live. I I for me I like that there's kind of a natural cycle for me of like, you know, as the people my age start to maybe drift a little bit out of the you know the after party scene here uh in Portland, a lot of times is the forward room. That's like the bar that everybody kind of goes to a lot of the times after shows. And you know, I'll hit it up every couple of weeks, every couple of months or something like that. I'll go to uh uh if everyone if all the stars align, I'll do it, but like I don't know. Clearing out the space, I think in these like local music scenes, right? You gotta have uh room for a new band to come in with these young kids, they're like just out of college, they really want to put something together. If everybody just played forever, I kind of think about this with sports, you know. LeBron James is like 41 years old. Everyone's playing now until they're like 40. There's just less room for these young kids to come in and like make a name. And it's like I think that's kind of a nice thing about music is that it tends it tends towards younger people and it gives them like space to do something as opposed to, you know, I don't want to be a boomer that's like holding space for some other kid that would be much more excited to play something than I would, because I've already done it before and this would be their first time. There's like sort of a natural cycle to that that I appreciate.

SPEAKER_01 9:51

For sure.

SPEAKER_02 9:52

Yeah. So uh when did you start playing music? Are you from like a musical family or were you just somebody that like picked up a guitar? When did you really uh start, you know? When did little kid what was the first thing that eventually bloomed into little kid?

SPEAKER_00 10:08

Uh my my mom plays guitar. Um growing up she would play a little bit, and I just remember early memories of her kinda tuning her guitar, and I think the guitar the tuner at the time was more of a touchy, and so it was very much like everybody be quiet uh in the house because I have to tune. Um that's kind of my early memory of her, but she was never I think when she was younger she used to play at her church, and um so uh there was a guitar around, but and I knew that my mom played guitar. I think I thought that was cool, but I um I don't have a lot of memories of her playing too much, but uh my grandma and my grandpa and my dad's side are both musicians. My grandma was an organist and uh at the church as well, and my and my grandpa was a singer uh in church. Um and I have a cool tape where he's playing um or he where he's singing, which is kinda neat. Um but uh uh anyways, so that there's some music on that side, some music for my mom maybe too. Um but I I remember wanting to play guitar when I was uh I think it was in grade six or so, and uh my mom got me a guitar then. Um and I yeah, I wanted to play I really liked the Canadian band The Bare Naked Ladies, which is not a cool a cool band per se, but I I love them as a first band I was kinda like a nerd about and and had all their CDs and um and Reliant K. I really liked the Christian pop punk band. Um nice.

SPEAKER_02 11:35

So those were like my early like I want to play guitar, play those songs and um but listen, Bare Naked Ladies, uh I there will be no Bare Naked Ladies slander on my page on any of our videos or anything like that. That band, I just there's a certain genre of like rock song, like Bare Naked Ladies are like Blink 182 or something like that, where it's like, yeah, if you if you want to be a snob about it, you could probably make an argument that this is not the highest of art form. But I don't think I've ever had a bare naked ladies song happen to me, like when I'm riding in the car or somebody like puts it on, where I've been like, oh my god, please turn that off. No, it's always like a good time. And also karaoke bangers, if you can hit them. For sure, yeah. You know, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 12:17

Paul uh from Little Kid, he put me onto that. He's like, if I'm ever not sure what to do for karaoke, bare naked ladies is yeah.

SPEAKER_02 12:25

Oh yeah. Gotta have there's it's a tough thing to hit, is the the karaoke banger. Uh my friend uh Jordan started playing Oasis songs. I realized that's a very easy that's like a well you can keep going back to. Because if you can get everybody in the bar to sing the chorus with you, you don't really have to sing that well. And that's something I gotta work around. You got a pretty good voice though. So you start playing guitar like sixth grade, you're listening to bare naked ladies, obviously, that's the Canadian national anthem right there. Um just you know, I do you start recording on your own, or do you start putting a band together? What was your thought process when you started playing?

SPEAKER_00 13:00

I had um around then I had some other friends who all kind of started playing guitar and stuff too. Um and it like I said, it was a small town, and I think we didn't have a lot to do, so we would just like play guitar and uh joke around, and we had a lot of bands back then that were just joke bands, like kind of and like Paul, Paul and Little Kid, he we went to high school together, so um, and I even knew him a bit earlier than that, but not super well. But he he was in some of these joke bands. So we definitely recorded a lot of music at that time that has thankfully not survived uh the many transformations of the internet. So but I have a Google Drive that's like hundreds of songs like I've amassed from my friends to try to keep it all kind of listenable to us, but um it's nothing I would ever want to show anyone. Uh maybe like even like my wife, I've shown her bits of it, but like her tolerance for it is even low, you know. Like people who are closest to me for don't even really care because it's kind of that that poor like this stuff. But um but it was good, clean fun. Like, I mean I I teach high school now and I'm around high school kids, and I'm like, if these kids were making that music, I'd be like, alright, that's that's uh there's a lot worse you could be up to. So um so yeah, good times, great memories with my friends just you know, goofing around and uh and I think it was like a low-stakes way to try to start making music, and I remember my friend Miles making like more of a trying to make a home studio and and like we were just using things like Free Loops or uh whatever, but like starting to slowly get, you know, more microphones and stuff. And um but Paul from uh who who played Middle Kid much later, but he was the one who kind of more seriously was like, I'm gonna go to school and went to uh this respected school called Ogert in London, that's like a recording program and he learned a lot there and he just started kind of dedicating all his spare money to buying gear and stuff. So uh he's one of those people you're really lucky to be friends with because he uh ended up being the person who recorded all the little kid stuff and mix it and all that. So um but yeah, I I think it was many years of goofing around, and then I think in my twenties or I I think I was nineteen, I I came up with the band nine Little Kid or this name, which I don't even remember kind of what prompted that, but thinking that would be my project, and then I made a little song on my four-track, um, which it for a first song is kind of a hilarious, um bit demanding song with the train recording. Like I'd just been recording trains a lot at the time, and I uh it's like a two-minute little simple folk song, but then there's like ten minutes of a train passing and coming back. Um so that it's a funny start. Uh, and I and when I hear it, I mean the lyrics aren't much, and you know, but it's not an offensive song to me. I'm like, that's like not a bad way to start, and it is definitely funny to be like from the get-go, here's a ten-minute train recording in my song. It's kind of uh funny in hindsight.

SPEAKER_02 15:58

That was one of the things, uh, if this is the song I'm thinking of off of uh Logic Songs, like one of the things that first caught me was like, oh, this guy is uh he's not gonna make this easy for me, you know. He's not just gonna give me the song, he's gonna give me ten minutes of train noises in the background. I'm like, yeah. To me, I I'm kind of fascinated by that idea that uh there's so much music out there and it's so easily accessible, and it all ends up being kind of frictionless. That like asking the listener for something, like standing up to basically putting a door between what you're doing and what they're uh listening to can actually create enough friction that it becomes memorable. And it's one of the reasons that I really like lo-fi music is that the recording quality, one, it's very intimate, it very it very much sounds like you know you're in the bedroom with the person making the recording, but two, it it kind of you know, the song is gonna be a little bit harsher. The recording's gonna be a little bit harsher. It might be harder to hear the words or something like that. But if you can get through all that, you get to the meat of the song, the core essence of the song in a much more genuine way to me. And it's like that's really what attracted me. I heard logic songs for the first time, probably 20 I want to say 2017 or something like that, 2018, maybe. Yeah, that's great. Um and I've I've always been a huge lo-fi guy. It's been one of my favorite, like, weird little genres, like tall dwarves, uh, early mountain goats, everything Lou Barlow's ever done. Uh are you into Lo-Fi, or was this just like I got a four-track, this is the best I can do right now, let's grip it and rip it.

SPEAKER_00 17:27

I definitely like some stuff. I think at the time, um a big one for me was the microphones. Like, I think it's very obvious if you listen to that album. I mean, uh there was a song that kind of rips off uh uh what's Solar System. Uh I think that's a song from from Mount Erie. And I just like subliminally, like I think I'd mostly listen to that album when I was like falling asleep, and I think I thought I had an idea for a song without realizing I took it. But uh I was listening to a lot of microphones and uh and like in in Canada there's like a lot of post-rock stuff like Godspeed and uh a Silver Mount Zion is my favorite of that kind of era, and they they definitely had like some uh some pretty scratchy stuff. Like that's some more like formally recorded stuff, but they like there had an EP called um Pretty Little Lightning Paw that I I think was pretty important for me at that time. I'm pretty sure they even whatever they did to initially record it, I'm pretty sure they played it back through a uh boom box at the end and recorded that for the final masters, so it's like extra fuzzy, and that one has like a lot of really pretty um keyboards and it's like it has this kind of mix of like ambient uh and folk music kind of happening. So I I think that that and the microphones were the big ones at the time that uh made me want to like make music that sounded a little more uh distant like that and and fuzzed out and and kind of bring ambient kind of textures into it. So um so yeah, that was my first foray into like I'm gonna write songs that express my emotions and not just like uh make my friends laugh and stuff.

SPEAKER_02 19:03

So um but yeah, it became it was very fulfilling, and it was it was a hard kind of step when you're like used to being kind of ironic and joking with your buddies to to do it, but it was a safety mechanism that a lot of people, especially that age, put out where it's just like, you know, I'm gonna hide um because the first step to being good at music is you have to be shitty at it. And sometimes you have to be really shitty at it publicly. You have to be like, you know, hey, I'm gonna try to go play this open mic and I'm gonna be the worst one at the somebody has to be bad at the open mic. That doesn't mean anything about like whether or not they're gonna be good in the future, but there is this sort of act of uh like when you start to take yourself seriously, you realize like, alright, well now I'm I'm actually like wagering my own ego a little bit. I'm gonna put myself on the table here and be like, if this is bad, that is gonna reflect my effort or something about me, whatever, you know. Like you you are putting yourself on the table as the wager when you start to take yourself seriously, but like it is an absolutely necessary step in order to ever make anything that like feel like you're saying, this is you trying to write a song to match your emotional state, right? Uh what was it about the time there that made you feel like, alright, I really want to like try to explore my own feelings musically? Uh was it were you going through anything, or was it just like, you know, being in your twenties trying to figure life out, and music sometimes can help with that?

SPEAKER_00 20:24

Yeah, I I think all of that, it's like your um identity formation kind of stuff going on, and I was I was at school uh and uh attending a church that was pretty kind of uh toxic in certain ways, a very uh strange out there kind of um miracles focused, kind of charismatic kind of church, and uh when I was also going to university at the time and like reading books that were um making me question my worldview and what the heck I've things I thought were true for my whole life. You know, this kind of time in your life of like stepping out from especially I guess small town to a city. Like I moved to London, Ontario, it's not a big city, but for me I was around more people and more ideas, and um just like that was the time for me of I guess yeah, just kind of breaking open my head a little bit and um so yeah, I think uh the whole album, that first one, is really, really concerned with uh the Bible and and I I was attending a church that really was focused on the Bible being literally true, like that was a really big thing for them. Like this is this text, like you can't remove anything from it, it's true. Um and at the same time I was like reading it and kind of thinking that well this part can't be true, if this part's true. Like I like I you know, like I'm literally studying logic in school, or I'm I'm in like social psychology classes and things, and I'm just like looking around me, thinking, Oh, there's some uh weird phenomena happening. happening here with all the people in the room and like you know so I'm just starting to kinda question it a bit so I think that was uh and I mean it it was a hard process. It's like in hindsight now and I mean I I feel further away from that that kind of um the painful aspect of it. But at the time I think it was helpful to have something to put some ideas in a song and think about them seriously for a while and and sing it and see how it feels to sing it and so on.

SPEAKER_02 22:27

So well I mean one of the first things that really uh reached out to me with uh logic songs especially uh was yeah it's it's pretty explicitly Christian at times, you know. Uh and at the time I was reading a book from like I don't know, it was written in like the 1600s about the Protestant Reformation because I kept I kept like trying to figure out how things I'm very very interested with like how things develop over time. And if you get into that eventually you're gonna start getting into history 'cause you're a dork. I'm a dork, you know, whatever. But uh and everything just kept coming back to the Protestant Reformation. You know like every single thing we you know it's like that joke about uh girlfriends recognizing that their boyfriend is thinking about the Roman Empire like every single day. It's because it's like everything kind of has some stem it all stems kind of from Rome at some point. You know these things all go back. There's a big part of that with the Protestant Reformation and uh I'm also like fascinated with like what is America you know this whole thing. I'm from New England. They were very Puritan uh concept of like oh the Bible is literally literally true. Uh the thing that I thought was fascinating that I learned from that was like Puritan New England had like a 99% literacy rate because their idea was that if you couldn't read the Bible and come to your own conclusions on it, then your community had failed you and it was keeping you out of heaven. You know so they had this 99% literacy rate when there was no electricity or anything like that. Wow but yeah listening to your album at the time while reading this book on the Protestant Reformation or whatever uh I always thought it was kind of interesting that uh your album is explicitly Christian and then it was called Logic Songs and now hearing you talk about this it sounds like there's this sort of contrast going on in your head at the time that the alb reflects itself in the album title and the album content. Do you think of it that way or am I reading too much into that?

SPEAKER_00 24:18

Yeah no I I mean it's definitely uh I mean the the p the tug and uh what's the word I'm looking for there? Push and pull of that kind of album um was kind of between the the logical side of of me or whatever and this kind of like uh the opposite of logic whatever that would be whether it was love or um uh I'm not really sure sorry, but the the parallels in my mind at least at the time were um I guess I think about technology like I mean like recently I've been having a whole new kind of lots of thinking about technology all the time and with AI and all this stuff. You know, I unfortunately spent a lot of energy kind of just uh grieving at the state of the world or thinking about the internet turning into like a dumping ground for all this crappy information and and like the kind of humanity that I used to be able to kind of connect with through this machine kind of being harder to to grasp and uh and and feeling like could I uh write about technology somehow in songs or that it's sounding kind of stupid or like sci-fi or this kind of stuff and then I'm in anyways thinking about that I was like I guess I was writing about technology w even on logic songs. Like not so much explicitly but but the um I think in my mind I mean the train like I was is was a symbol in a way of this kind of like between like the real sterile human made kind of um computery kind of stuff versus nature the train was kind of this thing running through um that that bridged those things with a feeling um yeah uh at odds with nature as much or something if that makes sense.

SPEAKER_02 26:10

Um it's kinda sounded a little out there but no no no dude you uh you found the target audience for that if you most of my comment section is is stuff like this but uh like that you're talking about right there I think about that um a ton with the development of like industrial development versus uh the technological development we're seeing right now where the industrial development is like here is nature soon there is a train and then the train comes and now the relationship to nature and man has shifted because the train goes through nature here you know it's like there's this creation of a physical thing that is gonna that in our world you know in the world of 2026 almost feels quaint that it's like oh when you build something you're building a physical thing you're changing physical nature that's kind of funny whereas now everything is online and uh there's a phrase that's thrown online I've seen all the time called the end shittification where it's just all these things that already exist everyone's goal is to just kind of make these things worse all of a sudden you know like I remember when I first was on TikTok it was just there was no formula for how to make a popular TikTok it was just people like holding the phone in front of them showing you their lives at 60 seconds at a time and it almost felt like voyeurism it felt like you were reading people's journal entries now the formula's been cracked there's a way to make money off of it and it feels exactly the opposite now it feels like you're just looking at the projection of people's ideas and thoughts and feelings and all that I'm also fascinated by this it's why I make the short form content that I do is because like I want to figure out how this thing works and my way of doing that is like I'm just jumping right in. I'm gonna do it too. And if I do it and I figure out something from that then you know because you got to move forward you gotta you got to move through these things. But like I can kind of feel that uh with your choice of using a four track when you make your first album it's this sort of like well I don't want to move too far ahead without you know fully understanding what we have here you know like listening to something on tape there's some a level to there's something real there's something material there that I don't want to lose and I don't want to leave behind. Are you worried this is a deep heady question or whatever you're worried that we're leaving behind humanity in the source uh in the the constant need to progress forward technologically yeah I mean I I think with all this stuff I mean it's worth um being critical of my own kind of biases and stuff and I mean I think I like even talking about the train I'm like you know a train was disruptive too they cleared land they cleared uh trees and probably animal um uh you know habitats and stuff to crush them and at the time people probably were grieving that and and uh um but the thing I mean I I guess I I don't want to go out too many anti-AI screeds here but I I mean I think I just there's so many levels that I'm opposed to it but like I mean as a teacher I mean I'm seeing the way it's it's it's uh essentially making people um I don't know it's it's getting in the way of learning in a in a big way in terms of just accepting an answer pretty quickly instead of chewing on some things and putting it together into an answer.

SPEAKER_00 29:20

Um but then uh for me uh in the artistic kind of world I'm also just like deeply offended by this uh I mean the idea of creating music with a with a prompt or like this kind of stuff like that the the struggle of making the thing and the way that that goes someplace you wouldn't have been planning and and collaborating with other humans. I mean that's like the most uh rewarding thing probably in my life like in terms of my musical stuff is is working with with those people I worked with for many years and sometimes butting heads and disagreeing and thinking that idea is is terrible but okay I'll give it a shot and go, oh wait you're actually totally right that was the best thing there and I can't had to come around on it. You know these things so I mean I I feel a lot of grief looking at things that are created with AI that look to me also very very hideous. Like I'm kind of I'm kind of depressed at the way the world even looks and this idea of kind of uh images that are being created on the internet looking more like this AI generated imagery looks and and it's kind of just offensive to me on kind of a um uh that just a visual level like I'm kind of upset by it. So anyways I I feel I I try not to go down the rabbit hole but like my my YouTube page knows me now. It's like here's some more depressing stuff about AI you can watch and I and I get watch it and feel more well um bummed at it.

SPEAKER_02 30:54

As a the kind of crazy person that I am I'm always just like uh uh I'm fascinated by the heightening of contradictions right with AI now we have this kind of massively heightened contradiction between the unreal and the real that previously wouldn't have been achieved you know it's like like you're talking about like playing in a band is a thing that intrinsically to you has a value that cannot really be calculated by computer, right? There's no way to empirically measure how much better your life was because you sat down with your friends and tried to write a song, you know? And I I think about this with like the proliferation honestly the biggest difference in my life since I I started getting big on the internet talking about music is so many people have sent me so many bands I've never heard of before and I'm like every single one of these bands is really good. There's so much good music out there. And so it makes me think like alright so what is what is the purpose of this music stuff and I think what's happening is there's kind of a reversion right where there's this brief period of time where you could be the Beatles and you could print an album and it would sell millions of copies and it would be a whole economy onto itself. That one album is a whole economy you know think of how much money has been made in total off of Sgt's Lonely Hearts Cup band. That is not the norm for music. In music for the most part it has been a local thing. You would play locally you would be the bard or something like that. Maybe you travel around or something like that. And I think in a world where the internet is losing a lot of its one-on-one internet connectivity stuff. Like it it feels you're not you can't be sure that you're even talking to somebody online anymore when you're talking to them. That whole dark internet theory is I believe it I think there are a lot of bots out there. The the geese thing is in it's telling you there's a lot of bots out there. You are talking to robots you know some of these things are robots talking to robots but it means that when you go to a show and you sit and you watch one of your local bands that is like a DIY band that's been playing house shows and is part of a community in it now hits in a way that it you can't get anywhere else. Whereas like maybe 15 years ago you could get that off of an internet forum that sense of community you can't get that anywhere else but being in a local band being part of a local scene so this the AI's ability to heighten the blandness of everything that is online. The the artificiality of what is online is now much more apparent on like an in a visceral level. So I I you know these are how these things progress in my mind I think there's there's a a a change coming or something I I think you're already seeing a lot of people mourn the loss of the old internet uh and my hope is that it results actually in more people starting bands and like more people playing music just to you know talk what you're talking about. Uh learn something real like actually make something you know make their participate in their own lives because online just doesn't really feel like you're participating in your own life anymore. Anyway, this is a very heady conversation I'm loving it. Uh Logic Songs comes out uh what's ne what happens after that for the band? Uh I do have a couple other albums we just should I should probably you know let the audience uh let you talk to an audience about it but uh I could talk about this literally forever. I'm uh I I rant, I ramble you should everyone should know this if they're listening to this podcast.

SPEAKER_00 34:03

Yeah no that's okay. I mean I I like I said I've been thinking about this stuff a lot and I uh uh I I guess I am at least slightly heartened that the idea that we might uh this could maybe result in people disengaging from the internet more and and engaging with people more I mean that's an optimistic uh way to look at it and hopefully that will be true. I think it will be true for me. I think for me and my people my age that will probably be the the reaction but um excuse me. But yeah the um I guess from from there with little kid I mean I I it became more collaborative after that. I think I I made that album all by myself which was was fun. Uh and I actually have been having a bit of an itch to do that again in a way but um it's it was it was a good time of discovery figuring out my voice as a writer, figuring out how to record things like not that I recorded them very well in that case but um started playing with with Brody uh around then like probably twenty twelve or so and um eventually we made an album together and Paul played some bass on it too and and he um what we were doing it was still pretty lo-fi in my mind I was like we really amped up the to the high-fire but we were using like a zoom recorder like where you mix on the on the zoom thing. So it has a sound. I I and I'm like that's the one album I have the hardest time kind of enjoying I think because it's um kind of between lo-fi and and a bit more um I oh god as I'm saying that I'm like I hope Brody doesn't hear this and feel hurt or anything. I I mean he we we were doing the best we could. I mean I he did a good job with it. We just Yeah the the equipment we were using was not was not very hi-fi so it has this kind of certain sound to it that I wasn't maybe what I thought was picturing my head or something. I'm not sure. But I I think also just there's things about my performing and my singing that I don't really like about the record too and uh it's kind of also a bit of an uglier kinda angry kind of reactive thing going on with it in terms of the the way it talks about religion and things. So in a in general yeah it's it's the album that I'm like, yeah I feel a bit less uh crowded in certain ways but um but I do have really good memories of working on with with Brody and like and like being uh just hanging out and playing Mario Kart and and making music and stuff and um but uh McKen Paul kind of joined in more around then and and uh that's when we started actually playing shows in Toronto and and uh I felt like we were actually a band or whatever around then for the first time probably in twenty fifteen ish.

SPEAKER_02 36:54

Uh what was it like uh like starting to play shows and stuff like that? Did you start off just playing whatever is around like what's the how was it like breaking into the Toronto scene? Do you feel like you broke into the scene at all or were you just like a band there?

SPEAKER_00 37:08

Uh uh yeah we had some lucky stuff happen. Like I mean we were we were definitely playing some like weird kind of random shows at first like I remember playing at a little cafe in in Kensington and just being like we're playing in Toronto like so excited like you know we're playing at like kind of a weird little cafe and like there's probably literally two people there or something. It's like our our friends came with us there. Like you know we arrived together they watched us and the person who owns the cafe or something like that. So it was like was that a show of Toronto?

SPEAKER_02 37:39

I guess so you know that some things like that and then when my wife and I started playing uh shows together we literally we've played a couple shows where the only people in the audience were her parents and we just played a show in a venue to her parents who smiled and they were very happy about it but it was like oh this is Yeah you gotta do it.

SPEAKER_00 37:59

It's just practice I guess, right? And and uh but we we ended up playing at the Silver Dollar a bit that which was a venue at the time it was it had a reputation it's like uh it's now defunct like it it got replaced with a kind of what a hotel or condos or something now but it's actually now turned back into a venue with a new name but it looks it looks like the old Silver Dollar which is kind of fun in a nostalgic way but um but yeah we played some shows there's a real dirty place. Um the booker there Dan Burke is kind of like a Toronto person people know like he's a bit of a a character with a mixed reputation but he's done a lot of a lot of booking and he was pretty good to us in terms of booking us some shows and then and he booked Carcy Headrest uh in twenty fifteen which was like he was pretty ahead of the curve there maybe like booking them right before they kind of announced the Matador signing and kind of blew up and stuff. Nice anyways at the time I was last FM uh top artists with uh top similar artists with with Carcy Headrest and I and I messaged Will and said could we play this show with you or Last Fm uh similar artist and he uh seemed to like that and said yes so we played uh and that at the time that was like I was like okay we're actually playing with like a band that's touring and we're playing at a and it was a sold-out show so that was one where we were like okay we got to do this show that was pretty cool and uh and from then on I mean it wasn't like that was like a big 180 turn we still played a bunch of kind of duds but we had had played one that felt more legit and I think we could use that in our emails to other bands and say oh we just played with whatever it's also just like kind of game you have to play and it's a huge boost.

SPEAKER_02 39:44

Like you just have that one show that was like an actually good show. You open for a big band on tour or something like that and it's like that can keep you going for like six more months really because it is yeah it was a lot of fun. Yeah. Playing uh playing tough shows is tough. There's you know there are times even now where I'm still playing stuff and every once in a while we'll play a show just because the nature of the nature of the business is that like some of the shows are going to be bad and you walk away from the show and you're just like I do not know what I'm doing with my life. Why am I doing this still? And then you play a good show and you're like oh now I know why I'm doing this this is easy. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 40:18

Yeah. But yeah the story.

SPEAKER_02 40:23

No I was just gonna say after that uh so at this point uh what do you have two albums out? Uh I know when did you guys start working on flowers?

SPEAKER_00 40:31

That was around that time and we had started it with me and Brody still just like we're like we're working on it and so it's a lot of it's still on that seed recorder. But then Paul started playing in the live band and we I guess just had a conversation at some point like Paul is in the band now and he knows how to record things like maybe we should try to hand this over to him, you know? And so we did some kind of thing where we you know shared all the tracks and Paul imported them into his Pro Tools and he started like I think we did a couple songs in like a studio around then like did some more like live off the floor recording and that's when we were like okay that felt really good let's we should should do more of that kind of recording. And so that album I mean that one I do feel pretty happy with like I it's like she turns 10 this year which is cool. So I re-listened to it kind of recently thinking about that and um it's a nice marriage I think of kind of more lo-fi and and a little more hi-fi. I fall out of tape machine and we did some like I think the opening song was on tape and the closing song was on tape and there's more of my like kind of little odds and ends. I was talking about my grandpa singing like I took the little piece from a tape where like her brother Kendrick be it's my grandpa being introduced and the laugh track was from a sermon I had on tape and and things like so it's a bit more of like a return-ish from like you know two years of being away from LoFi or whatever, like whatever but um it's a bit more of a mix of that and then I think we're just like more confident in ourselves as musicians. We have a bit more of us playing together um and uh it's a bit more like thematically I think realized and kind of um feels more like an album in a way. Yeah. As it's own world and stuff.

SPEAKER_02 42:16

Genuinely uh one of my favorite albums like of that's cool yeah out there for any album really like I recommend it to a lot of people just because exactly what you're talking about like it it does it kind of realizes the promise that Logic Songs starts off with of like one of the reasons that you do lo-fi is if you want to take sounds from a lot of different things but this is more thematically tied in together and I I feel like it's one of those albums that is really easy to put the first song on and just let the whole album kind of cruise through because it works into each other very well and it's like I've I've always enjoyed that. I've been I never really listened to songs or playlists I always just listen to albums from start to finish. And when the album makes it easy for you to do that that's really nice for me. It's very easy to put it on the car. Also the first song in the album is really good. It's one of my favorites so it's like that also helps because it's like well we'll just start with this we'll go through the whole album but uh yeah I've always that was I found Logic songs I burned through that uh I was like ripping through it for a while and then I finally after like a month or two I was like I'll check out some other music that this guy has really gotten stuck on flowers so that's great.

SPEAKER_00 43:20

I think just informally I'm like I'm feeling a little bit like there's a bit of renewed interest in that album. It's I mean we we're dealing with like you know I could count them on one hand probably or something but just like from my from my perspective I'm getting a bit more like DMs or or messages that are saying flowers this or flowers it I'm like oh it's kind of neat to see because I I do I mean in hindsight I mean we were excited we're playing shows we were feeling more like a band and but I think I remember that release um it was one where it was self released and we put it out and I remember it was the first experience of kind of being like oh I kind of was hoping this would go uh somewhere or something. This kind of feeling. And I mean it it it did still, don't get me wrong, people heard it that hadn't heard the other ones, and we did uh we kept playing more shows and stuff, but I think there was a period at least there of me being like um why isn't this breaking through or some kind of feeling like a lot of bands probably do feel? And I think we reacted to that by being like, well, let's just make a lot of music then. And and I think we had a time w where also Paul was had a studio in his apartment, and we had like kind of all of us were working less serious jobs and just kind of were in our more mid-20s, I guess. And I don't know. It was a time to look back on and I'm like, yeah, I had a lot more free time back then. Like that of course I was writing a lot more songs, and we were just like, let's why are we wasting our time? Like, I think at that time too, I mean, I think Dave Bazan had like Bazan Monthly, was like uh every month he was putting out a couple records and I got those seven inches. And Wilco did Star Wars and Schmilco.

SPEAKER_02 45:00

Yep.

SPEAKER_00 45:01

And I and I think those things happened, and then Big Thief was kind of coming out with stuff.

SPEAKER_01 45:06

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 45:06

And and I'd see them and they would be playing all new stuff when I'd see them after the album had just come out, and I and I there's so there's a lot of stuff happening where I was like, damn it. And I was listening to a lot of Bob Dylan actually, too. Like Blonda Blonde, and this kind of like youthful kind of I'm gonna make a lot of music. Like not that Wilka was youthful, I guess, but this attitude of like, you can't stop me, I'm I'm making songs, I'm making songs, I'm making songs, and we're gonna just put out a lot of stuff. And um, so there was a couple years there that are a bit of a blur in terms of just like Flowers was done. We we had Sun Milk, we we kind of found it funny with the way it worked out. We were like, we're gonna release it the day before the one-year anniversary of Flowers, and then we did that again with might as well with my soul. So we were like, there were 364 days apart or whatever, these albums.

SPEAKER_02 45:53

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 45:53

And then we finished Transfiguration Highway uh around the same time period we could have released it ourselves then, but we had um Solitaire Records is a small label from Brooklyn that we were talking to then, and we said, Well, we have one done now, and they were down to put it out, so we had to wait another year to put it out, but we were like we were on a bit of a tear there, so um, yeah, that's a lot of output in a a couple of years, man.

SPEAKER_02 46:20

That's a lot of output.

SPEAKER_00 46:21

Yeah, it was good, and I and I still feel pretty good about those albums, um, and still play a lot of those songs, and um but I mean now I feel a bit older, and I think COVID obviously happened and kind of our momentum was was stalled, but I think also gave some perspective, maybe just being like, oh I can't make songs the same way I can't be at that pace anymore. Um and uh we've had to make the next one slower, like just by like logistically, and I and I think um uh anyways, yeah, so Million Easy Payments took more like uh I guess four years to f to finish something like that. So very different. Um But I the results, I mean I I'm very proud of that one, and I I mean even saying I had to make things slower, I mean literally it is a kind of a slow and kind of quiet album. It is a bit of a kind of more c contemplative and kind of lonely kind of thing going on with it. Um and I think the youthful um I don't know, it's it's kind of an arrogance, to be honest, like that kind of and and I say that not not to try to be too hard on myself, but I mean Bob Dylan that's that's youthful arrogance, boom boom boom making all these records, like he just was like a little it's kind of like uh I don't know. I I think there's a bit of arrogance there. I don't I don't think it's necessarily a bad thing. I think it's kind of why young people make more music and sometimes make better music in some ways, because they're just confident and they're trying to just make a bunch of stuff and kind of leave their mark or whatever. So So that happened and then yeah, COVID I think is more um okay, what kind of pausing and wondering what what's the purpose of this stuff and what are we trying to do and and uh I guess uh honestly probably enjoying a lot more when we do get to get together and and record and um um and the time since then has been uh yeah, just slower and in my life now, I mean I am working more um of a serious job and I have less energy for music and I have other priorities and I um so yeah, shifts. I think honestly, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 48:27

All that stuff that you're talking about, it's like uh even talking back towards uh going back to the alb the stuff you're never gonna release on the the drive or whatever, like one of the things that I I really appreciate having gone through my own like youthful exuberance in terms of recording music and stuff like that was like a very similar thing. I used to just play all the time, go and record everything, and then I just try to piece it together into something. And the last couple years has been this sort of like trying to reckon with like, hey man, I I can't do that anymore. I can't just go into the basement and play guitar for three hours uh in a given day. It just doesn't work the same for a variety of reasons. The biggest one honestly just being that like, you know, I got married and I like where I'm at. I like my life, I like my little house, I like my dog. There's just not as much of this fucking need to go make myself because I feel like I've already made a version of myself that I'm like happy with. There's no impulse there to be like, I gotta go like make an album to prove myself worth or whatever. It's like, nah, my wife likes me, we're good, we're fine. This is doing alright. But uh the other part of it is like uh so you have like this time capsule thing of like where you're at when the album's coming out. Whenever you talk about an album, you can pretty much put yourself back in the room, you know. It it means all the different parts of the song, the writing of the song, the recording of the song, playing it live. Uh and then finally, like uh you kind of did a relatively similar thing. My wife and I, before COVID hit, we were playing shows like three or four shows a month or something like that. We were just playing everything. And then because I remember when COVID hit, my first thought was like, Oh, it's gonna be kind of nice to have a little bit of a break. But now looking back in hindsight, this kind of two-year hiatus, right at this point where I'm like putting the most effort I have into this thing, it it did hit at a very, you know, maybe not us at the worst possible time, but it did hit and change my relationship to music in a different way. Like it kind of felt like, well, we put all that work in and then we didn't really get to cash in on it. It just there was a two-year pause, and then everybody was back kinda to normal. Now we're restarting. Everyone's gonna kind of restart, and it's like I feel I feel kind of exhausted from it, but uh, you know, we reacted in our way. My wife and I ended up just playing in a lot of other people's bands for a while. Uh we, you know, we write our own songs here and there, but we mostly just play in other people's bands. How have you felt like post-COVID, your relationship to music, just getting older? Uh you know, do you feel like this is a good place for you to settle down? Or do you feel like, you know, maybe one of these days I'm gonna just lock myself in a room for like a week and a half and crank out another two albums just to see if I can still do it?

SPEAKER_00 51:02

Yeah, I mean, I think like you, uh my pace slowed down a lot when I moved in with my wife. Like we weren't married yet, but I we moved in a couple months or a couple years ago now. Uh four years ago now, I guess. Yeah. Congrats. And we yeah, I and I've been uh very happy and content in my life and and fulfilled by my work and uh having a nice relationship and trying to build a kind of nice thing together. And um she at times will say I feel guilty, I keep you from writing songs or whatever, but like I it's not her fault at all. I mean I think I like you said, like just messing around with a guitar for several hours is I think something I do less. I another by myself, I would just like watch a show and I would just be playing guitar while I did it and stuff like that. That would be annoying to do as a roommate, you know. So um but I did like I I was feeling kind of stuck. I started renting the studio once a week and I would go have a bit of time. And that felt really good for a while just to have dedicated time where I was writing stuff, but I really was not finishing much. I was having trouble writing under those kind of constraints, and um but I did have a lot a pretty good breakthrough with my my friend Allie who uh plays music as Ada Leah, she's from Montreal, um, she's great, uh she does a songwriting kind of um group where it's it's like it's not like we're it's not like a course per se, it's more like there's deadlines. You have to have songs written by there's some prompts that are kind of open and you just kinda it's like no excuses, you just make something. It doesn't have to be good kind of thing.

SPEAKER_02 52:40

I like that.

SPEAKER_00 52:40

And so I've done that the last few Januaries and it's not all been great, but I end up with ten recordings, and some of them have been oh, I don't I I made a song I really liked there, you know, a few of them were good, and it definitely broke the seal on just like I can record while my wife is in the house. Like 'cause I think that was a big barrier, was I was like, I'm gonna be annoying, I'm gonna be playing the same stuff, I'm gonna be singing in a weird high voice harmonizing with myself or whatever. Um But I had to just do it, and and then once I had done that, I I mean I s I still haven't been very prolific, but I've recorded a couple things outside of those um those moments too, so that's been nice just to kind of break the seal on like I can do stuff and be around uh my my wife and such remote, you know.

SPEAKER_02 53:28

I love the the prompt thing, because I feel like that um I try I've been thinking to do more. Uh honestly, before the reels took off, I I thought about this more, but now I'm busy making these little short videos for zoomers. Uh but like prompting my friends into writing music, because they're all musicians, they all write a bunch of stuff, and they kinda love having it's like, hey, can you a couple years ago for my wife's birthday, we uh I I secretly texted all of our friends, hey, can you guys record a song about our dog? His name is Seymour. And I thought they were gonna just write uh do a bunch of covers where they changed the words to be about the dog or whatever, and for the most part, everybody just wrote completely original songs about our dog that are way better than they needed to be. Um it made me realize it's like, oh yeah, these are all like very creative people, and sometimes for creative people, the hard part is having a deadline and having a task to do. It's like if you're just always open, if everything's always just a completely blank canvas, knowing where to start, especially, you know, for you, having finished an album before, having really put your whole heart and soul into it, talking about like youthful exuberance or whatever, uh, you no longer can lie to yourself that it's gonna be easy. You know exactly how much work it's gonna take, which does actually get in the way of getting it done. When you're young and you think maybe I'm just a genius and it can pull it off, you'll kind of get sucked into it as like a you know time debt or whatever. It's like you're just like, alright, I'm just gonna keep going, keep going. And then in hindsight, you're like, oh my god, that was a tremendous amount of work. And now the next time you do it, you're like, oh, I know how much it takes to like make something great, and I know what it feels like to maybe not give it my all on a recording or something like that. It just it hurts. I don't want to do that. I only want to make the great stuff, but it can get in the way of like making more stuff. So having prompts, uh you gotta let me know what your friend's little prompt thing is. I'd love to do that or at least promote it if they're looking for more.

SPEAKER_00 55:20

Yeah, sure. I think that uh it's it's fairly open. I'm sure they wouldn't want uh a hundred random people all of a sudden having the bandage or whatever, but I think they do uh it's fairly open. I can send you the info.

SPEAKER_02 55:32

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 55:33

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 55:34

But uh what are the plans coming forward for uh little kid? Are you gonna release any of these new songs? Are you looking at any new projects? Are you just like trying to figure out what your relationship is to the band at this point, or what are your what are your thoughts?

SPEAKER_00 55:48

I have a show uh on Sunday with Advanced Base, who uh runs the label around Arendtle Records at Owen uh I and I went on tour with him last year.

SPEAKER_02 55:58

Uh yeah, I actually saw one you guys played uh in Portland. Oh, you were there. Hey, oh that's awesome. Yeah, that's great. That was a good show. That was awesome.

SPEAKER_00 56:06

Yeah, my siblings were there, uh, which was really special. I I hadn't played in front of them either for a few years, so that was a really cool show.

SPEAKER_02 56:14

Uh but uh Turn Turn Turns is uh one of my favorite venues in Portland for in terms of small venues, that like is genuinely one of my favorites, just a very cozy spot.

SPEAKER_00 56:24

Yeah, all sorts of wild stuff on the walls and like some some weird uh piece of cardboard where somewhere written somewhere by Harmonica, like I can't remember what it said. It was funny. I took a picture of it. Um but yeah, that place was funny, and I'm pretty sure it's right next to like the classic Portlandia uh feminist bookstore, right? Or like Stace Down or something, right? That would that was fun.

SPEAKER_02 56:46

And that used to be a bookstore, and then it's been a community space, it's been a bunch of other stuff. Turn, turn, turn almost uh shut down for a little bit, but now it's back open with uh new people. But uh that has been a staple of my uh Portland music scene diet for the ten years that I've been here. So it was fun to see you play.

SPEAKER_00 57:04

Yeah, that was great. Yeah, I mean that was the last time I played with Owen. I've seen him, I think, once since then, uh but so it'll be nice to play with him again and and uh um and see him. Uh but I yeah, I mean I had a kind of a thought it'd be nice to play a solo set around now, just because I hadn't played in a while. Yeah. Um so I'm glad to do that, and I think I'll play some new songs. Um but uh that's kind of the only plan right now, to be honest, like in on the horizon. We we talked about should we try to do another show in the s in the summer, but we uh uh haven't really nailed that down because Paul Paul from the band moved to London, England, so um he'll be there for a couple years. Um so yeah, it's we we did record me and Brody and Paul like we did a like bed tracks for a bunch of songs um before he left. So I actually have been a bit more uh engaging with those lately and and recording vocals out of my house and stuff. So um an album that's sort of taking shape now, but it's um but yeah, like I think like a lot of what we've been talking about, just like getting older and kind of have a different perspective on songs and things, I think the what's striking me about the songs we're working on is that they are less um I'd have to say less ambitious. I mean they're not uh they're not I think we're kind of making what might be our most easy to listen to albums in a way, which uh, you know, I I I I I don't know. I'm I'm back and forth on it thinking like maybe some people are not gonna like this very much because it's not as um not as demanding or not as uh serious or something, but um but I'm feeling pretty good about the songs. I mean I like uh they sound good and I I like to have albums in my life that sound good and are nice to throw on, and I think you might be making one that you can throw on. Or I don't know if we've ever made an album that you can throw on per se. Um man. That's a good one.

SPEAKER_02 59:01

I always kinda wanna hammer my friends at some point. Like one of the prompt things I've thought about doing is like, I want you guys to just write a single. Like write a write a radio song, because everybody is just sometimes it like you said, the ambition can maybe get in the way of a song. You have like a good hook or something like that, but you're like, no, I want to be this band or that band. I want everyone to know that I'm like I'm a serious artist or something like that. It's like you know that song uh Yellow by Coldplay, the story behind it is he was just joking. He was playing it during a sound check, and he's just like they keep it really simple, and it's you know, if you like Coldplay, you probably started with yellow and then got into their more ambitious stuff. So there's a role for the it's not lack of ambition, it's just play the song. The song is the song, you know? Don't try to make it end into what it's not sometimes.

SPEAKER_00 59:48

For sure. Yeah. Yeah. I think uh I like a lot of music that's pretty simple and uh I like I like ambitious, weird stuff too, but I do um it's funny what we were saying about writing a single that I was just hanging with my friend Jordan, like from that band Wesley, and we were just uh talking about earlier. And he uh he he's even more than me, probably writes demanding songs. Like he like really his songs don't have verses or chorus structure as clearly sometimes, and I was just like, or he was saying I want to write something more immediate, and I was kind of ripping him saying, you know, we should try this format. It's like he read a verse and then a chorus, a verse, and a chorus. I was trying to walk him through. Um as if he's never heard of that. But he um I would in a way, I mean I'd love to hear his take on like a a pop song, you know, because I do I think it would be cool because he is a creative writer and uh his band is awesome. So uh yeah, I mean it happens every once in a while.

SPEAKER_02 1:00:47

Like you know, sometimes it it turns into a really good song, it turns into it's just something new, you know. Not everything's gotta be everything all the time, you know. Uh but yeah, I don't know, man. I just uh uh this has been about an hour. I usually like to keep these things to an hour just because uh you know, I I want to respect your time and it seems like a good amount of time for somebody to listen to this podcast, right?

SPEAKER_01 1:01:10

Big time.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:11

Uh anything else uh you want to plug uh while you have a chance?

SPEAKER_00 1:01:19

Uh I guess oh I'll say I I am going to try to get rid of some of my merchandise that I've been carrying in my house for a long time. So I I mean it's loose right now, but I'm I'm envisioning a spring sale of some kind. So if you've been wanting to stock up, I'm gonna have some, you know, little kid starter pack sort of deals trying to clear out some of my uh some of my tapes thing.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:46

So let me know when uh that spring sale comes, I'll I'll bump it on the uh on the Instagram page. I've been meaning to like I want to launch a a shop somewhere that like sells all my friends' band's t-shirts and like one place because they're half my wardrobe now is just my friend's band's t-shirts.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:06

Um there's a couple of my friends band shirt, hemlock, Carolina, uh wearing their shirt now. There we go. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:15

Yeah, I have uh I have three or I have two. There are three different t-shirts that have some picture of my wife's face on it, either a cartoon or an actual photo. And I I try not to wear those ones out in public because I feel like that's kind of awkward to stand next to her, but uh, you know. Uh that'll be a whole section in the shop, just uh t-shirts that have my wife's face on it. Uh, she'll love that.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:37

So that's great. I'm picturing like a face and it just says my wife's face or something. It's like kind of a bag or something, my beautiful wife, you know. Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:48

I really want to make uh somebody left in the comment section of one of my early videos, they called me David Foster No Bitches, and I just thought that was the funniest thing I've ever heard in my entire life, and I really want to make that into a t-shirt. Just my face, like it is in all the videos, with just David Foster No Bitches. So if anybody wants to design that, if you're listening to this and you want to make a t-shirt, I will sell that t-shirt. That's a good idea.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:09

Yeah, I like it. Lean into it.

SPEAKER_02 1:03:11

Oh yeah. Alright, man. Uh, this was uh this is great. It was great to finally get to talk to you.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:15

And uh thanks for having me. I appreciate the chance to talk and uh I was nice to get into it with you.

SPEAKER_02 1:03:21

Yeah, and uh good luck with uh the AI apocalypse. I got a million more thoughts on that, so if you ever want to talk about it, like I don't know, I think about this shit all the time. It's why I'm uh a weird guy with uh with a podcast now, actually. It's paid off for me. I did it. Excellent.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:36

Yeah, well mate, who who knows if your uh listeners are real people? That's the real question.

SPEAKER_02 1:03:42

Who knows? I'll get the bots to listen to it, get the numbers up, baby. Uh yeah, exactly. Anyway, exactly. Yeah. Thanks again for uh donuts. Check out Little Kid wherever you get music, and uh look out for the T Tirks, and I'm gonna be able to do it.