Off the Record

Livi Schwartz 0:00
Hello. This is DJ cherry headache for off the record at wknc, 88.1 FM, HD, one Raleigh. And today I'll be joined by Owen Ashworth of advanced bass. Thank you so much for joining me, and I guess I'll just get right into it. So

did you do any sort of music growing up like any kind of bands that you were involved with then, or just like passive listening, anything like that,

Owen Ashworth 0:26
playing music. No, I didn't take lessons. We had a piano in the house that I would just kind of plunk on. I have a little brother, Gordon, who's six years younger than me, and he took the lessons, which I was always a little envious of.

But I didn't really start playing music until

I went away to college, and

I had a few friends who had had bands from back home, and, you know, we would just play music together. And then it wasn't until I got a little synthesizer that I started really writing songs.

But, yeah, I don't know, for some reason just writing songs and recording them my on my own became

just the most clear line towards creativity for me, just I really just enjoyed the freedom of doing it on my own time, and kind of learning how to write and sing and record and and play kind of all in tandem, like it was just kind of a really nice, kind of, like personal,

kind of meditative thing. So, yeah, I don't know it's one. Once I got started and I was probably around 20,

it just became kind of part of my personal practice just to write and play these little songs on on pianos,

Livi Schwartz 1:50
absolutely. And

that's not the like. Only thing you also like draw I see like on your Instagram was that starting around the same time? Well, you know, as a kid, I drew,

Owen Ashworth 2:05
I've always just kind of doodled, and it's, you know, it's nothing I do professionally, but it's just something that

I just enjoy. And it's just kind of like, you know, just just kind of a fun hobby.

Speaker 1 2:19
Yeah, it's just something I've kept doing through my life. Yeah,

Livi Schwartz 2:24
yeah. In all of your albums, there's like, seems like these like grand concepts, kind of like animal companionship, a lot about animals, and like so many of your songs, like revolving around or mentioning different cities, or all the characters that are created within all of your music, which feels like almost kind of literary rather than musical. Has it always been that way for you, non like, not just the purely autobiographical songs and kind of like this world building? Yeah,

Speaker 1 2:53
it's, it didn't start right away. But I mean, there was a point where I would start writing songs, and the way I write the songs are usually pretty short and pretty concise and kind of just kind of follow there is, like, usually kind of a little bit, I guess, probably more narrative driven than than the way other people write songs. But yeah, they'll just it'll just kind of tell this one little story. And I found it really satisfying to try to write companion songs where you're kind of expanding on a story, or you're learning more about the characters who are kind of peripheral in certain songs. So I don't, I guess by the time I made the third cassiotone album, which was called twinkle echo, I was starting to connect narratives between songs and kind of just trying to build like a bigger world. Yeah, and it was, it started off just kind of being more for me, where it was just like a more interesting way to write, just to give a little more context and a little more meaning to what was happening in the songs. But, yeah, I mean, not every record has been kind of written as, like, with like an overarching concept, but there are often either locations or characters or like events that kind of link some of the songs together. But, yeah, animal companionship mostly takes place in Indiana, and, yeah, mostly about dog ownership, or, I don't know, the concept of the song is all the it's all, it's all, all the dogs are named Walter on the on the album. But it's, uh, just coincidental that all these people have dogs named Walter, and they've, you know, they've come to that name for different reasons. But I just kind of like the idea of the dog being it's almost like, um. Supernatural kind of presence in the songs, where nothing bad ever happens to the dogs, but and they are only like a source of, like comfort. It was kind of the idea, yeah,

Livi Schwartz 5:11
that's nice, a very good change, because, like, if you see a movie and there's a dog, it's always something's gonna happen,

Speaker 1 5:17
yeah, when I started telling people, those writing songs about people and their dogs. The first people kind of brace themselves. And I mean, just knowing that, I kind of tend to write sad songs like, Oh no, what happens to the dog? So it was really intentional about nothing bad happening to any of the dogs. Because I have heard a lot of songs, if someone tells you they wrote a song about a dog, this usually means that the dog died. So it's like, that's not what's going to happen on this record. Like, I want this to be a very comforting listen for, you know, for pet lovers, that's beautiful.

Livi Schwartz 5:51
Yeah. And like you said, like a lot of your songs are pretty sad. Find yourself as you've gone from Casone into advanced space, like trying to move away from some of the sadder sounds. Or is it, I guess, mainly, what I'm asking is, like, has it always been that way? And Will it always be that way? These kind of, like sad but comforting songs?

Speaker 1 6:18
Well, I'm not necessarily trying to write sad songs, but I think that's a lot of the songs that I grew up loving like I grew up with a lot of like Soul music and country music in the house. And the songs that kind of always felt the most relatable or comforting to me were kind of these, you know, sadder stories where there's this sense of, like, longing, or, or, or, or some element of grief, like, I just somehow it's really kind of gravitated towards those songs. So yeah, I think there will always be kind of some element of that. And everything I write, not by design so much. It's just that's kind of what I'm compelled to write about. And, you know, song, songs are lighter than others, and there's, like, you know, they're funny parts, and, you know, there's some really wonderful things that happen in the songs alongside the dark stuff. But the, the new record that I just finished recording is a pretty, intentionally pretty dark record, like it's, it's a little bit, I don't know, it's kind of about people living through traumatic events. Is kind of the intention where it's about, I don't know. I wanted it to be songs about kind of people being resilient and kind of like the events that happen in people's lives that kind of shape who they become and how everyone kind of has these kind of, like dark stories in their past. So that's kind of like the unifying theme of the record. But it was difficult to write. It was a little too sad for me sometimes, and I had to kind of put it down and come back to it after a while. But for some reason, these are the songs I was really compelled to write this time. So I just had to take my time getting through it.

Livi Schwartz 8:10
I understand that. And you said, like feeling like compelled to create this? Is that how it's felt with previous albums, or is there more of, like an intention behind creating them?

Speaker 1 8:23
Um, I, I think when I start writing an album, it'll usually just be, I'll get an idea for a song, and I'll, I'll just start kind of collecting songs, and I'll typically notice some themes kind of arriving or just, you know, common, you know, elements in the songs, like, when I like animal companionship is such an easy example, just because dogs are like the major theme. But, you know, I wrote a song about a friend of mine's dog, and then I wrote another song that mentioned a dog, and by the time I had written a third song that had a dog in it, and I was like, Okay, this is interesting. I'm obviously thinking about dogs a lot, why, and but once I kind of recognize themes, I can I start, you know, analyzing for myself why I think I might be writing about these things, and then also maybe kind of writing towards that theme, and trying to explore it a little deeper, and seeing if there is enough there to make, kind of the core of a collection of songs, and then kind of build out from there, but usually about a third of the way through writing an album, I'll notice what I'm writing about, and then I'll more self consciously be kind of writing towards a theme, typically.

Livi Schwartz 9:51
So those three lines are just mainly, like observed, and then you kind of like feed into them. But I. In a lot of songs you like touch on different cities, like, I'm from Charlotte, so I think Charlotte immediately, Oh, yeah. Is there an intention behind these specific places?

Speaker 1 10:13
Yeah. I mean, usually I think just making a reference to a specific place makes the song feel so much more tangible immediately. Like, if you can imagine where this is happening, play happening. I mean, I've always kind of had that experience, like, there's a, I don't know who wrote it, but there's an old country song called the streets of Baltimore that Bobby bear, and Graham Parsons and a few other I don't know, it's been covered a lot over the years, but just knowing that a song is about Baltimore, every time you go to Baltimore, you have this song, and you're i for person, personally. I mean, I think about that song every time I'm in Baltimore, and it just kind of enriches the experience of not only visiting place, but also listening to a song, to have been there and just to have, like, a really strong visual or memory attached to it. So I've always really loved that there's a song called that's how I got to Memphis by Tom T Hall. And again, every time I go to Memphis, I think about this song, and every time I hear the song, I think about the time I went to Memphis, and I just think that's such a lovely thing to have just this, you know, piece of media that you can experience in a place, and will also just always remind you of when you're there, or, I don't know, I think there's, it's a place you've never been. It kind of, it adds to the fantasy of this other location that you've never had a personal experience in. So yeah, I think that's just, I love that. So it's a trick. I keep doing it again and again. And I also really like personally having a location in mind when I'm writing songs, and so, like an album will often tend to have a lot of songs taking place in the same city because I'm writing about the same characters, or I'm really just trying to, like, populate a little town and imagine a community based on the characters in these songs. So yeah, Indiana was kind of the focus for animal companionship the album before that, nephew in the wild has a lot of songs that mention Michigan, but I don't know I was, I was trying to describe, like, a few generations of a family, and just like a little community of people interacting between the songs,

Livi Schwartz 12:36
when you are these all places that, like, you've visited and had experiences In, or sometimes you just like, think of a random place, and you're like, I could see this happening there.

Speaker 1 12:44
Yeah, not always. Sometimes it's just like, Charlotte, for example, it just, I like the sound of that word, and it seemed to fit really well on the song. And once I had an idea that, okay, this song is taking place in Charlotte, just having a location made it easier for me to mention everything else that was happening this new record that I just finished recording. It all takes place in an imaginary city called Richmond. And I picked that name because there are a ton of Richmond's across the country, in Richmond, Virginia being the biggest but there are, there are Richmond's in almost every state. There's a Richmond in California, near where I grew up. And so I kind of liked using Richmond, kind of like how they use Springfield on The Simpsons, where it's, it's just kind of an American place, and it's, they don't really make any specific reference to where in the US it is, or what, what state. And I just kind of like the idea of there being just a very common and recognizable city name that is kind of floating in this just kind of in this abstract I

Livi Schwartz 13:56
think that's beautiful. That also kind of goes in with, like how universal it is that we all have like, these bad things in our past that like you're writing about on this album, it's like, this could be literally anywhere. This could happen to anybody. Yeah,

Speaker 1 14:09
yeah. So yeah, Richmond is a place where terrible things happen. I'm in record. It's a lot of and I'm not trying to call out any Richmond in particular, but yeah, I don't know. It's just the idea of there being a place in your past where all the bad stuff happened. Yeah, yeah.

Livi Schwartz 14:26
I know. I used to live in East Bay, in California, and a friend of mine lived in Danville. Oh, yeah. And there's a Danville that I like, drove through in North Carolina, and I was like, Oh, these are connected. There's a portal, same place

Speaker 1 14:42
I know, I know the Danville you're talking about. I grew up in the Bay Area, and I had some friends in Danville too. It

Livi Schwartz 14:51
was interesting. But, yeah, I'm very obsessed with that. Like I. Of the assigning these stories to these places, because I know I definitely think of I like it whenever I think about Nashville. And yeah, so that's awesome.

Speaker 1 15:14
Thanks. Have you been to the Parthenon in Nashville? No,

Livi Schwartz 15:18
I've never been, but it just like clouds all of my like opinions of it, yeah, Elliot Smith's Alameda. Whenever I'd go to Alameda last year, I'd be like, I hear it in my head. So,

Unknown Speaker 15:32
yeah, it's so cool.

Livi Schwartz 15:38
And I guess um, in the advanced space albums, would you feel there's any like calling back to the cassiotone albums? Any like companion pieces, like within those to like, connect those projects, or do they feel very separate to you?

Speaker 1 15:55
That's interesting question. There are still some Casone songs I play live occasionally. And there is, there's a character named Becky who's in the advanced bass song nephew. And the song is called Trisha, please come home. It's on the album, nephew in the wild. And it's Becky is a name I use in a cascatone song named scattered pearls. And I had imagined that it was this, like the same Becky, like years later in like, a different chapter in her life. That's the only example I can really think of in an intentional connection. But I don't know. I mean, I don't think the way I write is so different than what I was doing by the end of of cassiotone. But, uh, no, I'm not, that's, I haven't tried to, you know, directly, continue any stories, with the exception of Becky showing up in two different songs.

Livi Schwartz 16:57
So would you say that those two projects feel very separate, and, like one of them, very complete, and the other one still happening,

Speaker 1 17:05
I guess so, yeah, I mean, I, I guess when I was doing cassiotone, and it was by myself for the most part, you know, I had friends would occasionally tour with me, but I was writing the songs, Um, it occurred to me that, as I watched so many of my friends break up, that I would have to be really intentional about ending this project, because I didn't feel like it was something that should go on forever. It's something, you know, I started when I was 20 and when, and it went for 13 years, and by the last few years, I was like, Okay, I gotta figure out how to end this, because I would like to do something else. I liked the idea of just kind of a fresh start and and writing and starting over with a new bunch of songs, because I don't know, I kind of felt the baggage of carrying it around so many years of casu 10 songs, and people would request songs that I written so many years before and didn't really feel a connection to anymore, and I just kept imagining how nice it would feel just to write a whole new set of songs that were about how I was feeling, or, you know, the kind of songs I wanted to be writing right in that moment. And it just seemed like such a good challenge to just start over completely, like, throw everything out and figure out a whole new kind of world of music for myself. So I wrote the last cast of tone album versus children, knowing that it was going to be the last one. I kind of like the idea of writing a last album, and yeah, and then I toured for that record, and I got very scared. I was like, you know, this has kind of been my main source of income, like I did to end this project is, you know, it's like leaving a job and hopefully being able to find another one. So, you know, I did one last very long cascatone tour, and then I took a little bit of time off, and then I started trying to write a whole new record of for a whole new project, and try to rethink it as much as I could. You know, advanced spaces ended up being not terribly different than Cassie tone in a lot of ways, but I think there is kind of a different mood. I think I'm in kind of a healthier place mentally, and I think there's just a more calming energy to advance space than there was to cassiotone. I feel like my relationship with music is different, and I feel like I am writing for myself in a way that I didn't used to where I'm I'm just making exactly the kind of music that I want to hear. One thing in particular I wanted to do differently with advanced basses. I had a few experiences playing in churches when I was in Cassie town. In Europe and in England, there's some really beautiful old churches that people just will throw punk rock shows and and they are, you know, designed to be naturally resonant, like really kind of, you know, beautiful sounding places where people get together and sing. And Casone music sounded so terrible in churches, it was just like the rhythms were so fast that they got very jumbly in the natural reverb. And there are a lot of harsh tones that just would resonate in really unpleasant ways. So when I started advanced space, I was like, I want to make music that would sound good to play in a church, because I love being in those spaces, and I had seen, I had seen so many friends play beautiful music in churches. I'm not a religious person at all. I just think, I think it's something about hearing music and in a place designed for sound, the way a church is, is, like, really special, like it's I just wanted to be able to make my music sound beautiful in church. So that was absolutely a guiding principle of what I wanted the fifth space to do.

Livi Schwartz 21:09
Absolutely, that's amazing. And so I guess with Cassie tone, it felt like, since this is like a 13 year project, there's like these expectations from people in the crowds. Kind of like to play those songs, maybe you don't connect with anymore. Like to be exactly like what they've seen before, what they're used to do. You feel those same kind of expectations now with advanced

Speaker 1 21:36
space, I'm sorry, could you ask that a slightly different way. Yeah, I'm sure I understand. Okay,

Livi Schwartz 21:43
yeah, it seemed like what you were saying with having, like, a 13 year project like that, yeah, and people requesting songs that you'd written so long ago and maybe didn't connect with so much anymore, and there might have been, like, a certain kind of pressure there to be what people expected. And I was wondering, I guess, first, like, if that resonates, and then also if it feels different. Now,

Speaker 1 22:12
okay, oh yeah, because I'm at this point, I'm 13 years into advanced space, and do I feel the same distance from the early advanced bass songs that I felt from the early Cassie tone songs by the end of Cassie town. Is that kind of what you're asking? Yeah, yeah, um, I would say less. So I think going from age 20 to 33 I personally experienced just a lot of change, and those being the very first songs I wrote from the, you know, the first song I wrote to the hunt, the 200th song I wrote. There was a lot of change in the way I wanted to write songs and where I was in life. But going from 34 to, I'm now 47 and we're talking about the 200 song I wrote to the 400th song I wrote, or something like that. There's less change. And I feel like I personally am a little more kind of settled into who I am at this point in my life. Like I feel like there have been fewer dramatic changes from the age age 34 to 47 so I still feel like fundamentally the same person I was when I started advanced space. And I find that music more relatable to perform. Yeah, then when I was at the end of Cassio town, and, you know, people requesting songs I wrote when I was 21 and I was just like, oh my god, I got I just, I feel like a phony singing the song. I just don't feel these feelings anymore. So yeah, I mean, there's some early Cassie tons or advanced bass songs that I just don't love as much as the more recent ones. So you know, I'm not always eager to play every song from the advanced bass catalog, but for the most part, I stand behind all those songs I and I feel like basically the same person I was as I was when I wrote them.

Livi Schwartz 24:08
Do you find it feels weird now when people ask you to play like, those same songs you wrote when you were like, 21

Speaker 1 24:13
it happens, I would say it's infrequent that people are familiar with songs that old at this point. I mean, etiquette is the most popular the cassiotone records. And people will request some of those songs occasionally, and there's some that I, you know, I figured out new arrangements for. The other thing is, a lot of those Casio tone songs were written on very kind of specific electronic instruments, and I just don't know if I could pull them off in a satisfying way, if, if someone is requesting a song that I think just the character of the arrangement seems to be like the thing that people love most about a lot of those songs. So I they're just kind of, I can't help them. I can't do that anymore. I just don't have a gear. And I honestly don't remember a lot of the words to those songs. But there are. There are probably 20 Casio tone songs that I'm still comfortable enough playing, and I've kind of figured out new arrangements for it that I feel good about. I should mention this, in a couple months, I'm reissuing the third cassiotone record, twin Coleco on my label rindle, another big change with advanced spaces. I started my own label called a rental so I've, if not, released, and CO released all of the advanced space stuff since this project started. So I feel like I have kind of just generally more control over what I'm doing, which feels really nice. But twinkle echo, the 2003 Casone record, was released on a German label called Tom lab that's not really doing stuff anymore, that's been out of print for like, a decade. So I'm finally getting around to reissuing twinkle echo, after having already reissued the last two Casone records. And coincidentally, at the same time I was preparing this project, I was cleaning out my basement, and I found a box with all those old casios, and I checked to see which one still worked. And it just so happened that a lot of the gear that I recorded twinkle echo on still works. So I'm going to do one twinkle echo like record release show, where I'm gonna play all these songs I wrote, you know, around 2002 2003 just once, just to kind of honor the project and honor the fact that the, you know, the record is available again because enough people have asked for it, where it seemed like a good time to reissue it. So, yeah, I'm fully engaging with the material, and I'm gonna just play them at this one show. So that'll be fun. But it'll, you know, it'll kind of feel like, you know, it's Halloween shows where bands perform as other bands. I kind of feel like I'm doing that. Yeah, I think it'll be nice.

Livi Schwartz 26:58
Yeah. How do you think like going into a show like that, like feeling like you're performing as a different band? Do you feel like there's something you can do to make it feel more like true to who you are? Now

Speaker 1 27:11
I'm kind of intentionally not doing that. I feel like I'm just going to play these songs and I will acknowledge the fact that these fully acknowledging that these are old songs, and this is kind of just a nostalgic thing that I'm doing. And I wouldn't want to try to do a show where I'm playing advanced bass songs together with these old twinkle echo songs, but just in celebration for what the thing is. And this is a reissue of a 21 year old record, and you're either interested or you in it, or you aren't, like I have some friends, and they're, you know, late 30s or 40s who are very excited about this idea, who are traveling and to see the show. And, you know, every I feel like we're just all in the same space, in the same page, like this is going to be a very weird throwback to another time, and we're all 21 years older at this point. But, uh, yeah, no, it'll in that context where that I know everyone knows exactly what's going on with it. I feel like it'll be a fun one off. Yeah.

Livi Schwartz 28:12
That really makes me think of, have you seen I see the TV glow I have, yeah? That kind of makes me think of that, just like the like, nostalgia for something that meant everything at one point, and you kind of, like, you're on some different stuff now.

Speaker 1 28:29
Yeah, yeah. I like that movie. It was very alarming at the moment. And movie, they acknowledged that the main character is named Owen. I went and saw it on tour with my friend Karima. And as soon as the name Owen was said, like, Kareem would just, like, turn towards me and started laughing. And it was, I don't know, something about that character being named Owen, I found so distracting and so so personal. Like, I really took it personal. Yeah, I like that movie.

Livi Schwartz 29:04
And I guess also on the reissue of twinkle echo the like vinyl reissue, do you feel more of a connection to things like physical media like that, rather than just like a remastered Spotify album or something?

Speaker 1 29:20
Yeah. I mean, I started the label a rindl, because I was so interested in the actual, like, physical production. Like, I really love vinyl. It's not the only format that I release on a rindl, but it's kind of the ideal for me. And honestly, like, the cover of that record is painted by my friend Heidi Anderson, and it's, I always thought it was such a good looking record, and people have commented that, like they love the art and they want a copy of it because they want to have that painting in their house. So, yeah, something about the I think a record in particular, it's just like an art object. And I. So I put a lot of work into making sure the records look really beautiful and like I have close relationships with the people who do the printing and the designing. So that's a big part of the passion for me. Yeah, I record design is, is, is a, you know, a big part of what I love about making albums, and not just, you know, a single that's going to be available on the internet, but like an album is like a it took a complete statement, and I want it to be like a full experience with, you know, there's a cover you can stare at while you listen to it, and you can flip it over, and, you know, read the lyrics, or, you know, the liner notes or whatever. Like, I like how immersive an experience just listening to a record can be

Livi Schwartz 30:47
absolutely and so with a rindl, when you're bringing people on with it, what kind of things do you look for? Oh,

Speaker 1 31:03
I was just talking this to the friend the other night. My friend Sam sadomski, who's a is a music writer, but also a songwriter in in New York. He just flew to Chicago and we did a show together. Yeah, we had a long Converse. We talked about a rindl a lot more than I usually talk about a rindl When I started the label, my intention is it was mostly just going to be to release my own stuff. And my brother had some music that he was excited to release at the time, and so I released one of his albums. And once, but once, I kind of had the infrastructure in place like I had relationships with, you know, everyone in the production side and kind of had built up a little press list and had just, you know, this is my house behind me. This is the room that I run a rindle out of. And once you have a room like this in your house, it seems like, Well, yeah, I guess I can help friends who needs records out. Like, I kind of have built up I have a label. Like, why not? So I started just putting out records for close friends, and a couple of things were kind of unexpected successes, and we're selling well enough that, oh, I have more money to put out more records, and I don't know, I started getting demo submissions. Much to my surprise, it wasn't really my intention with the label. Is there to be an open call for other artists, but mostly who I've ended up working with, or are other artists that I play with on tour, like bands that I will play shows with, or or musicians who I've had kind of built a personal friendship with, who are, I feel like we can kind of see eye to eye, and there's, you know, we're respectful of each other, and we want, I don't know we having being part of a musical community that is respectful and just going towards a common good. And want a rental to be like a really healthy, nurturing place for other artists. My friend Sam mentioned that humility seemed to be a factor linking all of these artists. I feel like it's a lot of like, very humble. And you know, a lot of these artists record themselves, and even though it's like a lot of kind of different genres, I think that there's a really kind of homemade and very personal quality to all of these everything I put out. And I think it's also important that people are just excited about being part of a rindl and are supportive of the other artists. And it feels like just, like a healthy exchange and like a, you know, supportive network. So that's kind of what it's turned into. Yeah, it's I, it's all my favorite music. Honestly, I mean, I'm the amount that I have music that I just listened to, that rindell came out on is, I think it's indicative that you know this. It's absolutely, this is my taste. It's what you're hearing with a record label.

Livi Schwartz 34:11
Absolutely. That's very important, I think the liking what you're helping put out, and then also, I think it's very important now to have a lot of this good, nurturing, healthy connections within the industry. Yeah,

Speaker 1 34:27
I wanted to feel sustainable. And I want this to feel like I don't know I am growth, capitalistic growth is not really the intention with the rental so much is it just keeping it going and feeling it it just to be a supportive community that artists can return to, yeah and kind of small by design. Keeping it small by design has been an important element of

Livi Schwartz 34:56
that absolutely yeah.

Yeah, I guess. Well, that kind of goes into one of my final questions for you about, like, what you listen to in your personal time?

Speaker 1 35:08
Yeah, yeah. Honestly, a lot of the rental stuff I love, I just put together a playlist for a music blog called ugly hug, and it was a challenge not to include any rental stuff, honestly, but I do listen to in a lot of just old country music, a lot of you know stuff from Nashville, from the 50s through 70s. George Jones is one of my favorite singers, and I listen to a lot of George Jones. That's kind of like when I'm by myself, because I feel like nobody else wants to listen to George Jones with me, but he's, I think, the best singer who ever lived. He's, he's just my top favorite. But I listen to a lot of, a lot of electronic he's, like old electronic music. There's this movement of of called, what's called Cosmic music from the 70s in Germany, like craft work. We're kind of part of that world. There's a band called Harmonia, a band called cluster. A lot of kind of like ambient, experimental electronic music from from 50 years ago, I'm kind of obsessed with but I don't know a lot of singer songwriter stuff too. I don't listen to music as much as I used to. As I find I spend a lot of time thinking about music. And I'll go for a drive and I'll go hours without listening to anything, but I will be thinking about songs, and I often find that almost as rewarding experience. So I don't know why that it is. I just I feel like I'm I'm taking in less music than I used to, but I find I'm thinking about music a lot. Really liked the last Cindy Lee album, Diamond Jubilee, and when I was on tour this summer with my friend kareemah Walker, we listened to that in the car an awful lot. Yeah,

Livi Schwartz 37:10
do you feel yourself drawn? I'm gonna back up actually. So yeah, like being more intentional about what, like how you're consuming music. I was curious, I guess, if you feel drawn to other projects that like, feel like they're part of, like, this greater world, like we talked about earlier with the songs, about places where you can, like, really feel it like that is that something that attracts you to certain artists or songs. Sometimes,

Speaker 1 37:43
I know what you mean. Yeah. I mean, sometimes you'll hear music that just it comes to you with no context, and the mystery can be really exciting and to wonder about. I mean, I listen to a lot of music from other countries too, and I listen to a lot of singers who are singing in other languages. And I was just talking, I have a 12 year old kid. We were just talking about this. There's this Japanese song that they were excited to play me, and it's all in Japanese. And I was like, Do you know what they're singing about? And they didn't know the lyrics, but they were just kind of, they told me what they thought the song might be about, just based on, like, the feeling of the music. And we were talking about how when you listen to music from a different place, and you're just responding to the sound of the music and the emotion and a singer's voice, you can project so much onto that. And I think that's that can be a really thrilling way to listen to music where you kind of can fill in a lot of the blanks. So taking music with like less context, I think, can be really exciting. But what I tend to do was, when I find music like that, is I'll start to do research, and I'll figure out where someone's from, and kind of get more of their life story, and then you'll start looking for other music that's happening at the same time, where you'll find out, like, Oh, this is this, the songwriter also did this, or this producer also recorded these other bands at the same time. And I love doing that research and kind of building out a world like that. I read a lot of music biographies, actually, and I love just knowing the context that music came from? Yeah, just to be able to attach a geographical location and, you know, point in history that music came from, I don't think it's essential to enjoy music, but I think it just enriches the experience to know, to know more about the context. Yeah, no, I think I kind of go down a lot of rabbit holes. I watch a lot of documentaries, I read a lot of memoirs, and I just read a book about Creedence Clearwater Revival, who were a band that went to the rival high school that my parents went to, and the early version of credence when. They were called the Blue velvets. They played it like my parents homecoming dance. My parents have really, I mean, I grew up listening to credence as credence, the same credence tape in my dad's car all the time, and remember my parents telling me the story of, like, yeah, we met, you know, we met John Fogerty and him, and him and the band played at our high school, and then by the time credence blew up, they were already rooting for them, because they knew that they were like local El Cerrito guys. So credence always reminds me of my parents. So reading that book and reading about is the all the East Bay, California. So I mean, that's I have a really personal connection to, just for that reason. But I love, I love knowing the situations and you know the people and the you know everything going on behind the music and be just a nice history lesson too.

Livi Schwartz 40:58
Absolutely, like putting it in context and like, being able to relate to it like that makes it so much better. I think, yeah, yeah. I think that might about wrap up every question I had. Was there anything you want to talk about, or anyone you want to expand on?

Speaker 1 41:17
I should just probably mention, yeah, the twinkle echo reissues coming out on a rindl and beginning of August, and then, fingers crossed, the new advanced bass album will be out end of the year on run for cover and Arundel records, run for cover is the label in Boston that CO released Animal companionship. They've been really wonderful partner to work with. Yeah, they're putting out the new album. The new album was called horrible occurrences. And, yeah, it's all done. I just got to finish mixing it and then send it to vinyl production. But hopefully, you know, by December, it'll be out. Amazing,

Livi Schwartz 42:01
great. Well, thank you so much for joining me. This was I was freaking out, but oh well,

Speaker 1 42:07
thanks for asking, and thank you for the thoughtful questions. It was really nice talking to you.

Livi Schwartz 42:13
Yeah, great. Talking to you too. Thank you so much for listening again. This was DJ cherry headache with wknc 88.1 FM, HD, one Raleigh joined by Owen Ashworth from advanced Space. Thank you so much For listening and goodbye. You

Transcribed by https://otter.ai