EP 32. Decision Paralysis (Solo Episode)

THE SHOW IS BACK!!! 

Chris chats about the gruelling decision making that inevitably leads to inhibition. He also covers the last episode which featured an interview with guitarist Matt Muehling from the world famous Kill Tony Podcast prior to their global success.


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Support the show:

www.patreon.com/crashtontalks


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Thanks to the CRASHTON TALKS PATRONS:

Colin McLeod

Nicholas McLeod

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Facebook: www.facebook.com/crashtonmusic
Twitter: @crashtonmusic
Instagram: @crashtonmusic



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Also available at:

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Theme tune written by Damien Hendry and Chris Ashton. 

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www.crashtonmusic.com

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:15

Welcome to another episode of Acting Talking. It's been a few years since I recorded an episode of the show. Basically, I went away, had a couple of kids, and I've been busy doing other stuff in music as well. But I've I've been keen to kind of get back doing this. So yeah, I had a I've actually recorded like four or five different episodes of this episode. And uh through that time, I've I've had like a recording studio where I recorded some episodes and just have never done anything with them and all that stuff, and I've been really yeah, I've just been desperate to get back doing it. There's some people that I want to interview, and there's just a lot to kind of talk about as well. Um so yeah, welcome back. To start off, I wanted to talk a little bit about the last episode that I've done, which is with a guy called Matt Muelling. Um, Matt's a guitarist based in Austin, Texas, uh, in America, obviously, if you're familiar with America, because it's a place that exists and it's also one of the weirdest places on the planet. But Matt, he's a guitarist and he he plays on a show called Kill Tony, and at the time I had been watching Kill Tony for like a couple of years, really enjoyed it, and I think through the pandemic the show had moved from like California to Texas, and it really drastically kind of changed in that time. Just some of the kind of format had changed in the show, and I I was really keen to interview Matt because the way that the the band was structured on that show before was like a kind of comedic thing, and the guys would dress up, and then this other band came in in Austin, Texas, and they were like a really you know, not to shoot the other band down, but they were like a really credible band, um, quite capable of just pulling any song out of the hat, and reminded me a lot of the kind of musicians that I'd been playing with over the past ten years, like playing in a wedding band, you come across these guys that are just they're able to just pick up songs by ear, and they can, you know, you tell them like, let's play this song with playing it, play it in A, and they'll just they'll be able to switch up. And I just noticed when I was watching the show that I was paying a lot more attention to what the band were doing, and I was just really into it. So it was quite cool at the time to get an opportunity to interview Matt because again at that time they had just kind of joined the show, really fresh. I think even at that time I was the first person to interview him, and uh which was awesome, but uh now it's pretty crazy because for anyone who knows Kill Tony, like it's just became this massive thing. I mean, they've got Netflix specials that have like multiple Netflix specials every year. They play like Madison Square Garden once or twice a year, and ev every month, uh every week, sorry, they they record a show in Joe Rogan's comedy club in Austin, Texas. So like that is really just completely blown up, and it's been crazy to like witness that. Um so yeah, it was pretty nuts that that was the last episode, and I I've kind of felt this feeling of like really wanting to get back to it, and also knowing that like or feeling at least that because that was the last episode, I wanted to do something that was like a step up and interview someone else that was like you know what I mean, like in the the industry, and like just your head does all this stuff. It's like it's like trying to make it as a singer. You're like you want your next release to be like better than the last one, and then to be honest, that kind of like I heard a phrase recently, and it's like it's like something paralysis, and that that's what decision paralysis or something like that, and that that's kind of like how I feel about this, is like it just it became such an overwhelming um experience that like I actually just became paralysed by it rather than like being able to roll with it. That's been an ongoing thing in my whole music career, is like something cool happen. You get to open for wet, wet, wet, you get to open for Luis Capaldo, you get to like go on tour with this band, get to play this festival and this country in the world, and then not knowing how to like how to like hold the reins of success. Do you know what I mean? And it like I think there's a lot of people that are like that, they're like super talented and they've got all the things going for them, but they just don't know how to ride the waves of success. And I'm actually just like sick of thinking like that. I'm s I'm sick of not like just being appreciative of what happens in the moment, even like having my studio, I'm like being annoyed at myself that I had this cool podcast studio that I didn't like record more episodes on and take advantage of, and then it it's like, well, who cares, you know what I mean? Like, I'm I'm I'm currently in my old bedroom at my mum's house recording this episode, even though I've got a recording space in my actual house and all of that stuff. I just wanted to come here and just record it because to me it's about the quality of the the the content and not it doesn't need to be in this cool recording studio or or all of that stuff and and even even the guests like one of the things that I enjoyed about doing the show before was that it wasn't just like all these famous people and stuff, that it was actually like people that I know in the industry that are actively working in it because to me that's like the most interesting part is you can look at like a Louis Capaldi or a wet wet wet and that that's like that's a a pillar for a lot of people of like success, but not a lot of people like think about the fact that a career in music can be maintained by like just being like a professional musician, you know, like like Matt, like Matt Matt from Kiltoni, like he um he's not a world-famous guitar player, but he's very much employed and uh probably makes good money doing what he's doing, and and that I think something that could be documented in like Crashton Talks is taking a look at those people who are maintaining like a professional job in the industry, and it not have to be like I'm a super famous guy or I I've got these accolades and all that. Like those are those are cool, but they're not like they're not the reason that most musicians get up in the morning, you know what I mean? Like what you get to a certain level where you're you're working so much that it just it becomes like like working in a factory, you know what I mean? There's there's days where you you love it, days where you hate it, and it it's also a sustainability a recognition of the effort that you put in like over those years of honing your craft, but at the same time still cushioning you with like a wage, and you're able to feed feed your family and and and do things, have a social life as well. Like that that's a bit been a big thing for me, is like recently I I went I took my oldest boy out with my cousin and his kids, and we were just like out fishing in the wilderness, and it was just super cool. Like I hadn't done anything like that in a very long time, and I said to him in that moment, I was like, Sometimes I forget like life life is actually about this, like life is it doesn't need to be about like career all the time or making money and and all that stuff. It's sometimes it can just be about like enjoying the time that you have and and outside. Like you I don't know if anyone else is like this, but I get to a point sometimes where I convince myself that all I am is that all I am is like trying to get money and and get more cool musician jobs and all that and it's hard because you're kinda bound to this like this thing that you've decided is you and this thing that you've decided is your career like so much so in fact like it's even more ironic with myself like my stage name is Chris Ashton, but that's not my actual name. Like I won't say it on here, it won't be hard for people to figure it out, but like I essentially when I was like 16-17 just decided that I was this thing, I was this guy that I was gonna go out and do music as because I th I don't think I was very comfortable performing under my my real name and stuff. So like I don't know, like I think that that's maybe like another thing about the music industry is you know like record labels, the way the way that the industry used to be set up was like presenting you would see this final product, like even like even it's just being young young kids playing guitars, as we would see like a Blink 182 and it's presented to you, here's Blink 182, or here's here's Green Day, here's like even thinking like bands that you probably don't think of as being like that, but like metallica, and you think oh they they're cool and they're edgy and they they have all these things going for them because you're being like presented this final product, but you don't see like the whole like journey and how hard it is to get there, and I think what what like I made the mistake of doing and probably what a lot of kids now are doing, especially like TikTok and Instagram and stuff, is that you end up trying to like model yourself after these final products, so like record labels actually don't have much work to do now because think think about like a I don't know like a young female singer, right? And she she's grown up listening to like By Beyoncé and Adele and all the like iconic singers, Whitney Houston and all that stuff. She is probably gonna model herself on those people, right? Which is a final product for a record label, like a an Adele, like Peak Adele, when she put out 30 that's presented to the world as this like thing that's tangible. And a young female singer will think, right, well, all I have to do is like wear a fancy dress, stand there, sing. Maybe Adele's not the best example, actually. Adele's like a very credible pop singer, right? But like I don't know, take maybe Sabrina Carpenter, and it's not to take anything away from her, I don't know anything about her, right? But but to me, there's very much like a an industry thing behind her, right? Dance routines, outfit changes, stage props, all that stuff. Young singers will like model themselves after that. So like by the time a record label's coming in, now there's not much for them to do because those people are already thinking in that realm of like, well, if I'm if I'm gonna be a singer, I need to have like the outfit changes and the the hairstyle and the you know all all the stuff that that record labels present, and and I've fell into that trap as well. Like all of my favourite bands, that there's there's a level of that to them, they're they're they're they've reached that level of success where they went through, made all the mistakes, and now they're presenting themselves, whether they've got the right haircuts or the coolest clothes, the coolest guitars, and all that stuff. And so when I created my band, especially like Florescent Hearts, like people, we did have some sort of like financial involvement eventually, right? But even at the very start, when we didn't, people thought we did because we were presenting it the way that we looked at other bands, and we waited like a year, year and a half before we actually done our first gig and built up some momentum because we were trying to like present ourselves as this thing that was already signed, and I think in some ways that kind of was a bit of a detriment to us, at le at least at that time, because I think record labels were less likely to look at us at that time because then they couldn't mould us into what they wanted us to be. But now, yeah, I've been in my 30s, like I I just I'm tired of that. I want to make music that I want to make, I want to do do the kind of gigs that I want to do, whether it's cover gigs, original gigs, and and it's the same with us, like I want it to just be an authentic thing that I go out and do, and it's a representation of something that I I do and enjoy, and whether people like it or not is besides the point. Which weirdly, on that note, um another reason that like I wanted to do this again is because like every week I'm getting these emails from the distribution company that my podcast is out on, and I'm getting downloads on the episodes. Like it's not a lot, it's like maybe like 25-30 downloads like every week, but it's enough for me to be like that's an audience, you know what I mean? That's like it's like a hundred listens every month, and I'm not actively doing anything at all. So there's people there that are that want content at least, or appear to want content, like I might as well put something out, see how it goes, and uh and yeah, just enjoy it. So I'll keep this one short uh and I plan on interviewing some people try and keep it like around my friends at first and then we'll move on to some other folk that that I'm interested in and maybe even if some people are commenting like leave a leave a comment leave a comment um of who you would like me to interview if if if you want to do that. If you don't want you don't you're not obligated to do anything, to be honest. Nobody's ever obligated to comment, so I take back what I said, don't leave a comment. But yeah, if you feel obliged to live your life, keep living, keep breathing, and um yeah enjoy enjoy yourself.