First of all, hello!
Hello!
How are you?
Very, very well. Very excited for this evening and even more excited to be here with you.
Yay! That’s always great to hear. I remembered I was introduced to you when you opened for Bad Suns. I believe it was earlier this year?
Oh, you came on that tour? Yeah, no way!
How did it feel touring with them? Or just being on the tour in general?
I love answering this question. And it’s simply because Bad Suns are such a good band. They are… You cannot fit a piece of paper between how tight they are. They are such a good band. At the beginning of the tour, we saw them and I just immediately was like, oh my God, we need another rehearsal. It’s always a pleasure touring with them because they are so professional at what they do. It’s very inspiring.
Now that you’re doing your own headlining tour, was there anything that you learned from that tour that you’re implementing here?
I learned everything from that tour. I have the great pleasure and the great honor of having a lot of my role models being my friends: Chris Bowman and that whole band; Miles is just so good, he’s the drummer; Jesse Rutherford, they’ve taken me out a couple times. More than what I’ve taken from those experiences, more than the experience itself, of the grand audiences and all that is if you if you’re willing, and if you’re open, man, what a learning experience. It’s faster than college. You know what I mean? It’s a crash course. If you’re open, if you’re paying attention, my God, you can learn like 7000 new things in one day. One show, whether you’re watching them play or even the way they park their van.
I noticed in other interviews you say that disco inspires your sound. Could you tell me more about that?
Okay, this is funny, because you know what it is? I love this and I think for the first time I’m gonna answer it correctly. I liked disco. And that sentiment before I found out that people think disco sucks. And to be honest with you, that kind of broke my heart because it’s like a form of music.
I think it’s one of the only forms of music where all walks of life, all colors of life, black, white, whatever – it all came together in disco. You have the Beegees, who are widely accepted across all cultures, right? But more than that, musically, you have Afro rhythms, you have very Beatles-like harmonies. You have all the walks of music and all the colors that come together somehow in disco. Hip Hop, everything. If you look at Brothers Johnson, there was such a cool way to do it. So I got into it because I thought there was a cool way to do it.
But then to be completely honest with you, when I did it, I figured that there was a little bit more of a – if you will – concentrated way to become inspired by that, you know what I mean? Instead of diving in and doing a whole disco record. Being more inspired by the essence of what it is. And I’m not going to sit here and say that I’m not making less disco shit because people think it’s lame.
I always find myself in a production like “oh, we should do something a little bit more disco themed here.” And it always seems to work. But in a weird way, I understand that disco can be done very badly very quickly. Disco is so easy to fuck up. You know what I mean? And that I think is just what it comes down to is like if you’re good at whatever you’re doing, if it’s authentic, it will work. And I think I’m not authentically a disco artist. And I think I’m just very much inspired by it. So lately, I’ve been trying to extract the way it makes me feel instead of literally putting it down.
Kind of going off feeling. I remember there was an interview that you had where you said, and apologies if I butcher this, that you go by feelings rather than the essence of the lyrics which come secondary.
I think absolutely in the sense of like… My mom always told me the story when she was younger, my mother is from Luxembourg, a very small country. Actually the smallest country in the world. But she has this story where she’s listening to American music, and there was a lyric in a song she would listen to in the 80s that says “she don’t lie.” That sounds song worthy, right? Sounds correct in the context of the song but the grammar is not correct. So she wrote that in an essay, and she remembers that the teacher came to her and said, “Hey, this is really bad grammar.” But I’ve always taken from that story that, really, at the end of the day, language is very elastic and you can play with it.
And I wouldn’t say that lyrics would necessarily come secondary, because I do really enjoy putting in a lot of intent behind the lyrics. But at the end of the day, like, if you look at artists like Kendrick, sometimes they’re saying shit. For example “Better make it look sexy.” It does so much more for the song and for the sentiment than having to be a really intense lyric. So I do agree with what you’re saying. And I also don’t agree with what you’re saying.
I love both sides of the coin, honestly.
That’s what’s so funny about music. There really is no rules, and you’ll hear a song you’re like, oh, fuck, I gotta try something like that. That’s just art, I guess.
Art has no rules. Well, it does have rules. But then once you learn the rules, you can break them. And I feel like that’s what I like the most about art.
That is very true. And that’s what’s so super interesting. Actually, I haven’t thought about it like that in a long time. There are for sure rules. Music is sound and rhythm organized in time. So I think the organized part, that’s the rule. That’s the one rule. To say it’s a rule though – I’m even trying to get myself out of that headspace.
I do photography, and they’re always just like, you have to go by the rule of thirds and stuff like that. And like you have to crop photos in a specific way.
I’m always on Instagram wondering what the composition of a photo is, the focal points. When I was a kid, I had the same outlook on photography. I was just taking a picture, like what is so exciting about this? The older I get, photography is actually an art form that I would say more than movies is inspiring me lately. Just because you take the time to learn those organization points, those rules, right? Photography is is a very, very interesting art form to me
A picture’s worth 1000 words.
And now actually is the first time in my life, I mean this, where I understand what that means. You know what I mean? That’s how you know that it is a good picture. This picture’s worth 1000 words. That’s a good photograph. Because you can’t really say that about a song. Everyone has their own relationship with a song.
I remember reviewing a song one time and the artist was just like, I didn’t mean for it to be defined like that. But I can see where that’s going. And now I kind of see that perspective.
That’s the beautiful thing about it. Rick Rubin also says the best way to service your audience is to completely forget about them. That kind of actually makes sense with what you’re saying. Because then that allows the audience to do what you’re saying.
There’s an artist that said that once your work is out there, your definition of that work doesn’t necessarily matter anymore.
I agree with that. Because I don’t listen to my own shit. I listen to it when I make it, of course. But I’ve actually recently been very inspired and meditative with that. Okay, there it goes. Because I had gone into a place where I could sit there and edit it all day. My dad says you never finish a song, you only abandon it.
I like that. You can strive for perfection in that way. But, you can never get to that point.
And another thing I love is if you sound perfect, no one believes you. There’s so much beauty. The first time I heard trap music, I was like this is ridiculous. And now I fucking love it. So that period of time for me was that life point and how that started to manifest. And obviously now it’s everywhere. It really taught me a lot, because it doesn’t have to sound perfect right away. There’s so much more to ingesting than just it tasting like a piece of candy.
How has the tour been so far
It’s a little bit of everything and it’s super hard. It’s super scary. But we’re doing it. And I’m so grateful.
A lot of artists that I love very much I sometimes wish they could be that much more open. Just show us a little bit more of what’s really there. Because it takes a lot of courage. I think it takes more courage to fully show you the truth. No fancy words.
At the end of the day, what’s been keeping me going is I’m very, very proud of a little boy inside me that wanted to do this ever since he was a kid. That’s, at the end of the day, fucking priceless. That’s something I intend to chase my whole life. So it’s been fun.
I really like asking artists this: if there was someone out there pursuing music or something that they’re passionate about, what would you tell them?
Such a hard question. Because you want to put the answer in like three words. Stay hungry and stay true. I can’t sit here and tell you how to write a song. But if you’re honest, the truth is never far behind. It’ll catch up with you. I’ve done it so many times where I tried to be cool for someone else. Don’t buy shit to be cool for anyone else. Don’t be anything for anyone else. Let the world come to you.
