The Best Songs Come From Deep Emotions - Interview with Lazer Beam

Had a great conversation with Lucust of Lazer Beam.

Lazer Beam Website  -  Bandcamp  -  YouTube  -  Spotify

Transcript

Intro

SPEAKER_01 0:03

Give me um can we take five real fast? I'm sorry, I just had to um Okay, I'm gonna be good. Sorry. I just I just had to be real bad. Okay. Um no man, I'm good, I'm good, I'm good. Okay, okay. Okay, give me two minutes.

SPEAKER_05 0:54

I'm your host, Steve Swisher. On the show, we interview people making music in their bedrooms, basements, and home studios. We're gonna talk about hardware, software, tips and tricks, everything that goes into their creative process. We have a great episode for you today. We're gonna be talking to Lucas, who is the front man and producer for the band Laser Beam. We're gonna listen to one of their songs and then jump into that interview. So here is Laser Beam with sorry for the heartache.

Song 1

SPEAKER_04 1:38

Spox gotta know that gotta be a big shot, shada trip you're in a rest. Now in the grave take a gonna give a shit.

SPEAKER_03 1:59

Come on, let's go, come on the life fire. Come on, let's go, come on in life fire.

Interview Part 1

SPEAKER_05 4:42

Okay, welcome to the producer's chair. I'm here with Lucas, aka Laser Beam, and we just listened to his song, Sorry for the Heartache. Lucas, how you doing today, man? I'm doing good, Steve. Thanks for having me on the podcast. You bet. I'm excited to talk with you. I heard a little bit of your background story when we were talking through email, and uh I'm excited to dig into that. Right on. How did you come up with the name Laser Beam?

SPEAKER_01 5:02

Well, back uh I was a teenager. I was uh in just getting out of a band with my dad, and so I was trying to be the opposite of my dad because dads aren't cool. Um so, anyways, I tried to start my own band, my own rock band, and trying to find a name for a rock band in this day and age that's only one word or two words is difficult. It's hard. So I played a lot of uh Call of Duty zombies when I was a kid. Ooh, and the cool the uh coolest weapon in the game at the time was the ray gun. So I wanted to call it ray gun, looked up, of course, there's a band called Ray Gun. Um they're on RCA Records. You know, cool band, but uh couldn't use that. So what do what do ray gun shoot? Laser beams. Boom, there we go.

SPEAKER_05 5:47

Okay, yeah. So got kind of a second choice there then.

SPEAKER_01 5:50

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 5:51

Still thought it sounded kinda cool though. Yeah, it does sound cool, man. I I like it. I always like asking that question. There's always interesting stories, or usually interesting stories, how someone came up with that. Sometimes it's just a you know, random name generator or something, but that's interesting too. So how long have you been producing? What you got what got you started into it?

SPEAKER_01 6:06

Okay, so currently I am 30 years of age. I've been producing since I was maybe 12 or 13, if you want to call it producing at that time. My dad was a musician uh in a band called Operator Generator. It's a pretty well-known rock band here in the Bay Area. Uh, they're not around anymore, but he would constantly be bringing home music equipment, music gear, music from the label that he was on. It's the label's called Man's Ruin Records. Um, kind of a cult underground deal at this point, so it's kind of cool to be involved in all of that history. But he had a digital boss BR900 track recorder, and he was trying to do these home songs because I don't know where he even got that thing from. He probably sold or traded some drugs for it or something, or traded some guitar for, you know, I don't wheeling and dealing, sort of sketchy stuff. So he got he got this thing and he's like technologically remedial. So he uh basically just got angry in the living room day after day after day after day trying to figure this thing out and and called me and like, hey man, you know, like he'd be like, nah, I can't figure this thing out, you figure it out. Sort of deal. He'd be like, hey man, can you you know can you help me help me record my songs? I I just need you to press play and record at the exact same time, right? And it took me a few tries to get it, get it right because I didn't know that he wanted me to hit record and play like exactly at five seconds, right? To punch him in because he didn't know how to set a cue. But um Yeah, anyways, it started doing that, helping my dad when I was like twelve, and he just ended up giving me the machine. He's like, Yeah, you can have this thing. I can't figure this thing out. This thing sucks. Like he would get angry at stuff and like degrade equipment, you know, like inanimate objects. And then he'd give it to me. So he gave me a um a Les Paul guitar, he gave me a Boss BR900 recorder, and basically a job to record him. And that's actually on YouTube is my I still have my very first project up on YouTube. It's called Pray Mantis, but it's pretty cool. It's pretty terrible sounding, but it's also cool. Like a 12-year-old did it with his dad, so I think that's cool.

SPEAKER_05 8:14

Yeah, yeah. I want to check that out. I've definitely been on both sides of that. I've definitely uh helped my parents with technology they didn't they couldn't figure out, and asked my kids to help me with stuff that I wasn't able to figure out. So totally get both sides of that issue. So yeah, that's that's kind of kind of the background. What what kind of music were you listening to growing up? What what was the style? What was your dad making?

SPEAKER_01 8:33

Yeah, okay. So my dad, um my dad was in a rock band. These days, I would say it would be probably considered stoner metal or alternative metal. Um like Black Sabbath, but on a bunch of uh, you know, bunch of hard drugs, probably. But um it's cool, man. It's cool. Not saying Black Sabbath wasn't on hard drugs.

SPEAKER_05 8:55

Yeah, I was gonna say, can you can you get more hard drugs than Ozzy and Black Sabbath? Maybe maybe.

SPEAKER_01 9:01

Yeah, I mean, probably, right? I mean, uh masses are reality. Hell yeah, those guys are probably all coked up. But anyways. Yeah, so it's cool stuff. I mean, so I grew up with a lot of hair metal, a lot of uh Guns N' Roses, and uh let's see, like my dad was he was kind of like the guy. Like he knew, he was like a curator, like before, you know, before people are making playlists these days and stuff. He was the guy, you know. If you needed to find a new band, he knew everybody and he knew like little details about every band. He was the guy who he'd collect the um the packaging and he'd read it all and he'd go to the shows and he'd ask all these people all these questions, he'd be hanging out with them, and he's like very social. So grew up a lot around like like hair metal and stuff and like glam and um a lot of pop. Like my dad loved Michael Jackson too. He'd be like the scary dude in Walmart with like dreads and tattoos, and he like smelled bad, but he knew the best music and he loved pop music. Like that was like the connection between me and him because I was kind of burnt out of all this heavy metal crap, and but he he liked pop and it was refreshing when I was a kid when he put that on and be like, you know, so I feel like I grew up with a little bit of both of that, and it it helped me really open my mind's eye to oh yeah, you know, I like to I like to move too. I like to I like to be angry and I like to move, you know.

SPEAKER_05 10:25

Yeah. Okay. Now you've definitely branched off from those things and created your own style here with with what we're listening to today. I'm really liking the feel for what you got. And uh how how long did it take you to make that track that we heard?

SPEAKER_01 10:36

Okay, so sorry for the heartache. That was a cool one because you know how they say, like, you know it's a good song if it comes together quickly. That song kind of came together really quickly, and it was emotionally charged. Like, I was living in Reno at the time, and I was like trying to start a band, and I was like going out, like kind of my first time, like going out to shows and trying to be involved in a part of a scene. I didn't know what the hell I was doing. Not to mention, like, I didn't know any social etiquette, and you know, I'm like, I don't know, I'm just a big, big, dumb kid. So at this point, you know, I I had made all of Oblivion besides that song. Sorry for the Heartache, it's the last song. And I had a bad experience at one of these shows with one of these other people, and this band was like young, man. They were like 21, 22. I'm like 25, 26, and you know, I'm thinking to myself, like, man, I'm 25, you know. These guys should show show me some respect. Like, I just recorded all this music all myself, did all the, you know, this and that, and got like a big fat head ego about it, and I got all pissed off of these guys. And I I went home and I wrote sorry for the heartache because I was really mad, and uh, I was mad at them for their parents having more money than my parents, and I was mad at them for being at a higher level than I was at what I wanted to be doing. So I felt uh I felt jealousy, and that's a jealous song, man. And you know, it's really, it's really um I I kind of like twisted the lyrics to make it sound like more like a relationship type deal. But to me, the core meaning of that song was I just felt like, man, I feel sorry for you guys. Like feels I feel sorry that you guys are paying to play right now and doing this and that. And but you know, in reality, that that wasn't the truth. But that song came together in like 20 minutes and to record it maybe maybe four or five hours, so from top to bottom. But I was I was pretty proud of that one.

SPEAKER_05 12:20

Yeah, it's fun when something comes together fast like that. You have have an idea and you just feel inspired and um in a relative relatively short time. Um what's some of your go-to tempos for this style of music?

SPEAKER_01 12:31

Um, for the oblivion stuff, um, I may I mainly kept it slow. I was like kind of going through a breakup and I was stoned all the time. So life just moves slower, man. So usually like a hundred, maybe a hundred twenty. Just slow mid-tempo, sort of kind of just chill, relax, and kind of hold your hand through your emotion type tempos.

SPEAKER_05 12:53

Yeah. And you explained kind of how sorry for the heartache came together. Is is that how you normally start a track? It's just you know, an idea, the lyrics or a chord progression that comes first.

SPEAKER_01 13:03

Yeah, so for me, um I'm a I'm like a a chronic noodler, so I'll come home and or I'll be at work and I sometimes I bring my guitar to work too. I'm a bus driver, so I have a some downtime and I'll play the guitar, but I I like noodle constantly. And I I feel like maybe it's a bad thing that I don't practice like all the time like hardcore scales and hardcore fundamentals and stuff, but I'm I I feel like that stuff, you know, I I've been playing for 20 years. It's like I know how to play my guitar at this point. And at this point, I'm like bastardizing the way that I am playing my instrument. So I feel like I just noodle around until I hear a uh like a good pattern in there. I I feel like I have really strong pattern recognition is one of my strengths. As soon as I identify like a really cool kind of movement or feel, then we can work from there and and it's just like layering upon layering. I feel like one of the best tools that I have is is a looping pedal for that reason because it it keeps you in the same feel, right? Like, you know, that beat isn't gonna change when it's looped under you, but you can add all these little top lines and all these little accents and highlights, and and then the real crafting of the song is pulling all of those away and deliberately, you know, shoving those in people's faces and taking them away with like the dynamic. I feel like that's the biggest part of the song. So yeah. What what looping pedal do you have? It's the Ditto V one, whatever that is. It's a TC electronic, I think. It's like the crappiest, the cheapest. It's the single looper. Okay. Um, nothing special. It's cool though.

SPEAKER_05 14:35

Yeah, that's fun. I got I think it's the flashback too that does does some of that. Yeah, I don't do a whole lot of whole lot of looping stuff, but I'd like to. I I think it's really cool. Uh people putting together stuff fast, using looping pedals. So it's it's something I'd like to I'd like to get and experiment more with in the future.

SPEAKER_01 14:51

Oh, totally, man. Dude, the looper is one of the best songwriting tools. What would you say your most used piece of hardware is? Uh, my most used piece of hardware. At this moment, probably I have a task cam 388 tape tape machine. I'll use that for uh like a lot of home demos lately, I've been using that for. We've been wanting well, I've been wanting to. I say we, but it's really just me. I want to use this thing for um I don't know. I like the way that the uh the knobs on this thing sound. The preamps are pretty cool in this thing. It sounds vintage, it sounds mellow, fluffy, cool. You get some like uh tape saturation if you really like slam the input gain. I I use that a lot. Um and pretty much the only other piece of hardware that I'll use is I've like an Art Pro VLA 2 compressor that I really like. I use that on pretty much almost everything.

SPEAKER_05 15:39

So Okay, yeah. Yeah, I've enjoyed using some tape as well. Um I got a couple mini cassette players that I'll record into, you know, record a synth into or something, and then kind of wave those around in the air, creating a stereo effect, you know, uh into a mic, and then use that, you know, for for the base of a basis of a lo-fi track or something. You can get some pretty cool sounds, just you know, kind of using one at a time, you know, bringing them towards the mic and pulling it back away and you know, creating a stereo field with it. It's kind of fun.

SPEAKER_01 16:05

So the black keys did that back in the day too. So the black keys also used one of these Task M388 things. The big reason that I got it because a lot of this old music that I listened to was made with one of these machines, so I sought out to go find one, like OCs, um, some old Jack White stuff, um, black keys. They all use this stuff, and and one of the techniques that I read about when I was reading about the black keys was they would hold a microphone like six feet above an amp on the floor facing upwards. They'd hold a mic over it and then they would spin it like like helicopter it, sort of deal, to get like a stereo field sort of thing. So it'd sound like it's spinning around. So yeah. It kind of reminded me of that.

SPEAKER_05 16:45

Yeah, I love to do experiments like that, man. Just you know, something weird that you can you can get some interesting sounds doing it that way. Yeah. What's your dream hardware that you don't have yet?

SPEAKER_01 16:54

Um, yeah, probably back to more tape stuff. Probably like a studer 24-track, two-inch tape machine or or like an MS 16. Like that's my next goal is to get a 16-track um recorder. I I love the eight-track, but I'm extremely, extremely limited here. I just want more, I want more drum fidelity and clarity. And I love layering. So I feel like the extra, you know, the extra layers would be cool. And if we're talking like rack gear, I don't know. I would love some uh if anybody wants to donate some uh some NiV preamps, I'll I'll take them.

SPEAKER_05 17:27

Yeah, there you go.

SPEAKER_01 17:28

Basically using bare bones equipment at the moment. Uh, we've been making music with the uh the the garbage pile lately, so it's been fun though. And it it's proof that you can make cool stuff with garbage.

SPEAKER_05 17:39

So absolutely. I think people would be interested. No, you you said that you recorded this stuff uh out of a van.

SPEAKER_01 17:45

Yeah, so let's see. I had a 2005 Econoline shuttle bus for a minute. That's what everything started in. We had like a full conversion thing, and my girlfriend at the time and I were living in it, and it was like a little house, and we had like a little laptop in there with some microphones, and and my amp was in there, my guitar is in there, and I kept it under the bed. Yeah, so I recorded, I started with the songs You Drive Me Crazy, which I previously had mentioned that I had sampled those drums. That was the first one that I tried. And the second one that I did was it's a song called Don't Tell. Both of these songs are on the first laser beam album, the pink album. It's untitled, it just says laser beam and it's pink. But, anyways, I I went outside under an overpass, like kind of out in the middle of the desert in Tempe, Arizona. And the first few I recorded the drums outside of the bus and then everything else inside. I'm calling it the bus, but it's like a short bus. And then um, so those two songs came together like that, and eventually I sold that thing, and I got a sprinter van, like an old crappy one. And uh, that same girlfriend totally dumped me. She left to Nepal, but she left, and I had this whole Sprinter van to myself. So I just spent all day recording stuff and finishing up songs that I had ideas on already. Yeah, basically, like all of the guitars, all the vocals, which is a bulk of the album, were recorded in a sprinter van the side of a highway at like 10 30 at night. So I think the album actually I think you can hear a lot of that, like loneliness in the album, which is pretty cool. Yeah, it's cool. It it turned out cool, like it totally came out like a vibe, and that's my whole idea behind all of this is like how can I make you see what I was seeing at that moment in time?

SPEAKER_05 19:40

So Yeah, I when I was uh first got my driver's license back in the early 2000s. My parents had I think it was a 94 Ford Aconaline. It was black, you know, that you'd close the curtains in the back, and the back bench would lay down into a bed. We used to use that to travel around to, you know, YMCA's boys and girls clubs. I had a punk band back then. You know, we would uh load up all our stuff and go go play little shows. So yeah, I spent a lot of time in in a van like that as well. Never recorded anything out of it, but uh used it to just haul haul us around and our gear and uh whatever girls we could get to be our groupies for the day. Yeah. Hey, what was your band called? Uh that one at that time was Fight for Finland. Nice. Yeah, I I don't know if there's anything available online uh for it, and I'd be embarrassed if anyone found it at this point. You know, we were pretty cool that's 16, uh playing for free at wherever where whoever would have us, basically.

SPEAKER_01 20:28

That's pretty cool, man.

SPEAKER_05 20:29

It was it was a lot of fun though. You know, the fact that you're able to record out of something like that, it really goes to show that, you know, people really put a lot of kind of overemphasis on, you know, building out their studios and feeling like they need to have thousands of dollars in in foam, insulation, and other things to be able to get a decent sound. And it's just not true. That you know, there are some things that you you can do for very cheap to make your room sound great and be able to record in your home or in any space you have, you can work with it and and still be able to achieve decent sound that you don't have to invest all this money to be able to do that.

SPEAKER_01 21:02

Yeah, you're absolutely right. Like, um, for example, I've got this IKEA cubicle partition sitting behind me. It makes the uh garage sound great. It's it's uh, you know, you don't need much else besides some moving blankets and a few partitions. Yep.

SPEAKER_05 21:17

I think there's a lot of a lot of easy, cheap solutions, you know, around the house that you can do to be able to get a good sound to record whatever you're trying to get. You know, the the whole purpose for recording is trying to get you know the sound that you're hearing of that instrument and trying to get it into the dog or onto the tape in as best clarity as you can. And you don't need dead silence. A lot of times you want some of the room sound in there.

SPEAKER_01 21:37

And totally.

SPEAKER_05 21:38

People spend a lot of time and a lot a lot of money that really they don't need to trying to get these studios perfect. And you know, it's just it's just pretty unneeded, especially with with a lot of the awesome mics that we have access to now. And I know. Um, you know, I know, dude.

SPEAKER_01 21:52

The other access to the I'm talking into this Octava three nineteen right now. Oh, it's so buttery smooth. I love it. And the best part It was only $200. Nice. That's the coolest thing. It's like, uh, yeah, you don't you don't need to spend thousands of dollars on gear. You can, and I'm gonna sound pretty hypocritical when I say this right now, but I love uh recording music at home and I I love doing it home and I think it sounds great. I think it's totally sounds unique. Like this the space that we have in the garage here, we've been calling it Riff City because it's very inspiring and it's just riff. It's Riff City when you come down here. So it's like, anyways, um, I think it sounds good here, but to be totally honest and hypocritical, like we are going to a really awesome studio here in a few months called Shark Bite in Oakland. Basically, in my honest brutal opinion, I feel like the last five percent of like a pro, pro, pro recording is gonna come from who's who sets up the gear and who puts the mics where and the space that you're in. So, like what type of space do you want, right? Like our ears are have been conditioned to, at least in rock and roll, has been um big rooms and kind of like, you know, everything kind of has that like kind of mellow reverb behind it. Here at home, it's not gonna have that mellow reverb. It's gonna have either like a harsh frequency from like being in a garage, or or it's gonna be like closer to be totally being dead because we're gonna artificially put that room sound in afterwards. With rock music in particular, I feel like sometimes you can't hide the fakeness. And sometimes in rock music, being a little more raw and a little dirtier actually will take you further. I feel like uh I'm really trying to go for like a Zeppelin style style production for our next album, have it be like raw, raunchy, you know, kind of recorded. Like they recorded drums in a house. You know, that's awesome. Like they put them in in the stairway for um when the levee breaks and just put microphones like 20 feet above them or something. But um, you know, I feel like sometimes it was rock and roll. Like you gotta be rock and roll to sound rock and roll, you know. So you gotta record it in a in an alley or someone's attic or you know, that's the best way to sound rock and roll. But if you wanna if you wanna hang with guys like Macedon, you wanna hang with guys like Red Fang, Queens of the Stone Age, you gotta go to a pro studio, or you gotta hire somebody that's like totally pro, you know, been doing this their whole life, knows what to listen for, what to bring out, like you gotta have some help. Rock is hard to do at home, or else it'll just sound flat and crappy.

SPEAKER_05 24:34

Yeah, no, I I totally agree. You know, there's there's no substitute for an audio engineer, you know, who knows what they're doing and can move that mic, you know, a couple inches from where you had it and it totally changes the sound. And uh, you know, and in a studio where the room is totally controlled and you can achieve a production quality there that you can't get at home. But uh it's it's not something that should keep people from trying to make stuff at home, you know, because they're not gonna be able to get, you know, exactly what that studio can. Like, you know, you won't. And and that's okay. And that uh, you know, my my thing is always people shouldn't wait to try to start making stuff until you know they've they've been able to totally re do out their studio and you know try to try to make it perfect because it's it's still just never gonna be perfect unless you're spending millions of dollars, basically.

SPEAKER_01 25:17

Yeah, and it it also depends on your end goal, you know, because for me I'm totally satisfied with um pumping out sketch demos. You know, I'll do like a sketch demo every day or two that's like a minute, minute and a half long. Yeah. Um, and it sounds like crap, but honestly, some of those recordings are some of my favorite because you know I can hear what so-and-so was doing in the other room, or I could hear, I don't know, the mailman put mail in my slot right now. I could hear like all sorts of stuff in the song and it reminds me like, oh yeah, I was alive at this point and I was having a good time.

SPEAKER_05 25:47

Yeah. What's your desert island hardware piece? What would you take if you could only take one thing?

SPEAKER_01 25:52

I would say uh my iPhone. So the iPhone is probably the best tool that anybody could ever have. I hate to say it because I hate the iPhone and I think it's a cancer to humanity, but also it's a very good creative tool because there's people on there who have created apps, and I'm totally gonna shout this out. I'm not sponsored by them. I do not uh I mean, I will endorse them, but this is not paid for or anything. But they're called Spire, and it's a free app that you can download to your iPhone called Spire. It's a pocket DAW digital audio workstation. You can layer as many voice memos as you want in a row. You could edit them, you can mute each one, you can mix, you can pan, you can add effects, you can do all this stuff from your iPhone.

SPEAKER_05 26:36

Yeah, and i iPhones also have you know a lot of the drum machines and soft sense and everything. Pretty unlimited in what you can do on those nowadays. Yep, that's that's my my answer is the iPhone, unfortunately. All right. I'm here with Lucas with Laser Beam, and we're gonna go ahead and listen to your second track here, Dandelion Wishes and the Knight of Wands. Let's give this a listen and then we'll jump back into the interview.

Interview Part 2

SPEAKER_05 31:29

All right, there we go. We just listened to Laser Beam with Dandelion Wishes and the Knight of Wands. That's another really cool track. Thanks. That's a fun one. How long do you take to make that one?

SPEAKER_01 31:39

I think that song was fragmented over a few weeks, maybe. Um that song I had also wrote in an emotional state when I first uh I first met my girlfriend and we had uh a great time, but I think she was with someone else. So I was like, I was just like, man, this sucks, you know? So um, so I think I had originally wrote a demo right then with the music kind of the same way and the same chorus, the do you want me for my body or muscle sort of thing. And um, I don't know, I think I think that song kind of sat in the vault for like three or four years. And then she dumped me, and then I'm like, all right, what a what a great time to bust this back out. So maybe uh maybe I don't know, maybe did the instruments in in a day and vocals another day. And I remember piecing it together like like having a, you know, just doing the guitar. Like I remember finishing the last thing on that guitar. The last thing I did on the song was like a really mid-heavy guitar track during the courses, and it was just like very mournful and like sorrowful sounding, so it just felt good to just just play that really loudly, you know, and just blast myself and get lost in oblivion and just like try and cure the pain Yeah of uh losing your partner. So but anyways, um it came together fairly quick. All things considered, I just kind of drug it out over a long time.

SPEAKER_05 33:02

Sure. Yeah, a lot of the best material comes from a place of deep emotion, you know, and a lot of that's pain. It kind of inspires you to to create. It does, man. Yeah, what's a goal that you're currently chasing?

SPEAKER_01 33:12

Um, you know, I want to be a professional at this. I need to get more organized. That's my biggest thing, is I I'm like a mad scientist. Like my desk is just insanity. And inside of my brain looks my deck like my desk, and inside of my project files, sometimes it can look like insanity. So um I think that's really holding me back from doing this all the time. I just need to figure out a way to slow down sometimes. Sure. I definitely want to do this full time. Um, like I said, I'm a bus driver. Um, that's also what our song Derelict is about, it's about all the cool people that that I see on the bus. But anyways, um I don't want to do that forever and it sucks and it's soul sucking. And I'm sure if you've ever worked an office job or anything where it's like, you know, it's like, well, I have to be here and I have to drive this thing right now, and I cannot do anything else, and I cannot get up and walk away, and I cannot shove this food in my mouth right now because I'm hungry, and I can't go pee because I'd have to pee for the last two hours, but I got all those people on my bus. And I can't pull over. You know, it's just like it's a very demanding job in a very passive, aggressive way. So I don't want to do that anymore. I'd rather just be surrounded by uh music. I feel like I feel like I'm starting to understand the fundamentals of how to lay out a song, you know, how to arrange a song. I'm starting to understand the fundamentals of like dynamics. I feel like I'm getting way more well acclimated to um recording music. I feel like, you know, the years go by and I just I'm just slowly getting better at it. So um hopefully in the next five years, maybe, maybe my band can be going and maybe I can just be like an awesome recording studio here in the Bay Area in the future. That's my goal.

SPEAKER_05 34:45

Yeah, I hope that comes true for you, man. I've definitely worked a lot of jobs where it's just, you know, you're just there to pay the bills because you gotta gotta feed the kids, you know. Yeah. And uh you're right, it can be pretty soul sucking.

SPEAKER_01 34:56

It's not something you you're passionate about at all, you know. Soul sucking, man. Wait, wait, hold on. Let me give a shout out to um, I'm gonna give a shout out to Sabrina and oh, I'm forgetting. Um, Jesus Christ here in the Bay Area. Um, they have a song called Soul Stalker, but I'm just gonna say Soul Sucker real fast, just how they say it in the song. All right, you ready? Here we go.

SPEAKER_04 35:15

Soul Stalker! Soul Sucker!

SPEAKER_01 35:20

All right, shout-out to Sabrina. We love you.

SPEAKER_05 35:24

Right on. Um, what's the hardest thing about producing from home?

SPEAKER_01 35:29

Uh the hardest thing about producing home from home is the time because I personally am obsessive. Like I obsess over the things that I like. If I have a song that I'm making and I'm into it, or if I'm working on a song with somebody else, I will obsess over the song until it's like off of my plate. And the thing that's been difficult for me lately is uh the at-home life. Sort of um, you know, it's like out of the house 10 hours a day at work and then come home and it's it's late already. So it's, you know, it's it's already 10 o'clock at night and and then you have to be up early. So it's like, when do you find the time for this stuff? When do you find like, you know, when do you find the time? But that's why I like to have my time be my time. Like, you know, I'll get home at 10 o'clock and and I'll obsess all night. I'll be up till six in the morning, I'll sleep till nine, and I'll go straight back to work because I just like obsess over this stuff, you know? I I it's part of my workflow. If if I have any distractions at home, like I need to uh cook dinner or whatever or prepare for the week, I'm gonna be doing that. And that's what I'm gonna obsess over, and I'm not gonna like it. Sure. But uh when it comes to music, once I'm in the zone, I cannot be stopped. I'm like a freight train rolling, you know. There's no stopping this bus, like until it's done. Um, my first album uh called Burn the Insects that I did with my dad and another producer, Chris Hughes, who I need to shout out on here. Chris Hughes has had my back and he's he's been like a mentor pretty much my whole life. We played our very first show in Oakland, Oakland, California at this at the store club in 2015. And he was the only person in the audience, and he came in at like 4 p.m. in the afternoon, and he gave us his card, said, Hey, I'm working at Expressions College up the street. I have a final project. You guys are heavy as F and I want to record you guys. So we called him and um he recorded us, and and our drummer quit, you know, right before we left. Like we were based out of Arizona, and he's like, I live in the bay, so we had to drive over here, but it was essentially free. You know, a free two-inch tape recording of your band is like like, yeah, let's go do that. Why not, right? It's like if somebody offers uh, you know, a free trip to Germany or something, it's like, hell yeah, let's go. But anyways, um, we go, the drummer quits, and my point is is that we had two days to record record an album. Two free days at this studio, uh, but our drummer quits. So um, yeah, man, I learned how to play all the drum parts, like, and we went in and we banged out an awesome album onto tape, like in two days, just non-stop work. Um, that's how I get, man. I'm a I'm obsessive. And if you ask Chris, it's the same thing. We uh went to 513 studios in Tempe, um, had a little recording deal where we were house sitting the place, and two days we banged out the first laser beam album. Um, so it's just obsessive, man. I'm I just go, go, go, go, go. And we did uh another album last October um at 2200 studios here in Sasoledio for a new project called Vibe Pilot, which is really cool. It's like a folk indie experimental band. Very beats driven, rhythm it's very rhythmic, which is cool. But we did that in two days. I mean, I like I had mentioned to you the other day, I've I've been dealing with this issue. I don't know what happened if I had some allergic reaction or something, but you'll see in the video, there's some video that that came out. Um I basically had to record the whole session in my underpants because uh I don't know, I had some full body um like breakout, some hive thing, but but man, nothing stops me with the music. I will be there until I I can't breathe anymore. I'm going to finish. Like I get obsessive, man. I will stay up until the project is done. Yeah, that's dedication right there. Yeah, you know, if I don't do that, I feel like sometimes the project can just get lost for years. And it's just then you come back to it and hopefully you obsess enough to finish it. Sure. What what's your favorite part of the creation process? Um chasing the little nuggets. Uh it's basically the only not the only reason, but a a huge, uh, huge reason that I I love waking up every day is chasing these little little nuggets, is what we call them. Got another friend out here, um I I've got a bunch of friends that we talk about this with um Jack from Treasures, Bobby from Treasures, my my old friend Matt Bell from uh Arizona. He's from Jerome. Sometimes we talk about like chasing these little these little nuggets. It's like, and you can hear them in the wild too. Like uh I have this song called Take Me Home, and the beat of that song I got. I used to be uh a dishwasher at this restaurant, and the rhythm of the dishwasher was t t t t tsk t t like sort of a disco sort of beat, you know? Yeah. And I I'm just sitting in the dish pit washing dishes, hours on end, going din and din and, you know, and it's like the rhythm of this dishwasher is just pounding into my head. And then um I went, I of course I went to go see Matt play in one of his bands, and then I don't know, I met some girl there or whatever. And then uh, you know, it's just boom, just like the next day I heard that rhythm in the song, and I was just like so happy from from like having a a girl talk to me for more than five seconds or whatever, be like, oh yeah, you know, or like I I was in the bar and I was only 20 or something, you know, I couldn't even drink, but it's like I was just happy to be there, like seeing my friend like kick major butt on stage. And yeah, it's like my first inst int introduction to that. But but finding these nuggets in real life, like if you can hear the dishwasher do that and it sounds rhythmically cool, or if you're playing your guitar and you mess up and you make a mistake, and you're like, actually, like if I repeat that, it's actually kind of like it's kind of um microtonal sounding, or it's kind of cool, like kind of makes you kind of it's weird, you know, and kind of makes makes you feel like, whoa, that shouldn't be like that. But you chase that stuff and you repeat it, and that's that's basically what I love waking up to do the patterns. I live to see the patterns. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_05 41:26

What's a mistake you made that taught you the most?

SPEAKER_01 41:29

Um, one of the biggest things that kind of elevated me musically, and as a person that I learned from, I would say probably my attitude, man, like that's probably the biggest thing is all of this starts from within yourself, right? So what's your goal is and what you're trying to find. And my attitude for a long time was very inflated. And like, I don't know, you know, I'm sure a lot of people feel this way where they just feel like, man, I feel like so guilty for having such a big ego and so, you know, for being so aggressive sometimes. And sometimes I get really agitated and really irritated, and I just need to remind myself to slow down and uh just remember, man, that I'm doing this for to help myself and to help others kind of um show the best part of themselves and uh the best part of their artistry. So telling myself to uh knock off the bad attitude and uh and to just try and really bring the light out of everybody is kind of helped me.

SPEAKER_05 42:24

Yeah. It's good that you have that introspection and are able to see that about yourself and and something you can work on.

SPEAKER_01 42:30

Yeah, man. I used I used to be angry, can tell you that. I I still have outbursts for sure. And you know, if if you ever listen to um some of our songs, actually we don't have a lot of songs out with uh with my my my actual voice, you know. I do this whispery voice on all the the laser beam stuff, and I don't really sound like that, man. Like when we sing live and I have like a very broken, sort of um screamy, sort of grungy sort of voice. Um I feel like the anger has really shaped that, like just yelling and screaming all day every day at random things, you know, like in my screen we're gonna like it's really seasoned my voice. So I think the new the new material on album is gonna be it's cool for people to listen to. They're gonna be like, is this a different singer or what's going on? Yeah. What's the weirdest thing you do in your recording process? I love like Jimmy Page's approach to guitar tone. Yeah. Like I've been getting into Jimmy Page a lot lately, and he would do weird stuff like he said that he tried to record his guitar underwater. It's like, how do you even do that? Like, sir, explain yourself. But, anyways, the weirdest thing that I've I've been doing lately is I've got sort of a similar setup. I've got um like my guitar cab, it's a 212, it's like a custom, just somebody made it or whatever, and threw two Ampeg special design speakers in them. Just nothing special, it's just a normal guitar cab, but I have it under that sink that I was just talking about. I have like a little painter's sink in the garage. And I'm I'm really obsessed with Zeppelin's guitar tones on like physical graffiti. Like uh, you know, all of their guitar tones are amazing, but physical graffiti. In particular, you get this like really it's like you hear a lot of like 3,000 to like 10,000, sort of like high mid to high, sort of like harsh owl sort of frequencies, like ouch. And you get a lot of that, like kind of with like if you ever use one of those fake doubler pedals, or like you get kind of a phasing issue, sort of sometimes sort of a sound.

SPEAKER_04 44:21

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 44:21

I've been doing like I've been pointing my cab underneath the sink into like a triangular corner and having it like kind of at a medium volume, not like super high, not super low, but you get a really cool phasey sort of out of like I don't know, you get sort of an out of phase sort of sound. And then if you place a microphone across the room, like 50 feet away, because I recorded in a garage. So if you put a microphone at the opposite end of the garage in Panham stereo, you can get like a really crazy sort of wacky sound. I'm working on this project with um some other friends, Kim, Evan, Phil, another band here called Some Good Things, and I kind of did like a mashup song. But we did this technique and it kind of has that 50s sort of slap back sort of sound, but it's really cool. So I just like getting weird with my uh my placements. I like um using the environment. Like for the pink album, we grabbed like a ziploc bag, like a gallon ziploc bag, and grabbed a bunch of rocks from outside. And then we were like stepping on the bag in the studio, like in time with the music, like footsteps, you know. Yeah. So a lot of little things like that, trying to use the environment and just use your environment and get weird.

SPEAKER_05 45:29

Oh, that's awesome, man. I love hearing that stuff coming from the engineering background. And that's something a lot of people miss. The the guys that are just, you know, fully in the box. They don't do any of this experimenting, moving mics around the room and you know, micing cabs and you know, placing placing amplifiers up against the cabinets in the kitchen and seeing what comes out, you know. I I love experiments like that.

SPEAKER_01 45:47

Yeah, man. I mean, uh I'm looking at my garbage can right now and I just got a sweet idea. I got like a little orange microcross throw it in the garbage can and see if you can get some cool reverb.

SPEAKER_05 45:59

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 46:00

Yeah, I love that kind of stuff.

SPEAKER_05 46:01

That's awesome, man. What's the best feedback you've ever received?

SPEAKER_01 46:05

Um, show up. I think the best feedback, and this goes along with changing my attitude too, but showing up with a good attitude is the absolute best thing that you could do for yourself and for your community. Because as soon as I started supporting my friends, as soon as I started being a part of them, they became a part of me. And I feel like I'm very lucky to have joined a very strong, tight-knit community here that's very welcoming to outsiders. So I feel like um I wouldn't have made any of these friends if I just went one time every month or, you know, or maybe I would have, but it I would just be, I would just be the guy in Laser Beam that um, you know, a few people know about. But I feel like here, showing up is the number one thing you can do to help yourself because it strengthens your s your social capabilities. I used to feel totally socially awkward, so it strengthens your social skills. It opens your eyes to what other people are doing with their music. It changes your perspective on music because when you listen to like triple A bands and big name bands all the time, like I did before I moved here, it really skews your you can start to judge others, like, oh man, you know, this doesn't sound like Slayer, right? Like this doesn't sound like uh sugar ray, you know, this doesn't sound uh anything like that. Why doesn't it sound like that? But once you understand that these people are not sugar ray, they are laser beam from San Francisco and they're doing their own thing. And, you know, you you show up and you start to understand how the industry works and how, you know, everybody has a personality and everybody has a dream and everybody has a life. And we're all doing this together. And the only way to um kind of feel included is to make them feel included. It's sort of like a two-way street, and I feel like I enjoyed, you know, I go see bands that I enjoy, and uh the people that like us come see bands that they enjoy. I feel like showing up has opened so many doors for me and it's changed my life.

SPEAKER_05 48:01

Absolutely, man. That's that's such great life advice, too. And not just for the production world and making music.

SPEAKER_01 48:07

Yeah, anything, man. Any job, it's just really good. Yeah, I mean, just make yourself useful, you know. There's a lot of, you know, for musicians listening to this in particular, and you're asking yourself, you know, why don't people follow me or why aren't people paying attention to me, or why don't people come to my shows? And it's a little bit of a sad reality that you need to provide something for them to show that you're a little valuable, you know, in some way, you know, whether it be as a friend or as um a photographer is huge. A videographer, huge, you know. Scenes don't have this sort of stuff where there's a guy that just comes to the show and takes a bunch of pictures, takes a bunch of video, and tags you online. Fan page, you know, it's like these guys, that's that's that's just a job opening that's available, like part-time to get your foot in the door to become a part of a scene. So I feel like, you know, show up and make yourself useful. If you want to run sound, go for it. If you want to help the band move their gear in, go for it. You know, anything that you can do to show up and just be cool. Don't be a jerk. Like, that's the best advice I've I've ever gotten. And I've been sticking with that advice ever since.

SPEAKER_05 49:14

Yeah, no, that's great. I've been in uh numerous bands over the years, and that was always a thing for me that you know you'd hear some guy from another band being like, you know, what why does no one come to our shows and be like, you know, how how many other small local bands are you going to their shows and you know, helping them carrying in gear or anything, you know?

SPEAKER_01 49:28

It's all about the hang, man. It's all about the hang. Because if they don't know you, they're not gonna think about you. They're not gonna ask you to play the show.

SPEAKER_05 49:35

Yeah, absolutely. And building building the community like you're talking about. Good stuff right there. What's the worst advice you've ever been given?

SPEAKER_01 49:41

Well, probably from my dad. My my dad told me one time, he's like, yeah, man, he's like, you know what we used to do back in the day? He's like, we used to just roll up to shows with all our gear and and just set up on stage and just play before the like the shows would start. So we tried that one time. Like we tried that in our first band, Burn the Insects. I think a buddy John, just if you're listening, in Vegas, he's a local promoter there, and we were hounding this guy for a show. He he gave us an inch and we took a mile, basically, is what happened. Again, you know, young, dumb, didn't know how any of this stuff worked. And my dad telling me these crazy stories of, oh yeah, let's just show up and see what happens. So we drive up to Vegas, we drive five and a half hours up to Vegas because we saw this bill that we wanted to play on. We're like, oh my God, this is gonna be like a savage bill. It's gonna be packed. Like, we have to play this. We knew John from a show that he hooked us up with last year. And um, yeah, we had big egos, big heads rolling up, rolled up, saw John. Hey man, what's up? We're in town. Like, dude, can we, you know, can we hop on the show real fast? Can you throw us on real fast? He's like, oh man, he's like, I can't do that. He's like, dude, this is like big show, can't do that, you know. And we're like, come on, please, dude, just 10 minutes. All we need is 10 minutes. Just let us, let's plug in and just we'll be in and we'll be out. And he's like, All right, you know, he's like, all right, I'll I'll do it. He's like, just get in, get out. He's like, no sound check, you guys just get up and go. And uh you guys have 10 minutes. He's like, get up right now. So we get in, we get on stage, and one of the amps wasn't working. And so we got like half of one song, one song called Sink or Swim. And that that was like so embarrassing. We wasted all our time, wasted all this motivation. You know, nobody gave us any mind. Like, all the people in the crowd were like, Who are these clowns? Who are these jokers? You know, we came here to see this band. And uh, yeah, so you know, fool me once, shame on you, but fool me twice, shame on me, right? So shame on me, because a few months later we tried the same thing at Club Red in Phoenix. We rolled up, um, tried to open for Brandt Bjork, tried to open up for Royal Thunder, and they 86 us from the club, they told us F off, never come back. We uh yeah, so we never got to play the Club Red, which sucked. But yeah, that's probably the worst advice I've ever got was to just show up and play. But showing up, see, that's where if you take the words show up to succeed, not show up and force yourself to play in front of all the other bands who are in the right place supposed to play. It's a terrible thing to do, right? It's like the worst thing you could ever do to another band. Like no wonder, no wonder, like every learning was the way it was. That's pretty terrible, man. I have some hilarious stories with that band, like with my dad, and we had some good times, but hilarious, hilarious stories, dude. What habit has improved your music the most? Practicing. I got advice from a family friend of ours who's in a a Grammy award-winning band. Uh, he told me, Practice with a live band. He's like, the number one thing um that you could do for your music and for your show is practice with your live band. He's like, you need to find players that you have chemistry with.

SPEAKER_05 52:45

Yeah, absolutely. That's great advice, dude. What advice do you have for someone just starting out trying to make music?

SPEAKER_01 52:51

Don't give up. Like you and I, I'm sure, you know, have probably 40 years combined of music experience, right? You and I both. Oh yeah. You know, like realistic experience. And, you know, we're just shooting the, you know, shooting it over the phone, having a fun conversation with each other. We're just trying to do the thing that we love to do because we love it. Right. Like this is cool, man. You're giving me an opportunity to speak about my life and my journey and all of this. This has been really cool, but it's taken 20 years of me to get to this point. And it's taken 20 years of you to decide you want to start this podcast. So my point is for everybody trying to start out, you know, for my friends here that are listening, I know I know there's probably one dude that's gonna be listening to you. I love you, man. You just gotta keep keep going. Don't let it deter you that uh there's only a few streams on your song. You gotta keep your head down, you gotta make 500 songs before you have a batch of them that people are really gonna resonate with.

SPEAKER_05 53:48

Absolutely. Man, that's great advice. You talk, you know, not giving up. What do you do when you get writer's block?

SPEAKER_01 53:54

How do you get over that? Go outside, man. Go have an experience, man. Go walk through your inner city and step over some dog poop. Go get yelled at by a homeless guy, you know? Go, um, I don't know, you know, like eat a rotten piece of chicken. I don't know. Sorry, it's I I I think I have ADHD, man. But anyways, um, yeah, man, never give up.

SPEAKER_05 54:16

Okay. Yeah, that's awesome, man. That's great advice. What would you say is the single most important thing in your life right now? Uh, my girlfriend Trixie, man.

SPEAKER_01 54:23

She's the most important thing in my life right now. So very cool. Yeah, she's been really good for me. Glad to hear that, man.

SPEAKER_05 54:29

The show's called Producer's Chair, so I gotta ask, what kind of chair you said in to produce?

SPEAKER_01 54:35

I knew this was coming too, because I listened to the other episode. Um You guys are gonna laugh. This is a uh technically, this is a world market or cost plus, if that's what it's called in your region. It or IKEA. It's called a it's like a like a mustard yellow dining room chair.

SPEAKER_05 54:53

Okay.

unknown 54:54

Cool.

SPEAKER_01 54:55

It's uh not very comfortable, but you know, I'm not too picky. I but I'm sure once I get a real office chair, I'll be I'll never go back. Sure.

SPEAKER_05 55:04

Where can our listeners connect with you online, hear more music?

SPEAKER_01 55:06

Um, the biggest place is our website, man. The website is laserbeam.band. That's the best way to stay connected with us. Our music is always free digitally on our website. We have them as free downloads on the site. And if you sign up for an awesome newsletter, which is old school too, but if you sign up for our newsletter, uh you get an unreleased track called Sucker. So it's a pretty cool track. We recorded that in Seattle with our buddy Alex last year, and it turned out great. It's part of the Fight Fire session, so it's got that raunchy black keys sort of sound.

SPEAKER_05 55:35

All right, very cool. And we'll get those links up for everybody wherever the podcast is being played from. We'll have those links below that you can go and check out some more from Laser Beam. Well, Lucas, I really appreciate you being here with me today and coming on the show. This has been a lot of fun, man. I love your story and love your positivity, and hope to hear a lot more from you in the future.

SPEAKER_01 55:52

Well, thanks for having me, Steve. That was this is really cool for you to invite me on.

SPEAKER_05 55:56

Yeah, absolutely.

Outro

SPEAKER_05 55:57

And that's our show for this week. Appreciate all of you who joined us today, and I'll have another great episode for you in two weeks. I'm gonna be adding a listener question segment at the end of these episodes. So if you have a question you'd like me to ask my guest producers, use the provided email and send that question to me. Until next time, I'm Steve Swisher, and you've been listening to the producer's chair.