Hey Smiling Strange
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Hey Smiling Strange
Jeff Martin of Idaho, My Most Listened to Band
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This was a special one for me, as Idaho was my Most Listened to Band of 2025, and I've been a fan of Jeff's music for years. A wildly underrated band that's starting to get some of their much deserved recognition in the 2020s after forming in 1992.
We talk LA, working professionally creating background music for film, and the magic of imperfect recordings.
Check out Idaho where ever you get music and @idahoband on Instagram.
Today we got uh one of my favorite musicians, uh, the coveted position of most listened to band uh of me on Spotify in 2025. Uh this is Jeff Martin of Idaho. Jeff, how's it going, man? Uh how does it feel to be one of the very few? It's you, base it's basically you and Lou Barlow as the only two that have held this coveted position. Oh, and John Darniel. So uh congratulations on that, John Darniel of the Mountain Goats.
SPEAKER_00Oh, okay.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Gosh, I have a blackout there. Um I know. I mean, it's it's yeah. No, that feels really good. You know, I don't get a lot of shine from from, you know, I have my sort of core following, and once in a while they speak up and tell me that they dig what I do, and and that makes it all worth it. So thank you.
SPEAKER_02Nice, man. I am definitely one of those uh core following people. Like I I just uh I was talking to my friend Isabel, she's been a co-host on this podcast uh in the past, and uh she plays in a band called Baby Tooth with my wife, and I was playing her a bunch of slow core bands that I liked, you know, like Duster, uh Bedhead, etc. And she's like, Oh, you gotta hear Idaho. You absolutely you're gonna love Idaho. And first of all, anytime somebody tells me I'm gonna love something, my immediate reaction is like, absolutely not. You don't know me. I'm a special, unique snowflake. I put it on, and like 30 seconds later I text her. I'm like, all right, you were right about this one, and it's just been in rotation ever since. So uh congratulations again. I I'm sure that the trophy is in the mail. I send a trophy out every year now. I should start sending out uh awards to bands that I like.
SPEAKER_00Like yeah, baseball style trophies. Oh my god.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, it's like a gold glove.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. That's so funny. Yeah, I wonder what do you know what song what record it was or what song?
SPEAKER_02Forbidden EP. It's just that was on repeat. It was like, yeah, for whatever reason, so I mean, maybe it's just the fact that I live in Portland, Oregon, and the weather and that album. It actually shocked me that you are not from either Idaho. I assumed the name of the band Idaho meant that you lived in Idaho and had moved to Portland, like many people who live in Boise eventually move here. Now a lot of people are moving back to Boise because it's kind of cool. Uh, but uh you're down in California, right?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I mean, it's I think John Berry, who I started the band with, liked the the sort of irony in a way, is that we were from LA. I hate even saying LA, Los Angeles, and and uh uh yet we were we weren't part of any scene, we didn't sound like we should come from here, and so we just he thought, oh, you know, we we sort of the something about just that that title and the the the the the feeling that it conjured was like very uh endemic. It it very much described what our band was like. I think that band, I think that movie My Own Private Idaho, it just come out too.
SPEAKER_02So I don't know if that that had a part uh part of the the the reasoning, but I mean I I talk a ton about uh like the Pacific Northwest as sort of this uh I think I've said it almost in every podcast, as this emergent civilization coming into itself. Like America is this sort of emergent civilization project, uh and within that are these micro civilizations, and like one of them is the Pacific Northwest, of which I am sort of adamant on like Idaho is part of the Pacific Northwest. I view Idaho as like the capital of the rural part of the Pacific Northwest, where it's like you know, uh and so like I feel like tapping into that, one I think slow core music is very Pacific Northwest coded, even if you're from California, but like by even tapping like one step further, you're going to the Idaho part of that. And I don't know, do you think there's any uh is there any like rural country in that you hear in your music uh itself? Is there any influence from that?
SPEAKER_00I mean I it definitely initially felt expansive, you know, not not not so urban, and and you know, it's there's there's there's there's sunsets and there's open open plains and and and and and the solipsism, like the sort of loneliness of it, all all sorts of all kind of fits. I mean, I I I don't I I do get inspiration from Los Angeles though, but a lot of it is the you know, I was raised here, and a lot of it comes from probably films and and and and Charles Bukowski and the way it's it's you know it it's it's a funny city, it's a place where people can kind of imagine and dream and sort of it's a it's i i i but um yeah no you you're you're you're you're right on target there.
SPEAKER_02I think uh my favorite description of LA uh comes from uh Jean Bougiard in his book America, uh where he talks about um LA as being a wholly authentic cloth stitched together by completely inauthentic things. Like the palm trees themselves was his primary example. It's like palm trees in LA is totally authentic and completely inauthentic. Those are a native non-native species. They actually like have to maintain them against the will of the palm trees who like can't f fully throw uh flourish in LA. They have to like maintain these things, but like all these parts of LA like you're talking about, is like people can come to LA. I feel like New York is kind of seen as the city where you can go and make yourself into anything you want to be. And LA is the story where you can go and make the story of you into a reality, you know. You make the movie of you first, and then your reality follows. So it's like one is coming from the material bases in New York, you make money, then you get the penthouse. In LA, you shoot yourself in the penthouse and you just associate yourself with the penthouse enough that eventually people just give you the penthouse. And it's like those are the two I think this is why America's two cities are New York and LA, because that's the two sides of America. It's either like you know, it's either purely, purely materialistic or purely, purely idealistic, and everything else falls in the middle.
SPEAKER_00So yeah, that's that's true. I'm glad I lived in New York a little bit in the 80s. That was very formative in a way, but um uh yeah, I mean you're a West Coast guy. I oh, I'm such a West Coast guy. I mean, you know, and and and and and Los Angeles doesn't have a lot of natives really. I mean, it it's the place where people come, like you know, the sort of the uh the uh the uh Brits love Los Angeles, and yeah, people sort of come here uh from elsewhere, and I'll and uh but yeah, you know, I I I would love to to leave someday. And I've lived in London, you know, when I was 20. And I I I I I have this great house in Laurel Canyon that I bought for a steal, and I've got two acres of garden, and and speaking of palm trees, there are 19 palm trees on the property. Oh my god, which is bit a bittersweet issue because they're very hard to take care of. Yeah, there you go. Um and and main mainly just to clean up the the dangerous palms that fall down. But so I'm I'm I'm stuck in this little Xanadu here, this little paradise that I would never leave, uh despite being a little bit tired of Los Angeles itself. Although I keep rediscovering new parts of it. My what my new wife lives in Eagle Rock and I love that highland. Do you know LA a little bit?
SPEAKER_02A little bit. I'm getting to know it more. I'm I'm like originally from the East Coast, and I I I've never spent much time in California. I've always uh I've always been more drawn to the Pacific Northwest than the the California. I like the I'm very much in the California's a great place to visit. I don't know who I would be if I lived there. I'm not sure I'm supposed to see that much sun. I don't think I'm supposed I think I'm supposed to have a couple months where I'm just like, why am I doing anything? And that's the winter than the spring.
SPEAKER_00To have that sort of, yeah, the having real seasons is is awesome. Although being born here, we're not really cut out for it. When I lived in London, I got very I had to deal with this depression in the in the dank, gray, endless winter. Oh and uh, you know, and and we're not really cut out for it. So to to us, there are seasons here because we're just used to the the light changing a little bit and the temperature going down 10 degrees, and that's that's sort of got profound to us.
SPEAKER_02So I uh I talk to people all of the time, uh especially like at the dog park for whatever reason down the street from my house. And we'll I'll talk to them in like August, and they're like, Yeah, I moved out here in you know May from LA. I just couldn't take LA anymore, and it's just been so nice here in Portland, it's so beautiful, it's so sunny. I'm like, have you gone through a winter yet? They're like, No, I've heard it's bad, but it can't be that bad. I'm like, I like immediately like get very serious with them. I'm like, listen, man, you need to make a hobby where you see other people, and there's a lot of indoor lighting, and no matter what you do, just make sure you leave the house once a day, or like it'll start to stack up pretty quick. Like, you think you're ready for this, and you might imagine like anyone listening to this that's not in uh uh Portland. My first winter in Portland from uh October 31st until March, there were three days where the sun got through the clouds. Three and it's it's something you can get through it, it helps to be in a band. I'll tell you that much, because that keeps you moving, keeps you motivated. But like it is it is a different way to be. And then all of a sudden every winter, like in February, I always tell my wife, I'm like, we could just move to LA, we could just move to California, it's right there. We could do why are we doing this to ourselves?
SPEAKER_00But uh Yeah. Well, we're we're we're we're we're supposed to do hard things in life, you know, so it's it's good.
SPEAKER_02Uh speaking of hard things, you started a band, which uh I don't know, might be easy for you, but uh it's hard for other people. A lot of people that listen to my podcast are people that uh have like wanted to start a band at some point in their life. Yeah, what is your history with music? Are you one of those guys that grew up playing all the time? Were your parents into it? Did you take lessons or did you come to it later?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah, my parents weren't that into it. Um but I was really just the second I touched a piano at about two, I was just transfixed with just bathing in the in the sort of sonic bath of of of of like you know harmony, like, oh, I can hit a C and I can hit an F and smash them down together. And then if I move my finger, right finger up, it's like, oh my god, that change just slayed me. So I was just addicted from an early age. And uh, you know, my parents caught on to it and they got me when I was about 12, uh, they got me like a little four-track reel to reel, which I still have. Nice, and uh I still use, but um, or use starting to use again, but I can get into that later. I'll tell you why. But um, but so you know, I I would enlist kids from the neighborhood to come and like smack a snare drum and and and then and then eventually uh in high school, I uh my school was kind of liberal art, kind of artsy. There was I was in a music program that was uh and so I got friends who were could sort of play the sacks and do this and that, and so we would converge on my parents' house, and I had this sort of a studio and just make noise. And you know, it's not I I wasn't very gifted with uh a lot of technical prowess, but there was a part of me that that really wanted to express myself that way. It was painting with sound and and uh you know, so it it it I I was all I've always been doing it. I I wasn't one of those kids that's like, oh god, like what what what are they interested in? What are they gonna do with their lives? And unfortunately, my parents, you know, it was sort of cliche. They were a little bit like, well, you're how are you ever gonna make money doing that? You know and and still a question, I'm sure.
SPEAKER_02Uh everyone's gonna be able to do it.
SPEAKER_00Oh no, and I never did make money off of Idaho. I I got I made money off of scoring television and film, which I very much got completely uh um bored with eventually, and just was like, fuck it, life is short. I'm not just gonna create background noise. So, so so yeah, so yeah, that that all uh just had its own um velocity, and then you know, you meet certain people that are big touchstones for you that open up your world as far as what's out there because I wasn't really being you know, and so there were really like two major, you know, people somebody in high school, and then later in high school who I met who exposed me to like amazing shit, and and that really opened up my world of possibilities as well. And yeah, it's really all over the map, you know. It's not like oh man, classical stuff to crazy experimental jazz to to punk rock to to like I guess right when Idaho started, it was like the we I was really affected by codeine and and and uh and and codeine's definitely just one of those bands that like the entrails of what they produced uh have touched so so many bands reference codeine as well as yeah. I feel like they were early on with that very minimal get to the point, like wow, you don't have to fill the space with with with sound, with with with notes, and and um that was very that that that really was helpful to kind of see that that could be done.
SPEAKER_02When you were learning uh how to play, do you view yourself as like like I I've I've talked about this uh in the past where it's like for me, um a lot of music for me was like anti-homework. Like I had homework and you had to study and drill and you have to like study note cards or something like that. I liked music as I would just pick something up and like try to figure out how to play the guitar with no real instruction. For me, like the important thing for whatever reason was like I don't really want anyone to teach me anything. I want to have an idea in my head and like fight against myself until I discover how to make something that never quite sounded exactly like what I wanted it to do, but like might even be better, might be worse. But it's like that thing, that struggle is like what kept me going, you know. Did you see yourself are or I you know I have other friends that are like, oh, I literally just grinded scales for like four years, and then I got really good, and then I started to discover like what I wanted to make uniquely. Are you more in the camp? Like, how would you describe your learning process uh in music?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I mean it's it's a little bit of both where my parents followed that sort of uh conventional route where like well, maybe you know, in the at that time especially, like, oh, he likes music, he has to have piano lessons. So I did I did have some serious piano teachers, and it got up to when I was in my mid-teens, like I was sort of being groomed to maybe even you know be a pianist, and you know, I very quickly killed that one, but but I got good at it, I got good at it, and I really am glad that I was given that toolbox of you know, yes, doing scales and and getting my hands to the point where they they they they could sort of do what I told them to do. Now, yeah, that's but but again, I love though that I discovered guitar way later than than most people, and not even I didn't even want to play six-string, I just played four-string guitars that I happened to cross, happened upon, and I never learned regular tuning. So in that case, yeah, nobody ever taught me anything on that. And and I I I I just did it a lot and came up with something that I like, and I I prefer that route because I don't know how to to play it very I I came up with my own shtick, my own thing, and and and that that's where Idaho kind of came from. Now, the you know, the the so I I it was a little bit of both. I mean the piano was very formal, I think guitar and rock and roll and all that was like very autodidact, very much like a lot of my favorite bands. I mean, Joy Division, you know, psychedelic first, none of them knew how to play. So many great bands, Velvet Underground. I think I might be wrong. Well, some of these, but but they all taught themselves how to play, and it and and and it, and so they have something unique to offer.
SPEAKER_02Um my wife would went a very similar route. Like, she grew up playing the piano, and I think it was uh it's a really great foundational piece. You know, like I I talk about uh another thing I mentioned on a lot of my podcasts. Like the first band I really got into was the Beatles, and I think that's a great place to start because it just sets a foundation that like later on when you're listening to a band like Ido, you can like hear some things that you can start stringing together, trying to work your way from you know, Love Me Do to uh you know the forbidden EP or something like that. You'll go through a bunch of music history in your head just like piecing these things together. So I just think it's a good foundational spot. Um I've my wife's the same way. She like grew up playing the piano, got into guitar pretty late, and uh I'll plug her band here, uh Yellow Room. We only have an EP online because she does not like to record that much. But uh I just she was able to take the musicality she knew from that, plus this sort of like introduction to a new instrument, the the guitar that she didn't have mastery over, and create stuff that sounded wholly like her. Like I don't think anybody else really sounds like her, and it's like I feel the same way with Ido. You hear it, I'm like, dude, I can hear similarities with other bands, and all the other bands that you mentioned too, all these autodidactic bands. It's like you can hear similarities to other things, but nothing sounds like Joy Division. Joy Division is Joy Division, and that's to me. That's uh what I love about music, you know, uniqueness, uh individuality, expression, all that fun stuff.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, completely. Um, and and uh, you know, it's I I I do sometimes consciously or subconsciously have to realize when I might be aping something to I get I'm very naive or I get very uh moved by something novel or I hear something and I can tend to not want to copy it per se, but I can start to maybe go, oh wow, the this this new band has has the king keys to the kingdom, and like you you you I I I I I get sort of tempted to not copy, but to go too much towards it, and then there's there's always this little bit of parsing about what's really me and what's too much of me being affected by something else. But that's that that that's that that's a very nuanced discussion that I don't even know if I could do justice to.
SPEAKER_02But I think that's honestly a thing that I I talk to about a lot of people. Like I got really into this year, this band Shallow Water, which is from you know, they're from Texas, and they sound like they're from Texas. They have a bunch of really cool uh guitar tunings. Honestly, one of my new favorite bands. I think you dig them a lot because they Oh I'm I'm uh I'm writing it down. Oh hell yeah. They play off of uh you know, like the same kind of atmosphere that you're playing with. Instead of the space being West Coast space, though, it's very clearly like Texas space, but it's still a big empty field, you know? Yeah. And I literally uh because they're they've been on the podcast, and the other day I was like, you know, playing around trying to make stuff sound like them, and I just messaged them and was like, hey, what tuning was this song in? Can you just and then I just started playing the tuning, and I'm clearly trying to rip them off, but like that battle uh between I really like this sound, I want to try to do that, versus like, well, now I just feel like I'm playing a B side of a band that you know, like this is a song that a that band would have gotten rid of because it's not as good as what they were gonna do. But my brother actually gave me good advice on that once where he goes, like, well, even if you played it exactly the same, the difference is gonna be you, like you yourself are gonna whatever the limiting thing is, uh I was just gonna say exactly what what your brother said.
SPEAKER_00You know, no matter how hard you try, and what we're all ripping each other off anyway. Yeah, all the time, and it it's accepted and it's wonderful. It's like it it it it adds to that that that tapestry, that sort of shared language, and it's fine. I mean, and the second you put your voice on it, it's it's yours, you know. And maybe only that band would be able to kind of go, Oh, I kind of hear that you might have been listening to to me when you did that, but no one else added, so it's not a problem really. Um at all.
SPEAKER_02Speaking of voice, by the way, uh I made a a video about yours that did you know. I I saw that.
SPEAKER_00That that's how I yeah.
SPEAKER_02Because uh, you know, it it always goes back to the the Silver Juice David Bourbon line, uh all my favorite singers couldn't sing. And I'm not saying that you can't sing, obviously.
SPEAKER_00Uh I I'm not I'm not a natural singer. I've found a thing. No way. My my wife has got way better pitch than I have. I mean, I she showed me uh uh a talent show she did when she was 10 and did some song that her her father had played a lot. It was either not uh I it was some country I'm very I have a big hole in country music knowledge, but but uh and she was so beautifully sang. She sang it perfectly. I mean, I cannot for the life of me to like just sing on key. Really, really well. It's all about emotion. If I can feel it, then all of a sudden my voice gets a lot better, but I have to I have to conjure the the emotion, you know.
SPEAKER_02What's funny uh when you say that, it's like uh I've noticed in my experience making these little reels, right? I walk around until I have an idea. As soon as I have the idea, the enthusiasm for that idea, I start recording, right? Ah I think they can hear that enthusiasm. What you just said right there, it's like I definitely feel that I can hear I can hear the genuine nature of your voice when you sing. Like it does it definitely comes across that this is somebody like earnestly trying to communicate something, even if you're not like the greatest singer in the entire world, whatever. But it like it fits the music really, really well. And I just your ability to like emote in a minimalist way. I've always found like be as somebody else who can't really sing that well, uh, very encouraging. It's like, all right, maybe I can try to tap into this thing, but like, do you feel that? Do you feel like you're really emphasizing the emotional aspect of the voice? What are you trying to do when you sing?
SPEAKER_00I mean, I'm not trying to do a lot, it's almost more like an abstract painter who just sort of knows. I remember seeing some is it Gerhard Richter? Is that the the artist? The German. I remember there was a documentary, and he would just stare for hours at this abstract painting he's working on, and then somehow you just know when you're finished, or you know, I know how to craft something, and then part of me just knows when okay, there it is. I got it, it's done. And yeah, you know, and you know, there I'm struggling, always struggling with the two different worlds of live and recording. Yeah, and lately I'm way more into like capturing something live with some people in the room, and I'm having problems because everybody's kind of quitting and and everybody it's like I can't I can't keep a band together in my 60s now, like I could in my 20s. But um, but but uh so I I it's not like very technical or or or or planned out. I I just kind of know when I'm in the right space. I'll I'll I'll rec we'll record a song or I'll track drums and guitar and I'll overdub some bass, and then I'll have a melody that I've been work thinking it was gonna be, and and even lyrically. Sometimes I'll go to record it and I'll go like, this is not working, and I'll completely change it. Um and then you know, there's the there's this you can sing very softly, you know, in a recording studio, even if the music's kind of tough. But I can't lately I'm I'm trying to get back to what works if it worked live in a room through a PA, and that's a different thing, and and and you know, I am a little bit ashamed that a lot of the a lot of the Idaho post the first two records, which were pre-pro tools, which were like you really had to play and you didn't have a ton of tracks and you had to just do one vocal track. I got into comping vocals because I'm such a perfectionist, and in a way, it is hard for me to sing really as well as you're hearing me, like in the forbidden EP. That was probably four vocal takes, and I picked the best lines. I mean, I don't feel great about that, but some people say, no, well, no, that's your craft. You're you're crafting something, and there are plenty of other art forms where people, you know, are have have that ability to fix things, and I'm I'm kind of not into the fixing so much. I listen, I watched a Neil Young documentary about his goal, you know, his cool period where he started up to like the last 1970 to uh his last record in like 1969, and he was adamant about like capturing stuff live with all of the the mistakes and and all of the the the rough edges. And I'm really missing that in a lot of music now since everybody started recording in the computer, is that even even bands that are supposed to be kind of like punky and kind of real, I can still tell like this shit is too polished. Yeah. And we're getting away from that danger and that that beauty of like capturing something in the room.
SPEAKER_02And I don't know if we can go back really too much, but you know, you know, it's what's funny is I I've been trying to listen to uh because I feel like a lot of uh like my generation's bands, as they get older, uh I kind of have the same thought. I like I feel like to an extent, everybody's a little too good at recording now. There's no struggle, you know? Yeah. Uh where well the thing that I I've really started to enjoy is like uh some of the the Zoomer music, the kids that are younger. There's this great band Robber Robber, right? Where I've never heard of them. Yeah, they sound like a band that like somebody burnt you a CD and the compression of the audio files was all fucked up. So you're gonna hear like you're gonna hear that very digital clipping noise, but they like work it into the song in a way that makes it sound that so like they've been able to capture uh you know, like I feel like you did a very good job uh with Idaho of uh even if you weren't necessarily recording lo-fi aesthetics, you capture the analog lo-fi feel. Anything in a uh an Idaho song, you can kind of picture like oh maybe this would sound better on a cassette tape on a walk man as I'm like walking down the street or something like that. Uh whereas the kids these days they have an affinity for like a digital lo-fi, a kind of corrupted file thing. And that to me is fascinating. Uh, it's really like drawing me in, even if it's not necessarily like maybe I'm not the target audience for this shit, but just seeing what they do with that.
SPEAKER_00I know I'm so tired of hearing this polished sheen and everything recorded so well because really isn't that song really? I mean, if you're a band, isn't that supposed to like I don't want to show up on stage and just be completely different than the recording? I I feel like you know, you might as well just be Brian Eno or something then and just make yeah. Why are we making rock music if it isn't isn't live? Isn't that the thing? And it never sounds nobody sounds like this polished, microscopic, perfectly compressed and EQ'd and massage thing uh live. And uh it's funny. I know we played with the band who I love now called 22 Degrees Halo.
SPEAKER_02Oh my god, I love those guys. Uh yeah, I met him in Philadelphia and one of the best bands uh out there. Oh my god.
SPEAKER_00And and two of them were getting asked to play these shows by these sort of Gen Z bands now, which is kind of cool. And uh we played with them in Brooklyn, and then I listened to their record, and I was like, I loved how homemade it sounded. Like literally, I think a lot of it is just on a little weird eight-track reel-to-reel quarter inch thing, and like it was so refreshing how immediate and not agonized over and polished it was. And it you know, the old Jeff is very I'm was I'm very I was Idaho records are pretty hi-fi, actually. I mean, the guy that both of our producers were really into recording things really well, and I'm not gonna poo-poo it too much, but something does get lost with all of that uh the all of all of all of that methodical focus on on on the sound quality, you know.
SPEAKER_02A weird thing that I can't like quite wrap my head around, because I don't know if this is just me being, you know, p a snob or whatever the fuck I am. I don't know what I am. I'm a I'm old enough now, I don't really care. Uh but it's like when I hear things that are overly polished and overly corrected, you know, like I've recorded some stuff and like they'll move like my kick pedal so that it's perfectly in time, even though I fucked it up a little bit, and it sounds it's like I just why the fuck did I play it? Like you guys, so you made the kick pedal play there, like just have a machine do it. But it's like to me, weirdly enough, there's like this insecurity of like, well, they aren't gonna like the song if it has imperfections in it. And for me, it's the exact opposite where it's like I yeah. I was listening to uh Hello Shark today walking around, and you can hear uh before I think the song Jackson Brown, when it comes in, it deep in the background, you can hear him just say, uh, just come in whenever. Like he's talking to the drummer or something like that. It's like those little Easter eggs that that to me feels like playing uh the Letter and Zelda Ocarina of time and finding like a weird little gold scatella in a room somewhere and being like, Oh, I'm the only one that ever found that. You know, I know I'm not, but like I like that shit. I like that connection, I like that personal aspect to it.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, it's it's it's funny. We we recorded right before we recorded a rehearsal um uh uh in last month, and I had seven microphones up, just you know, old school drums, just do the weird uh Led Zeppelin thing with the one above and then one pacing this way on the tom, and then just a kick. We had a room mic, and then my voice, and we captured these two songs that I planned on doing on the next record, and they have such a vibe. And then the later weeks that we recorded, it already started losing it for me. And so there's not even it's not even so much about not worrying so much about the recording thing, but it's about sometimes it's about capturing a song in its inception, yeah, too. Like oh, absolutely. That's it's better when the band is kind of figuring it out live in front of you. And so I'm gonna just release that as a digital single, probably, because it's like these songs are done to me, and I haven't worked that way since the early 90s, where we would go for stuff and just keep the first take. And and even the vocals, I'm not gonna overdub the vocals. They didn't they have bleed, and bleed is amazing now, too. You have that, all that it it kind it it it it it congeals it all, you know, and everything is so separate now.
SPEAKER_02You hear every tone in its own little box, and you know it's honestly one of the reasons like uh the the album You're Living All Over Me by Dinosaur Jr. What I've always loved about that is it feels every part of that album feels like you are in a swamp, like you feel it's just mud and things are different. There's reeds and mud and bugs, those are all different. Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_00I just listened to that I just listened to that record again because I loved it so much when it came out, and I can't believe how early that I mean that was like 89 or something, or and uh yeah, it it it it's almost harsh. It's like, whoa, this record is not recorded that well, but I wouldn't have it any other way.
SPEAKER_02I mean it's he literally layers guitar solos over each other so you can't even hear what he's playing. And I like I've done that too. I do a lot of feedback noise guitar stuff in my own music, and I love just being like, fuck it, we're putting a second guitar in there. I didn't like I didn't get it exactly how I wanted. But one thing I wanted to mention when you talk about like that ability to hear the moment a song comes into being. Uh this is something I have thought about since uh I was in like high school or college. The comed uh not comedian, the magician Penn Teller, right? I remember watching him talk about what he calls song poems, which are uh in the 70s and 80s, you could send in the lyrics to a song that you'd written to companies that would then hire musicians that were for the most part like heroin strung out, uh just like absolutely needed the cash guys, but like wildly talented musicians, and they would give them the lyric sheet and they would write a song, but they'd do like 20 or 30 of these in a day. So they would literally like go or you know, talk about it for five minutes, go one, two, three, four, and then bang the thing out. And he says, uh the way he describes it is like 90% of the music is unlistenable, it's just no one's trying that hard. But they're all such talented musicians that every once in a while they hit something, and you you can hear the moment, it becomes a song for the first time, and it's absolutely captured in that moment. Yeah, and they're such talented musicians that even this you know crappy set of lyrics will produce the spark. And he thinks he's like, once you hear the spark, this is the thing that uh this is the part that stuck with me is like once you hear that in a song, everything else sounds artificial. And that's like the thing for me. That was Lou Barlow's uh 703, just listening to that over and over again, and then going from that back to like a polished, even like uh Sonic Youth or something like that, and just like oh my god, listen to these New York cool kids trying so hard when like all you need is a four-track and a dream, man, and it's like it it just it changed me, you know.
SPEAKER_00Completely no, it's I I I don't know how many people really are really know this in their hearts, you know.
SPEAKER_02But yeah, I think it's just uh there's the line from uh Pat the Bunny's like a folk punk guy. Every song is a line as soon as it's played twice, by the hundredth time it's pathological, and it's like there's some element of that that I I believe in. It's like it's my I I want to talk to you a little bit more about like uh because I I view I really struggle like making live versions of songs. One, I usually record a song until I kind of hate it and then forget about it for a couple weeks and then come back and I'm like, oh, it wasn't that bad. So I forget how to play them. And I also played like all the parts, so I you know, I I don't know. I didn't write anything down and it's just like reconstructing it. Uh do you view the recording process like making a recorded song as sort of categorically different than a live song? Are you trying to blend the two together or do you see them as like one continuation of the same thing?
SPEAKER_00Well, I I had a whole period that lasted forever where I was just working alone mostly and I wasn't even thinking about live. It was just like I want to make music and and release it, and uh the the the few times like five years ago by and maybe we'd be asked to do a festival and I'd con got gather whoever friends or Idaho adjacent people and we would we would write new stuff together because it's like we gotta make this work with the three of us. And so I I really I struggle with that all the time. Now I'm basically writing everything live, even if it's just me in front of a PA and standing up and holding the guitar. I I I have to I I I'm making live the arena that that that it has to honor and not creating something in the studio from scratch anymore. It has to be at least played with like one one person, like a drummer and me on guitar, and I'm gonna build the song around this and we're gonna work it out in real time. So in that case, it's easy to play it live because that's where it came from. It came from that that canvas, that that situation.
SPEAKER_02Well, I like that I like that approach because I really hate sometimes trying to turn a recorded song into a live song. Uh yeah. Because it's like I I wrote it to be recorded. I also just find this particularly with um you know, a lot of the atmospheric stuff you do. I noticed you mentioned like Brian Eno earlier, and like, but like slow core, a lot of the Idaho recordings that I really like, the the alchemy of creating that uh that landscape in a recording is very delicate, you know. I I always talk about like with slowcore, three beats per minute faster or slower is gonna wildly change whether or not how the song sounds and feels, and that like the genre of slow core, if you consider yourself that or whatever, is like dusk where it's just this it's this ephemerable part of the day that you can't really describe. It lasts for a very brief period of time, but when it is dusk, it is 100% dusk. It is not evening, it is not night, it is not daytime. Like, you know what it is when it's there, but it's like it's such a delicate thing that like I'm sure I could get there if I recorded live and like or like played live more with these people, but I just I I don't know, I kind of give up on it during the live one because I'm like, let's just write a live song. This isn't this song was never meant to actually be played.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. No, that it's it's it's true. I I can I it it yeah, it it's there they're different things. I mean, yeah, I mean you're something about being in the studio and then or or or just working on something sort of painstakingly and focusing on each part, you can create a world and a feeling uh and maybe in in some ways easier than if you're limiting yourself to just one instrument and shouting into a PA, but but I'm I'm just getting a little bit tired of that. I of of that because because I I know that we're trying to just be a three-piece now. I say we, and there's not even a is not even a bass player anymore. It's just me and Jeff Semitty, the old drummer. But but I noticed that I can I'm I can create really cool stuff if I write a cool song on the four string, and then later I can do a very atmospheric keyboard part that I could just trigger with a foot pedal and just let it play. And you know, it's a little bit blasphemy to me, but it's not something you could create live anyway, because it's it's something I created with the Prophet 5 synthesizer and maybe going through some guitar effects and reversing it. It's too much to expect to play live, especially with zero budget and people. And so just with the the guitar, the bass, the drums, and maybe a sample, very uh subtle stuff. I I've really surprised myself uh about how many basses I can cover.
SPEAKER_02I know I'm I'm getting a little bit off subject here, but you know, it's that's basically the the underlying uh premise of this podcast is I'm getting a little bit off subject.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, well, I'm I tend to be a little a little scatterbrained, so I'm gonna I'm gonna start going off on a on a tangent. Um what they're doing. But yeah, it's it's it's it's I'm I I stay up at night, I it keeps me up at night thinking about how to how to how to make how to make Idaho always. Like how how am I gonna do this? I mean, am I am I gonna do it the forensically in the studio and just be a Jeff Martin sort of world, or is it is it interacting, having that kinetic that that thing with other people, which I really do love. But um, you know, the good thing is when I as I age and you know, I I think I've got 10 more years really of still being able to act like Idaho was a band and kind of do the thing. And then when I'm an old man, I can create, I don't know if you know the record, like the the the the uh the uh the alone gunman is like very piano-based. It's my 2004, and a lot of people really love that record. And you know, I can make that stuff into my hundreds if I want to. I can sit with my sineway and I'll do all that kind of quiet studio work later. But now while I can still hold a guitar and my voice is not ragged, I'm gonna try to capture that power and that in the moment energy more.
SPEAKER_02Well, uh, one thing I wanted to uh attach on to it, it's like first off, uh, your idea there of just being like, yeah, when I get older, uh I'll I'll switch over to something easier. Uh that's why I tell people, oh, like I'm saving cruise ships for like when I can't really do anything else on a vacation. You know? It's like when I need to like walk very small amounts of steps, yeah, then we'll save cruise. It's good to have something to wait for later. But uh you use the term blasphemy when it comes to like pushing a pedal and playing like a pre-recorded thing. I think one of the biggest differences between like the zoomers and the younger kids and everybody older than them, especially in the indie rock scene or whatever, is like exact I love that you use the word blasphemy because I'm recognizing it's like uh I think for millennials, like genre was really important, right? You don't have like an emo song, it can't be like a hard rock song. Like these genres were immutable membranes that could not be passed, and then for other people, it's like, oh yeah, well, we're not a digital band. You know, I've literally thought in myself, it's like, well, I'm never gonna use uh I'm never gonna use a th a synthesizer because that's not like rock music or something like that. Yeah, meanwhile, I I saw this band lots of hands play recently, and it's two kids and like two laptops and a bunch of electronic gear, and they're clearly a rock and roll band. Like they don't give a shit about any of this stuff. There's nothing sacred, and I fucking love them for that. I never thought about it, and it's like, oh, we were wrong, we were dumb. These kids are right, and it's like they're right, yeah.
SPEAKER_00They're right, and me saying blasphemy is is you know, I'm I'm literally I'm the last freaking boomer. Like a I mean, I am I am old school, you know.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, and it it's it's just that was immutable when we were playing, when we were growing up, like these things were real and important, and they aren't anymore. And I love I honestly, all I give a shit is that like things are changing because as long as they're changing, they're not dying.
SPEAKER_01And it's like if music is Oh, it's true.
SPEAKER_02So, but I think it was important back in the day to be like, all right, well, you know, we want to distinguish ourselves from electronic music, which to one extent actually allowed electronic music to advance beyond rock and roll. It wasn't everything wasn't always the same thing all the time. It's like electronic developed its own personality, and now we can take from that and take from rock and mix these things together or whatever.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_02Uh, so it's all like, you know, important to some extent. It's just it's different now, you know.
SPEAKER_00There is a certain thing I want to see, you know, like for instance, it's it's interesting. My my wife's next door neighbor was in Tortoise. He's the drummer, John Hurley.
SPEAKER_02Hell yeah. We just saw them play. Uh I got to sit, I got to stand on the front row. It was awesome. Had a headache for days because uh I'm not my ears are getting given out at this point. But that was great band.
SPEAKER_00And his son is like a huge rock star now, to Hollis.
SPEAKER_03Oh, don't know them.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, too. It's it's just it's just a 20 year old kid who's got all this rock star charisma. He played at Coach. Last year, and he oh nice, but he literally just creates stuff. They got him that software that everybody used. I forgot what it's called. Uh it's it's I don't know nouns.
SPEAKER_02I'm I don't know noun, I just don't know the names of things. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's all vibes-based at this point, you know.
SPEAKER_00He basically he gets up on stage and literally just jumps around to his record and goes like, oh you can't sing the parts because they're all they're all like auto-tuned. And it's like that is a little bit kind of I'm going like, yeah, I get why he's famous because he's just so he's like early David Bowie androgynous, and like you just see him and you're like, whoa, this guy, and he's super smart. And he makes this catchy music. I don't I don't even know what the genres are now, but but uh but but like I I kind of going, I wish I could just maybe if I ever run into him next door when he's having dinner with his dad, and like just try singing, singing at least to it, or or get a drummer or there is a point where it has to be a little bit organic. There has to be something absolutely a little bit but but again, you're saying these people did it with two laptops, and I totally yeah.
SPEAKER_02I mean, they still played the guitars, they still sang everything, they just you know they're coming from. Absolutely, and I but the other thing too is like I I I also like I have the same reaction if I saw somebody just kind of hit a recording and not even sing, or they're just kind of dancing onto it. Me personally, as a 36-year-old fucking indie head music snob or whatever, I would go, I don't really get that. But to me, there's something beautiful about the fact that like there are kids that do get that and they don't explain it to us and they fucking love it, and it's they're going nuts.
SPEAKER_00They're going nuts, they become one amoeba, like one uh uh sort of yeah, they're all jumping, they're all they all become like one being. It's so funny. They're they love awesome. I mean, yeah, yeah. Yeah, but he's infusing that into the music.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, it's like that's their thing. I I want there to be things that the kids can't explain to me because there were things when I was a kid I couldn't explain to my parents. It's like not everything should be for everybody, is kind of my thought process on a lot of this stuff, especially music. I think it's totally fine for it to be a for me to just admit it's not good or bad. It I actually can't judge it because I don't know shit about it, you know. As Mao Zedong said, no investigation, no right to speak. I have not investigated, I can't talk about it. Good for you kids, have some fun, yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_00No, more power to them. And it has to be that way.
SPEAKER_02Uh, I want to touch on because uh, you know, I don't want to keep you too long, but um, it's fine. So, Idaho, the band, uh, how close did you guys get to the point where it's like, oh, maybe this is gonna be my full-time job as doing Idaho? And then how did you get into what ended up being a career making uh it makes perfect sense to me that you would be very, very good at making background music for stuff uh as someone who has been the background soundtrack to a lot of good points in my life? Uh yeah, yeah. Oh yeah.
SPEAKER_00I mean yeah, I mean, I don't know if Idaho, you know, when the Nirvana sort of when the when the the labels were looking for more Nirvana's we were on Caroline Records, which was a cool kind of subsidiary, you know, that had, you know, the first Smashing Pumpkins record and like the hole and like they were kind of a neat New York label, but they didn't we started getting good press, and then for a minute there in like '96, we were being courted. And I say we because then the three sheets to the win, which is like maybe a year before the record you got into, which is after we got dropped, and I did that just with Dan Cita, who was a longtime guitarist for me. And and we were getting courted by majors, and it could have been, you know, that we got a real record deal, but you know, that how often does that even turn into anything like that you're gonna that's gonna support you?
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Unless unless you're, you know, like some some you know big, big, big ass MTV band or something at that point.
SPEAKER_02But it's so hard to make any of that kind of money. It just really the guys that you know are famous, like people that you know their stuff, like they didn't make any money either, you know. I know famous famous bands didn't make any money, yeah.
SPEAKER_00Like I mean, and in some ways, just the music business, that term, it's it's already flawed. It's like unfortunately, I think music purest forms of of like it needs to be made very apart from that world. And unfortunately, it's like maybe everybody's just supposed to have a different job and and do music on the side, but then you can't really immerse yourself enough because you do need 24 hours a day at times to do it, so it is a problem.
SPEAKER_02Um, I mean, that's why my uh my my political philosophy project or whatever is just free time and nothing else, baby. Just increase the amount of free time and everything. Look at the amount of AI shit that is now automating a bunch of jobs. Instead of trying to figure out more jobs for people to work 40 hours a week, just everyone works 20 hours a week now. Oh, yeah. Oh, completely. No, it should be 20. Oh, yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. I mean, yeah, they were talking about that, but you know, then we'd have to get into the history of finance capital, in which case I will once again plug the work of economist Michael Hudson. Everybody should go read him, but like Michael Hudson? Michael Hudson, man. Super imperialism uh is a book he wrote in the 70s about how the US dollar is uh essentially funded. Uh was mostly ignored by the people he thought was gonna read it and was bought up by the State Department and was used as essentially a how-to book on how to run the US Empire. Uh now he has a book called uh The uh Destiny of Civilization is a great one. Killing the host is awesome. Uh he's just one of those guys who has devoted his entire life to his corpus of work. He used to work at like Goldman Sachs and shit like that, and then just spent his entire life studying finance capital and like how money works and everything like that. And he's like 86 years old and just still cranking out work after work after work. No recognition for the most part. It's starting to like bubble up here and there, but uh he's the only he's the only economist I would describe as having the artistic temperament, right? The kind of guy that like he's doing this as a calling, not as a job. And you know, inspecting.
SPEAKER_00Is he like a di does he show up on YouTube? Is he interviewed and stuff?
SPEAKER_02Yes, he is. Uh he will basically all of his interviews will like kind of repeat the same shit over and over again. He like no uh it's you can see how his brain works, but it's very good. Uh go check him out on YouTube or whatever. There's a guy on Twitter named Logo Dedalus that did an interview with him, and uh that's like his first highlighted tweet as an interview. That's a pretty good place to start. Oh, okay.
SPEAKER_01Definitely. No, I that would be that would be great. I'm definitely interested in that.
SPEAKER_02But yeah, but yeah, basically it's just like uh it is it's the model I I've tell the people this all the time. It's like the model of like you're going to be rich playing music, and that your job is gonna be like to to be a musician that solely focuses on their art or something, has only really existed from like 1945 until about 2000. And then after that, the music industry is actually an industry of intellectual property rights. It really isn't uh a music industry, it's an industry of like you know, especially now it's like who's making money off of streaming sites. That's the music industry, you know? It's a it's a very weird perversion of the thing it's supposed to be, but that's I don't know, that's the nature of how these things work sometimes.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I don't I don't see how it changes really. It's it's uh it's crazy. Um and and I think people are just gonna have to to to be more efficient with their free time. And and again, you know, we've been talking about the the the amount of work it seems to create this polished sort of uh uh marketable thing, but maybe maybe it'll go back to being a little bit more DYI and kind of uh capturing the moment and some more human error and and and all of that. And and you you you you don't need to obsess so much. But and then the whole marketing thing, like I cannot I see people I know like selling their souls and trying to have a this persona and and be uh and everything, you know. I I don't know. I mean I'm not a natural at that, and so I I've never been a good promoter, you know. I'm not selling some brands, you know, selling my you know, this this this is who I am and how I feel about everything. It's like you know, it but now it's like the music itself uh can't hold hold the weight. You have to kind of I don't know.
SPEAKER_02Oh yeah. No, I I mean uh obviously coming at fr uh from this uh from the perspective of somebody who very recently discovered that he is good at marketing this type of stuff, you know. Like I make these little videos and you know, surprise me, whatever. I I I'm getting more and more used to it as it goes. Uh but like I tell because Portland, Oregon is very, very into DIY music, like DIY culture. Uh that is like part of the foundational DNA and it's part of this sort of Pacific Northwest mentality or whatever. Exactly. But like I can tell some of the people that I talk to, they do want it to work. They want to be musicians, they want to play bigger shows, they want to be a bigger band. And for those people, I always say the same thing. It's like, listen, if you want it, don't pretend you don't have to play the game a little bit. Like, if you want to go and play bigger shows and stuff like that, say you do. Don't don't do the like cool guy, like, oh, if it happens, whatever. It's like, no, no, no. Say you want to do it, take it seriously. It is going to admit that like you are gonna have to try stuff that you might not have to do, but you're gonna have to try. Like, you should be trying. If you are a band, you want people to listen to you, everybody watches reels. They don't watch music videos, they don't watch MTV, they're not flipping around the radio for stuff. Yeah, make a 60-second song clip or whatever, and make videos of the same clip over and over again until it catches. If you think it's catchy, right? But you have to write for the TikTok generation, or I don't know, maybe because I I've gotten relatively popular being a quote unquote music influencer, and I can tell you from my friends' music that are promoted, the bump that it gives you from getting you know 30,000 people to watch a video, it's really small. It's much smaller than you think it is. It's like of 30,000 people that watch that video, maybe a hundred will listen to the song. That's like 30,000 people on a video is uh that I do that, you know, only a couple times uh a month or something like that. So like you have to get very lucky just to get that hundred people. Like it's hard, man. It's really, really hard. Just know what you're getting into when you do it. I'm not saying don't do it, I'm just saying if you're gonna do it, you yeah, this is the world you have to be in the world that we live in now. You can't lament the fact that it's not 1985, you know.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I I definitely am not wired really for this too much, and in a weird way, I don't like being on working with record labels, but the last record, you know, we were on arts and crafts, and I I bristled a little bit, but they did kind of make me like get on Spotify playlists, and and I remember somebody that worked there was in from Canada and we had lunch, and he said, he said exactly what you said. He said, like, just make some make reels. Like I've got like a treasure trove of like 90s videos of us on the road. And you know, there was a there is an Idaho documentary out there on uh oh SIG. Do you know that it's on it's on like Apple TV and and and stuff, it's called Traces of Glory. A fan made it, uh, and then I gave him all of my I've been obsessed with categor cataloging and filming, and I so I gave him all my stuff and and so awesome. Long story short, I I I I I definitely understand that that that I could tweak it a little bit and probably push the envelope a little bit more, and and even just talking to you about it now is giving me a little fuel for that.
SPEAKER_02So well, I'll give you my spiel whenever anybody asks uh about how to make reels or whatever, and I always say the same thing, which is like you can't ask somebody for something if you haven't given them something first. It's like you can't on this thing. So, like, I talk about you'll if you watch any of my reels, I almost don't talk about music most of the time. I just talk about like ideas. This is something I thought of, you know? And by the way, here's this song, and it might relate to it, it might not. It's just a song.
SPEAKER_00I think that really works. I I think you've managed to cover a lot of ground, but there's still something cohesive about it. It just because it's you, you're being you're you're you're being honest and you're you're you're walking around and capturing that moment where you have some enlightenment about this or that, and so it works. It's not like you've you found a brand almost in in that roundabout way.
SPEAKER_02It's honestly it's it I'm trying to make it sort of a sincere thing. That and that's the thing too. It's like uh in the age of AI and the age of everybody acting like a brand, like you have this playing field now where just literally being a normal person, like a sincere normal person, uh, but like for you, Jeff, like you probably have a lot of information on how to, you know, make like background music for a TV show or a film or something like that. Oh yeah. Give a little tip on like, hey, by the way, if you're thinking of doing this, like this is a way Odyssey if I'm you, I'm like, if you have a scene where somebody is giving bad news, this is what I look to do, and then at the end, you know, you play your background music and it's like, and by the way, uh I'm you know, Jeff Martin of the band Idaho, check out my work on on Spotify or something like that. That is the thing where it's like you you would get an audience probably for that would make great reels or something like that, and then you could honestly splice in with that all the archival footage that you have every once in a while, just like post on your video, the documentary. Like you could do that, it's just you have to give them something early on, otherwise, like they're just gonna go to the next guy. You know, if you're asking for something, they're gonna go to whoever's gonna give them something for free. You gotta respect your audience, man. You gotta respect the game. It's it's but like you could do that, I think that'd be something.
SPEAKER_00Who who knew uh in this podcast I was gonna be given this like sage advice?
SPEAKER_02I had never dude. I've I've been doing this for like uh six months now, and it's just in my brain all the time now. I just have so many fucking thoughts about social media and posting and stuff like that. I never wanted this curse, but it is right, it is who I am now, and it's like I I've asked for so long, like I didn't even have Idaho levels of fame in any of the bands that I'm in, and I just wanted something with any type of recognition. Now that I've got it, it's like it's not up to me to be like, oh, I wish it was something else. Who gives a shit? It's not this is the thing that I'm good at right now. I'm gonna be good at it. Let's go, let's go nuts, man.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah, yeah. You sort of stumbled into it. That's awesome. Um wait, do you so so so who who I this is just I'm just curious. How did that show in Portland come to be? Was that through Nathan or did was it because uh is it you or is there another member of of of Pile Up that that liked Idaho?
SPEAKER_02So uh in that show, uh just recap, I uh Jeff and I met previously. I uh our my the band I played drums in pile up uh opened when Idaho was in uh Portland. And uh I believe that the head of our band, this guy named Nathan, he knew the bookers at um what was it? It was a lollipop shop, which is censored.
SPEAKER_00Oh, and that and that was a confusion. There's Nathan and then there's Nathan of Rivulets. And exactly the whole time. We always emailing. I didn't know.
SPEAKER_02Very confusing.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_02Um, and then what actually ended up happening was uh Pile Up was supposed to play a show earlier that week, and then you asked to play, or like somebody asked Nathan if if Pile Up wanted to play the Idaho show because they thought we'd be a good fit, and everybody in the band's like, Oh, well, do we blow off this earlier show? Like, who's it going? And I was the one that was like, uh just throwing it out there, they were the number one listened to band of mine last week, and the other show is with people I've never heard of. So, like, my thing is in this, and when they heard that, they're like, Oh, yeah, we'll play the Idaho show. That Kyle likes this band a lot, we'll go play it. So I'll take full credit on that.
SPEAKER_00Good. Well, that that that that sort of thing is keeping us alive now. We're getting asked for these weird one-off sort of opening things or festivals. We went all the way to Belgium, and it's happening with with younger bands that that that like even some of them are like my parents, my dad liked you, so I was sort of listening to you a lot as a younger person, and now yeah.
SPEAKER_02I do think your style of music uh fits more with the modern landscape for whatever reason. I think you know, in the 90s when you're going up against grunge and everybody's looking at like grunge and hip-hop or whatever, versus now, I just think there's so much like bombastic music that like having something that sounds analog, that has like an analog vibe to it, and is slower, and it's just like it's not as ADD, you know, or whatever, which is funny because talking to you, it's like we are both very uh top energetic people, and it's like the music is just so mellow. But like I think that it there's something to I think the ADD efication of everything now that kind of almost requires the meditative aspect of music. That music becomes the what used to be the cigarette break. Yeah, yeah. You're the cigarette break for zoomers because they don't smoke anymore, you know. They just vape everywhere, which is like, what's even the point if you're not gonna be able to step outside for five minutes?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, and catch your breath and like reset.
SPEAKER_02Oh my god. Um I don't want to keep you too long. An hour's good. Uh, this is been great, man. Uh, do you have anything that you want to plug? Anything coming up? Anything you're working on? Anything you're excited about?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, well, I mean, I'm excited about the new record because the songs are uh uh I've got a lot to choose from, and I picked a really good ten and you know, famous last words. We'll start it and it'll it'll genuflect into something else. But but there's that. Um and uh uh you know it's it's it seems to be there seems to be the landscape and the interest is still out there in very odd ways for Idaho to keep going because because in many respects it's it's like I'm so surprised that it started in you know 92, which is like 34 years ago. And uh um, so so uh yeah, and and some shows exciting opening for some bigger bands. I don't want to jinx them, so I won't say anything, but things are things are in the works for that, which is crazy. And um uh uh uh yeah, I'm gonna put some more. There's a cool cassette that sold out of a live show we did rec uh last November in Switzerland, and I'm gonna make that uh uh digitally available soon. And then and um gonna do a lot of like cool like releases of like sing like digital singles and things, and um but yeah, it's uh that's awesome, man.
SPEAKER_02Where can people follow you?
SPEAKER_00What's the best uh uh they can follow um uh uh uh Idaho Band on Instagram and then IdahoBand.com and um uh I'm not on TikTok. I'm still I'm holding off on that one. I don't know why. And um you gotta draw the line somewhere.
SPEAKER_02You gotta draw the line somewhere. There's a lot you really do. And I don't do the YouTube shorts, so that's like that's the one I you don't, really.
SPEAKER_00Interesting. Because people say YouTube sometimes is the biggest platform, really.
SPEAKER_02But well, maybe I have plans in the works to do some video essays. Uh, and I just my brain is like, well, if I'm gonna do YouTube, I'll do I'll start posting on YouTube when I start having like a YouTube video to draw people to. And part of it is just it's just a lot, man. It's like it's a lot to even manage a couple of these different accounts. I also I'm trying to blow up on uh Xiao Hong Shu so we can get uh so I can work on my uh Shojongwen. I'm trying to get better at speaking Chinese, so awesome.
SPEAKER_00Well, cool man. I'm I'm glad we did this.
SPEAKER_02Uh as soon as you have anything that's coming out, any shows that you want to play, anything you want to promote, let me know. I'll bump them on my uh Instagram page. Like the the one fun thing about being a somewhat popular Instagram page is like, oh, I feel so it makes me feel so good about myself to like post in my story a friend's band or something. Oh yeah. Totally self-serving, obviously. But like I'm happy to promote whatever you you got coming up. Oh, amazing.
SPEAKER_00No, that I I I I totally that that I that post came out of the blue and it was so great, and I love David Berman so much. So it was Oh yeah.
SPEAKER_02I honestly uh you were one of the bands that like sometimes I just throw bands in here and there. It's like I wanted to make sure I had a good one for Idaho because I know you just are one of those bands that does not get the recognition that I would like it to have.
SPEAKER_00It was so it was such a wonderful like like uh uh ingredients there. It worked great.
SPEAKER_02Oh, yeah. And also my audience loves when I mentioned David Berman for whatever reason. Yep. Put that one in the bottom.