0:00

Hi, everyone, Sophia Bush

0:02

here. Welcome to Work in Progress,

0:05

where I talked to people who inspire me

0:07

about how they got to where they are and

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where they think they're still going. Today's

0:23

guest is not only one of my

0:25

very best friends, he is one

0:27

of my very favorite recording artists

0:30

on Earth. It's none other

0:32

than the incredible Jack

0:35

Garrett. He has a brand new album

0:37

out now called Love, Death and Dancing,

0:40

and today we're going to talk about how

0:42

he came to create both

0:45

the album and the visual film that

0:47

accompanies it, How and

0:49

why he started making music in the

0:51

first place, who some of

0:53

his inspirations are, how

0:55

he grew up training his ear

0:58

hiatus, that he took from music to examine

1:01

mental health, and how he prioritizes

1:05

real, vulnerable and substantive

1:07

conversations around mental health. Today.

1:10

There is so much to enjoy in this episode.

1:12

See on the other side.

1:19

This is a time for great introspection, for

1:22

examination of language and

1:25

how we spend our privilege and all of these

1:27

things we're talking about. And

1:30

and yet it's it's the both,

1:32

and we do have to figure out

1:34

how as individuals to find

1:37

some purpose to take care of

1:39

ourselves, to mitigate you

1:42

know, the stress on mental

1:44

health and and so on and so forth. So

1:47

what are you doing for you

1:49

in the midst of widening your perspective?

1:52

You know, are are you writing music?

1:55

Do you find that you're playing more music? Are you

1:57

are you having trouble focusing? I mean where

2:00

where? Where do you kind of find

2:02

yourself now this this many weeks

2:04

into this thing. My my issue

2:06

at the moment is I'm so deep in the world of promoting

2:09

an album. I'm finding it hard to I'm

2:12

finding it hard to like take stock

2:15

of the rest of what I could be doing, like

2:18

so much of it. I

2:21

love my job. I love everything about

2:23

my job. But like I I love, I

2:25

love everything about my job so much so I

2:28

am annoying to work with because I want to

2:30

be involved with every part of

2:32

what my job touches, whether that's you

2:34

know, writing the song and then producing the song,

2:36

through mixing it and mastering it, to how it's

2:38

packaged, how it's marketed, the

2:40

design of everything that goes around it. I want

2:43

to and should be, I believe, involved

2:45

in every single moment of that of those

2:47

decisions, um and

2:49

again. It makes me annoying

2:52

to work with because I am I am

2:54

very picky about about the things

2:56

I like. I'm very good, I always say, I'm very good at

2:58

noticing what I don't like. I'm not very good at

3:00

knowing what I do like until I see it. And

3:02

but but that helps me make the right decisions.

3:05

I think is if something, if I'm presented

3:07

with something, I can go I don't like this. I

3:09

don't like this, I don't like this. The

3:11

rest of it is great, So let's keep that and let's

3:13

change the other bits. And so you know, I've got to be

3:15

better at doing that because that

3:17

makes me a pain to work with. But but what

3:20

it's leaving to me too is this is my

3:23

brain is so enwrapped in that way of

3:25

thinking. It's finding it hard

3:27

to it's finding it

3:29

hard to create. Yeah, I think. I mean, like I've

3:32

been desperate to get up into this room, which is

3:34

like where I am right now. Is I'm in my studio

3:37

at home, which is just a bedroom at the top of my

3:39

this house I'm renting in London, and I've

3:41

got all of my toys in there. And if you know, I don't

3:43

know if anyone who's listening has seen any

3:46

of the like shows or streams I've been doing.

3:48

It's it's the room in which I sit

3:51

in those is exactly where I am right now. So

3:53

I'm surrounded by toys and things that make noise,

3:57

and I find it hard

3:59

to at the moment, I find it

4:01

hard to ride the wave that will get me to the shore of

4:03

an idea like it's it's it's kind

4:05

of tough because I'm on one hand

4:07

thinking about promoting a record, so I'm in

4:10

quite like a clinical way

4:13

of thinking, and I'm thinking about, you

4:15

know, promotional things. But then at the same time, I'm also

4:17

performing these songs for radio shows

4:19

and you know, um tuning

4:22

into Facebook streams for

4:25

like I already said, like radio stations in America,

4:27

and at the same time, I'm doing

4:29

phone interviews and all that kind of stuff. I mean, I mean

4:31

like I'm in I'm in business

4:34

mode, and I really enjoy that

4:36

because I only get to do it when I'm putting an

4:38

album out or when I'm putting new music out,

4:41

and I thrive in this place. I enjoy this place.

4:43

I get to be a version of myself that I

4:45

find quite interesting because it's so not

4:47

like who I am usually. I get to use

4:49

all the decisiveness that I'm usually so bad

4:52

at doing. I'm I'm my harshest

4:54

critic, and I'm the worst person to make a decision

4:56

about anything because I overthink when I'm in

4:58

this mode. That guy just disappeared is I

5:00

don't know. I I need

5:02

to be better at being able to have that

5:05

version of myself coexist

5:07

with the more creative versions of myself because

5:09

I think, I think

5:11

that decisive part of who I am could be

5:14

really important in my creativity.

5:16

But he just he's not there when I'm creating.

5:18

He's somewhere else, which which

5:20

again this this ven diagram thing,

5:23

this trod in his box, this I'm everything and

5:25

none of them all at once kind of thing. I

5:29

need that part of me to be there to make decisions,

5:31

but I don't need him there if what he's going to do

5:33

is overthink the decisions that he's making. And

5:36

that guy, so that business guy

5:38

is great when I need him to be there,

5:40

like right now, not in this conversation. Because

5:42

I'm with a friend and I'm talking about fun

5:44

stuff. It's easy for him to just take a break. But

5:46

like when I'm when I'm in a

5:48

meeting with my label, that

5:51

that's that's who I am in that moment, and

5:54

he and like I said, he makes decisions and he thinks

5:56

about things and he seems to know what he's

5:58

talking about, which is very

6:00

much not like who I am when

6:02

I'm in creating something. I don't

6:04

want him to be there all the time, because otherwise I'm going to

6:06

be making music from a business perspective

6:08

or from a from a clinical perspective.

6:12

But then again, the other question is can he be there

6:14

a bit? Is that going to help me make good decisions quickly?

6:16

I don't know, I don't know. It's it's weird, but

6:19

but but everything that I've said is relevant

6:21

to just my creative experience, regardless

6:23

or not as to whether I'm like stuck inside because

6:25

of a pandemic. I think actually i've been. My brain

6:28

has been quite good at disassociating from

6:30

like what's going on ten ft outside

6:32

on the pavement and just allowing me to kind

6:34

of exist in this room and and work

6:37

when I need to. M hmm. I

6:40

wonder if for people like us

6:42

who do spend so much time on the road for

6:45

work, and I mean, I

6:47

feel like I'm always gone, and you when

6:49

you're touring are quite literally in a different

6:51

city every day or every other day. Yeah.

6:54

Do you think that maybe some

6:56

of what might be

6:58

good for for creatives

7:01

about this being at home is

7:04

is the ability to nest a bit too.

7:08

You know, you've been able to, as you mentioned, set

7:10

up your studio. You know, you've got all these

7:12

noisemakers that you've collected that

7:15

that now have this place and you can

7:17

work. You know, I again,

7:20

in trying to find some elements

7:23

of lightness in this

7:26

dark time, I've really tried

7:28

to practice a lot of gratitude for the ability

7:30

to be at home and work from home

7:32

and not be on a plane every

7:35

four days. You know. Um,

7:38

And I wonder as

7:40

this all continues, I wonder what. I

7:44

wonder what might get made out of out

7:47

of that space. Yeah. Something

7:49

my manager said the other day that really

7:52

made me kind of take stuff and think it was I

7:55

he said when I was talking to the other day,

7:58

he was saying, everyone's

8:00

going to have a comeback show after this. Every

8:04

single musician, every single one of them. There is

8:06

not a single musician who

8:08

isn't going to have that moment when they

8:10

play their first show again. Right,

8:14

every single musician on the planet who is touring

8:16

and doing all that kind of stuff. When they do

8:18

their first show, that's what it's going to be. It's going

8:20

to be their first show back. And

8:23

I that's the that's the thing that kind

8:25

of that's that's where I that

8:28

hits me where I live because I nest anyway

8:30

when I'm writing, because I have to, because I'm on my

8:32

own when I'm doing it, so so me like,

8:34

and that's what I mean about, Like those ten ft from

8:36

where I am in here to where the pavement

8:39

is. I've been able to put

8:41

up a barrier there for so long anyway,

8:44

the that that's kind of no different

8:46

for me now. But me being in here, my

8:48

my issues are still the same. My my either lack

8:51

of or overwhelming

8:53

amount of creativity is still something. It's

8:55

a you know, a lion. I'm constantly

8:57

trying to attain. But the thing that I'm so interested

9:00

about is like, how

9:02

how how how to react

9:04

when I do that first show, when I walk out on

9:06

that first stage. Do I reference it? Should

9:09

I? Is that the point? Do we want to be reminded

9:11

or do do we just want to live in the

9:13

moment of the show, like you know from the

9:15

shows that I do I have this, have

9:18

this unspoken contract with my audience where I refuse

9:20

to let them leave unless

9:23

they're as tired as I am,

9:25

and as tired and as stressed as I am.

9:28

Like, I still want that feeling to be the same. I

9:30

don't. I don't want I don't want this

9:32

to have affected I

9:34

don't want this to affect that moment so much so that

9:36

it becomes the reason why we have that moment.

9:39

It's going to be the reason we have that moment anyway. I just

9:41

want to know the first time I do a show

9:44

that I want to know that's why we're all there.

9:47

It's still we're there for the show, We're there for the live

9:49

music. I don't. Yeah, Well,

9:51

it's interesting because again it's a simultaneous

9:53

truth that first show back

9:56

for all of us will be a reclamation

9:59

and it will all so be a welcome departure.

10:03

It's both, and you

10:05

know, we want we want the

10:08

departure from this reality and we want

10:10

to reclaim our

10:12

group experience. The cantarsis

10:14

the the you know, to

10:17

your point that the overwhelmingly

10:19

fun exhaustion you feel at the end

10:21

of a great show because you've been shouting and dancing

10:24

and sweating, and you know

10:27

that's going to be such an interesting thing too,

10:30

to get back. And it makes

10:32

me think, you know, when when you talk about the

10:35

relationship where you have to your audience and the

10:37

way that you perform,

10:39

you do you put everything out on the

10:41

stage. And because you're the only one playing,

10:44

you know, I think there's so many people who hear your records

10:46

and think like, wow, that guy's I wonder

10:49

who's in his band? And I always laugh because

10:51

I'm like, hello, it's

10:53

just him. You know, you

10:55

you are this savants

10:58

you know, mad, freaky, genius, prodigy.

11:01

These are words I used to describe you. I know you're turning

11:03

red. I don't care. Don't

11:06

disagree with every single one of them. Well I know that

11:08

right, and I'm here to have a debate

11:11

with you about it. That's not helpful for our podcast.

11:15

But you know, the amazing

11:17

thing about watching you

11:20

do what you do is that you do

11:22

all of it and and you

11:25

have such an incredible

11:29

I think about your brain a

11:31

bit like a library of like many

11:33

records and sounds, and

11:36

it's it's awesome. And

11:39

I've seen you play so

11:41

many different kinds of shows and so many

11:44

different kinds of music. And

11:46

and I'm curious, you

11:48

know, because obviously we've we've taken

11:51

a leap off the high dive into where we are today.

11:54

But one of the things I like to do

11:56

with people is is go back. And

12:00

I know I know many things about

12:02

your childhood because you're one of my best friends.

12:04

But for the audience, we'll

12:07

go back to some things I already know, which is where

12:09

did you grow up, who's in your family? And

12:12

then I want to get into when

12:15

you first picked up a musical instrument

12:17

and why so let's let's walk walk

12:19

us, walk us down memory laying a little bit well,

12:22

I mean I grew up. I grew up as the as

12:24

the youngest member of a family of

12:26

five, including my mom and dad, my brother, and my sister.

12:29

Yes, the the youngest of three. My sister

12:31

was the oldest, my brother was there in

12:34

the middle. All of us musical,

12:37

not like it

12:39

was inevitable and inescapable.

12:42

Um My, my mom. My

12:45

mom was a firm believer that the firm

12:48

believer that we all should and must

12:51

take piano lessons when we were kids, which

12:53

we all did, and then when we were old enough

12:55

to we were able to learn an instrument.

12:57

Of our own choosing. And that's because we all showed in,

13:00

you know, in a nate wanting to

13:02

to play music in some sort of way. I think it's it's

13:04

it's very much something that is in the DNA of

13:07

of our family. And

13:09

going back even further, definitely both on my

13:11

dad's side and on my mom's side. So like my

13:14

my dad taught himself to play guitar

13:16

when he was about I don't know, like

13:18

seventeen eighteen. And although

13:20

he doesn't come from a

13:22

an obviously musical family, there's

13:25

music in in that family, right,

13:27

music appreciation and and

13:30

and an understanding of music. My

13:32

mom's side was a very overtly musical family.

13:35

My my my grandfather, who I never met,

13:37

was a church organist and a traveling

13:39

salesman. And my grandmom

13:42

sung in the in the church choir that my

13:44

my grandfather played the organ in. And you know, so my

13:46

mom grew up the youngest of um

13:48

I think she got yet three brothers.

13:51

Um No, not the youngest, sorry, she was the

13:54

second youngest, but she grew up

13:56

and they all had the same kind of thing. Music is

13:58

very important, but hers was

14:01

was a secular music upbringing. So music

14:03

was was was secular. It

14:05

was, it was it was a type

14:08

of of praise, which

14:10

is a very different thing to talk about secular music, and especially

14:13

like religious music, Christian music. It is a very different

14:15

thing in the UK than it would have been to what

14:17

I think you would be assuming or

14:20

the image you would be conjuring in your head. Um

14:23

in America. I think it's a very very different

14:25

thing. Like for example, like I said, my

14:27

my grandfather was like the church organist

14:30

of the local parish. And you

14:32

know, all of those words when I say them with

14:35

a little bit of British

14:37

in my voice kind of paint

14:40

the picture a little bit more um. You know, I

14:42

think cobbled streets and moan

14:45

grass and I mean gaslights.

14:47

But she's not that old. But the

14:51

but like but but but the point being

14:53

is that like music is in the in in my blood,

14:55

it absolutely is um. And when I was

14:57

a kid, like I said, my my mom,

14:59

as she did my brother and my sister, I had to get piano

15:01

lessons. I hated them.

15:04

I didn't enjoy my piano lessons because my

15:06

piano teacher, my piano

15:08

teacher forced me, as any good piano teacher

15:10

should do, forced me to learn

15:13

the pieces that we were playing by using my eyes in

15:15

my hands, whereas I just wanted to use my ears all the

15:17

time. So the beginning of the beginning

15:20

of a piece that we would spend the next few weeks learning,

15:22

she would play it for me. My

15:24

ears would remember everything that she played, and I would

15:26

sit down and I would start to find

15:29

the notes. Rather than read the music, I would just let

15:31

my fingers tinkle around the keyboard

15:33

until I found the notes of the piece

15:35

that she just played to me. And that's not what

15:37

that's not what piano playing is. That's just you

15:39

know, that's guesswork, essentially. But

15:41

but my ears were desperate to do that. They were trying

15:44

to figure figure music out. They were trying to

15:46

find a way to get my you know, my

15:48

ears were trying to find a way to get my brain to talk

15:50

to my hands. And what my piano

15:52

teacher did is she would put books

15:55

over my hands so I couldn't look at them, so I

15:57

had to look at the music instead of looking at my hands

15:59

and trying to guess the notes and all that kind of stuff. And I hated

16:01

it because I was like, this is just easier if you just if

16:03

you just took the book away. I could learn this

16:06

piece really quickly. But that's

16:08

not the point, you know, because so

16:12

much of what my music upbringing has

16:14

taught me is is an appreciation

16:17

for the discipline of

16:19

it, and her

16:21

doing that was encouraging me to be

16:24

more of a disciplinarian on myself when it

16:26

came to music, to not take

16:28

the easy route, but to take the challenging route.

16:30

Not because it's right, but because it's challenging.

16:34

Obviously, my brain, my ears wanted the

16:36

challenge of something, and she just offered it to me in

16:38

a different way. But Yeah, and then when I was

16:40

like eleven, I I picked up the trombone.

16:42

That was the that was the second instrument. I officially

16:44

like got lessons in and started to play. But

16:47

that whole time doing lessons in piano

16:49

and trombone and stuff, I was surrounded

16:52

by musical instruments at home, and I just picked

16:54

all of them up and tried to play all of them.

16:57

Yeah, why do you think you went for

16:59

the trump n second? Because

17:01

it was abrasive and loud and funny to

17:03

look at. Literally, that's the reason I like, we

17:06

got Yeah, my so it

17:08

was So that was the whole point is it was all it was.

17:10

It was around that age. It was always like ten or eleven.

17:13

We could then choose to play our own choose

17:15

to play our own instrument, choose another instrument

17:17

to learn how to play, to get lessons in. So

17:19

my brother, sorry, my my sister, who

17:21

was the eldest, chose the flute. My

17:23

brother chose the cello. I chose the trombone.

17:26

I mean for any

17:29

I guess, like for any music nerds. I'm absolutely

17:31

a brass ensemble member.

17:34

Like if you were to just look at me and you know anything about

17:36

my personality, I I suited the brass

17:38

very well. It was either going to be brass or percussion. Um.

17:41

I was never gonna have a violin in

17:43

my hands, although I did try that for a bit and

17:45

just didn't get on with it. But I don't

17:47

know, the trombone just seemed to make sense to me. Um,

17:49

something about the visualization of it. With a trombone,

17:52

there's no fixed there's no fixed positions like

17:54

there are on a trumpet or on a I

17:56

mean, on any other standard member

17:58

of the brass family. Like trumpets have valves,

18:01

French ones have valves, tubers have

18:03

valves, they've all got keys

18:06

essentially that you pressed down. In the combination

18:08

of keys that you press produce a certain note.

18:10

The trombone has a slide. It's

18:13

guesswork if you don't know what you're doing. The

18:15

visualization of it made sense to me. It

18:17

reminded me of the of a threat of a guitar.

18:20

You know, on it depending

18:23

on the shape of your mouth or the

18:25

what's called your umbre. Sure you

18:28

can change the range of the trombone.

18:30

So on the lowest range for me,

18:32

that was just like the lowest eastring, and

18:34

every position on the trombone was a different threat.

18:37

It just made sense to me. The guitar was an instrument. Already

18:39

knew at that point, I'd already kind of worked my way around

18:41

it. But this but this is the thing, is that like I'm over

18:43

explaining something that was instinctive and instantaneous.

18:46

Um, the decision to pick the trombone was

18:49

because it visually made sense. I didn't

18:51

sit there as an eleven year old and go, oh, well, it kind of

18:53

reminds me of the guitar. But if I was to think

18:55

about it now, that's probably one of the main reasons

18:57

why I subconsciously I went for it, all

18:59

right, okay,

19:05

smart, So you you started

19:07

on the piano, you picked up the guitar on

19:10

your own. I got

19:12

quite good at that, and then used your second

19:17

the blessing of your second lesson

19:22

that allocation. So,

19:26

yeah, knowing some of your musical taste

19:30

in the way that I do, I'm curious,

19:32

do you also think the trombone.

19:34

I understand how it technically made sense to

19:36

you in the way that in high insight

19:38

you realize that it felt similar to the guitar.

19:41

But do you think that you also loved it, that you

19:44

love brass because

19:46

of the music you grew up listening to. I

19:49

think there was something in that as well. I I

19:53

can I can respond to that by saying that, like what

19:55

every instrument I learned taught me to

19:58

do, was it learned me to think it sorry

20:00

to learned me. It taught me to think about

20:02

music from a different perspective every single time.

20:05

So, you know, the job of a

20:07

brass player, no matter what the band

20:09

or orchestra or ensemble they're in, is different

20:11

to that of any other instrument. And

20:13

it's the same with the guitar. It's the same with the piano. You

20:16

know, I I never, for example, when

20:18

I taught myself to play the guitar, because we

20:20

had guitars around the house and I and I saw

20:22

people playing the guitar, and my brain went, that makes

20:24

sense. Pick it up, pretend

20:27

like you know what you're doing. The rest will come, and

20:29

that's that is essentially what happened. But like for

20:32

me, there's a huge difference, as there should be

20:34

between the bass guitar and an electric

20:36

guitar, as much as there's a difference between the electric

20:38

guitar and acoustic guitar, they're all They're all entirely

20:40

different instruments. They're not the same thing just because they

20:43

are shaped the same, or that the science

20:45

of them is similar. And and

20:47

and I don't think I've really encouraged

20:49

myself to think like that. I think I just always did

20:51

think like that. I I taught myself

20:54

to play instruments, like I said, by literally mirroring or

20:56

mimicking that of people who played

20:58

those instruments first. So I taught myself to play guitar

21:00

by watching videos of Stevie A. Vaughan, who

21:02

is, in my opinion, the greatest guitarist

21:04

they've ever lived, who died tragically

21:07

too young in a helicopter crash a couple of years

21:09

before I was born, in I think or ninety

21:12

and the he

21:14

he played the guitar

21:17

like no one else I'd ever seen, like no one else

21:19

had ever seen. My dad had an old video

21:21

at a VHS video for you kids

21:23

out there, He had a VHS

21:26

of a really like a

21:28

really famous show of Steve A.

21:31

Vaughn's. It's called Steve Evone Live at the Elmacambo

21:33

Theater. And this

21:35

is like widely regarded as one of the one

21:37

of the pinnacle examples of how

21:39

to play the blues guitar like Stevie

21:42

might have been twenty six

21:45

in this video. Here is this essentially

21:47

this kid playing the blues

21:50

and not slow blues, not like

21:53

like not Delta blues, like playing

21:55

Texas rock blues,

21:58

like like no on had

22:00

ever played it before. And

22:04

it was, Like I said, it's widely renowned as being

22:06

one of the greatest examples of guitar playing

22:08

and blues playing in in in musical

22:10

history. For the band that we're playing

22:13

with him that night, they've been quoted as saying that

22:15

was just another show for that's just that's the level

22:17

at which he played always. I

22:19

don't know. I think when I was a kid, I was so infatuated

22:22

with the stories and with the with

22:24

with the different characters that you could be

22:26

behind an instrument that seemed to

22:28

be the thing that drove me the most. No,

22:30

two instruments are the same, and you

22:32

shouldn't be the same if you're playing a different

22:34

instrument. I think, I think

22:36

that makes sense. I

22:39

don't remember what your question was. Well,

22:41

and maybe that's why.

22:43

That's the whole point. It's just maybe

22:47

that's also why you

22:49

love every piece

22:53

of the puzzle of your music and the way you do and

22:55

you play them. Every piece

22:57

is is a piece of you. It's you.

23:00

You you paint the whole picture, which

23:03

is very interesting. So I am

23:05

curious. So you grew

23:08

up listening to Stevie y Van and

23:10

who else? What do you think now when

23:12

you look back at your childhood, what

23:15

are the bands that come to mind or songs

23:18

that jumped out well that I mean

23:20

I always go back to. I

23:24

mean, like Stevie Wonder taught me how to write

23:26

songs. Obviously he didn't

23:28

know that's what he was doing, but he taught

23:30

me. He taught me how to write songs. Yeah,

23:32

I

23:35

I mean, music was evidently

23:38

everywhere in the house, but it wasn't always being

23:40

played, you know, like we

23:42

we weren't the kind of musical house where there was constantly

23:45

music on the on the on the radio, or

23:47

my dad wasn't always playing CDs, but he

23:50

usually was. But silence was

23:52

just as important, and discovery was

23:54

just as important. Like my mom and dad never sat me

23:56

down like dad, never sat me down and went, boy,

23:59

I'm going to play you sever everyone, and you're going to like him

24:01

like my dad. Just my dad just played Steve ray

24:03

Vaughan and I saw the absolute adoration in his

24:06

eyes, and it made me want to It

24:08

made me want to love the thing my dad loved. It

24:10

was just then very easy to love it because it was incredible.

24:13

And it's the same with like my mom, who would play Stevie

24:15

Wonder on the piano and we would listen to Songs

24:17

in the Key of Life, and that's that's an incredibly

24:21

like Songs in the Key of Life was one of the first

24:23

albums I heard that changed my perception

24:25

of what pop music could be. Right, here's

24:28

this album. When I listened to it, I was a child,

24:31

but here's this album that is politically charged,

24:34

socially charged, economically charged,

24:38

and it's and it's it's

24:40

a hit factory, right,

24:42

Here's here is Here is a Here's a double

24:44

LP by one of the

24:47

one of the most undeniably brilliant

24:50

musicians. Um

24:52

but like his his Here's Yeah, Here's

24:55

a double LP of of of of the

24:59

purest just enjoyment

25:01

on on record. I can't get over how good

25:03

that album is. And I was, and I was a kid,

25:06

and I remember listening to it, and I remember obviously

25:08

not understanding what I was listening to, but just

25:11

knowing that what I was listening to was irrefutably

25:14

good. I didn't have I didn't have the

25:16

I didn't have the context of what great was at the

25:18

age that I listened to it. I must have been six, I don't know,

25:20

younger than that even, but like, I just

25:22

knew it was I knew it was good. I knew the

25:24

melodies immediately. I didn't

25:26

know that that's what made them good. I just knew. I knew

25:29

those melodies immediately, you know. And the

25:31

amazing thing was the reason why I bring up like Steve

25:33

Everyone's, particularly Steve Everyone,

25:35

Stevie Wonder also like Paul Simon

25:38

David Bowie, is that those

25:40

were all I'm very yeah, I'm

25:43

very aware I lifted off a lot

25:45

of men there, and I'm gonna I'm gonna get there in a minute

25:47

as to as to what like they all

25:50

represented the people I wanted to

25:52

be as an artist, right

25:54

and I because

25:57

because they all at the core

25:59

of what they did, it made

26:03

I'm going to use this term pop music.

26:06

See where everyone played the blues when pop

26:08

was when when the blues was popular and it was

26:10

charting, Right, Stevie Wonder

26:13

made funk and soul music. He didn't

26:15

make pop music, but it but it like it

26:17

was popular enough that it turned him into a

26:20

global sensation. Well, you're

26:22

meaning pop as in the most

26:25

popular of its era, not pop music

26:27

like that we understand pop to be today

26:30

exactly, but the genre, the

26:32

the the the the

26:35

size of the experience. But to link

26:37

it back to what we've been talking about this conversation so

26:39

far, when it's it's it's both and

26:42

yeah, it's both and like it's

26:44

like pop music in terms of the word popular,

26:47

it unquestionably

26:50

is like David Bowie's album

26:53

Let's Dance was was was

26:55

panned when it came out because it

26:57

was so obviously a pop record,

27:00

and critics were like, like, what's David Bowie

27:02

doing. Well, what he was doing

27:04

was making some of the most interesting

27:07

and some of the most interesting

27:10

and challenging, intricately

27:12

put together pop music that the world had ever

27:14

heard. And to do that, he enlisted the

27:16

talents of Nile Rodgers to play guitar

27:19

and to produce the record, and

27:21

also he brought in the talents of

27:23

a young blues guitarist who we might have already talked

27:25

about, Steven Avon, who played the guitar

27:27

solos on that record, right, And

27:29

like, and I

27:32

I just can't. I could never go

27:34

back and and look at any of the

27:37

reviews for that record A because it's not helpful,

27:39

and no one remembers the reviews. Everyone

27:41

remembers the album. But

27:43

but there would be no need to, no point to because

27:45

I understand why it was panned because

27:48

it was easy to pan it, but it's it's

27:50

it's way more difficult and it's way more interesting

27:52

to appreciate it for its nuances and for its

27:54

intricacies. And all of the artists

27:56

that I've listed did that. What they then enabled

27:59

me to do was when I was in a

28:00

a huge like discovery

28:03

period of my young adolescence,

28:05

like thirteen fourteen. They opened

28:08

the doors for me to then listen to a huge,

28:10

wide, varying amount

28:12

of styles and genres of music. But

28:15

they made me want to listen to people who made me feel

28:17

the same way, which was, well, hang on, this is a hook,

28:20

but there's so much more to it, like

28:22

Image and Heap is a huge Image

28:24

and Heap like taught me how to think about

28:27

pop music in a way that I

28:29

still don't know if I'll ever be able to

28:32

to think about music in the way that she did. When I

28:34

first heard hide and hide and Seek, which

28:36

is a very popular song, it

28:39

is, it is, it is so

28:41

much more than that. I remember the

28:43

first time I heard that song absolutely it

28:45

was because of that famous scene from the O C.

28:48

But the first time that I heard Hide and Seek

28:50

by Image and Heap, I my heart

28:52

broke and I was, like I

28:54

said, thirteen fourteen, maybe when I heard that song

28:56

for the first time, I did not know,

28:59

and probably a bit that, but anyway, I didn't

29:01

know how to. I just didn't know how to father I could

29:03

not understand someone could think about that

29:05

as an idea. It's such a simple

29:07

melody, it's such a simple hook. But

29:10

the production of it, the science behind it, the

29:12

technology that I'm

29:15

speechless. I am still flummaxed by

29:17

how brilliant that song is. Everything

29:19

about it, right, every layer of that song

29:21

is brilliant. Her performance, her

29:24

writing, the production, the mix of it,

29:26

the master of it, it's placement on her album,

29:28

everything about that is so well thought.

29:31

And I don't know. I just think every artist

29:33

I've ever looked up to and wanted to be similar

29:35

to, I think has looked at music in the same

29:37

way that I found myself doing it, which was

29:39

if you think about if you

29:42

don't think about all the details, you're

29:44

not servicing the song m

29:48

and I just that's just wrong true with me. Ever since,

29:50

every musician I fall in love with, I hear

29:52

the details in what they're doing, whether

29:54

it's Prince, whether it's Ethan

29:57

Griska, whether it's um

30:00

Umm St Vincent, whether

30:02

it's like newer artists like

30:05

Lapsley, who I absolutely adore, whether

30:07

it's Little Sims, who's another British artist who

30:09

I absolutely thought like people who just obviously

30:11

care about the detail of the art that they make.

30:15

That's what that's what lights my fire, that's what

30:17

gets me going. So where

30:19

do you think you realized music was

30:22

the thing that you wanted to do. It wasn't just

30:24

a Harvey, it wasn't just in the house, but

30:27

it was what you wanted to do with your life. There's

30:30

a strange difference there between I

30:34

think when did when did I realize that it was

30:36

what I had to do? Because

30:39

because I think it was always what I was going to do. I

30:42

went to UNI to study teaching.

30:45

Both my parents are teachers, or were at

30:47

some point. My dad was a policeman for the majority of

30:49

his career. My mom was a music teacher,

30:52

so teaching is in my blood as much as

30:54

music is. And I went to

30:57

university to study primary

30:59

school education, specializing in music.

31:02

So I was, you know, essentially sewing

31:05

together a little safety net of, um,

31:07

well, you know, if the music thing doesn't work out,

31:10

I'll go and I'll teach primary school kids music.

31:12

I'd taken a gap year and I had been

31:15

a teaching assistant at a primary school. I

31:18

had the I had the experience, and I knew

31:20

it was something I could do. And then I went

31:22

to you need to study how to do

31:24

it. And the minute I started doing that, my

31:27

entire body went what are

31:29

you doing? Like why

31:31

give yourself a safety net? And

31:33

the argument, the argument was always well, you know,

31:35

just in case it goes wrong. And

31:39

the voice in my head that was screaming at me would go,

31:41

why are you allowing it to go wrong? Why

31:43

are you allowing yourself to need a safety net?

31:46

Don't do this, Go go run,

31:48

chase the thing that you want to do. Don't let yourself

31:51

have an opportunity to fail. Don't even

31:53

think about that. That's not that's not the fact that that's not

31:55

like, that's not going to happen. I remember

31:58

after a turn, I called my

32:00

sister and I said, I'm I think

32:02

I have to go home and tell mom and dad I can't

32:04

do this. I didn't. I didn't a term

32:06

out of my first year. I said

32:08

I just can't. I can't do this. And

32:13

it was she was able to hear how serious

32:15

I was, and I'm not usually like that with her, and

32:18

she was able to hear it. And she was the one who

32:20

kind of instilled the courage in me to go home

32:22

and see my mom and dad and you know, do

32:25

the thing. That neither my brother or sister had done,

32:27

because I've spent a lot of my childhood as well kind

32:29

of feeling like I lived in their shadow. UM

32:32

for other reasons, but

32:34

to know I had her support and to and to know

32:36

I was, you know, I was going to do something

32:38

that

32:41

my mom and dad never experienced before, which is have

32:43

one of their children come home from university

32:45

and go, this isn't for me. I think I need

32:47

to go and do this other thing instead. And the support

32:50

that they showed me is

32:53

still there to this day. They gave me,

32:55

you know, as any good parents should do. I think

32:57

in that situation they gave me an ultimatum

33:00

and they said, yes, absolutely do it. Will

33:02

support you as much as we can, but we need to see

33:04

that this is going to work for you, right, And

33:06

I think Dad said I think Dad gave me like six

33:08

months. He was like, six months you can stay at home absolutely.

33:11

After that, you need to figure out

33:13

what you're doing. And two

33:15

months later I moved into London and was

33:17

making music and making earning a living.

33:20

UM. I was earn thinking you're living making

33:22

fake versions of songs that a advertising

33:25

company couldn't pay the licenses for. UM,

33:27

for their online adverts. I

33:30

was everything that I disagree with in the music

33:32

industry for about eight months because it paid

33:34

so well. Yeah, but that's

33:37

like, so there was never a point where I was like,

33:39

I know, I'm going to be a musician. I just there

33:41

was more a point that was saying, you don't want to do anything

33:43

but that. Um So

33:47

I'm really curious because the

33:49

voice that says, don't you dare

33:51

give yourself a safety Now do

33:53

what you love, pursue it. Yeah,

33:56

you know, it's very good, kowski right, It's

33:58

like, fine, what you love and when it kill you, this

34:00

will be your only option. But

34:03

that you know, And

34:05

and obviously I don't mean literally I

34:07

want to be alive and threat but

34:10

that voice strikes

34:13

me as determined,

34:16

as confident. And

34:19

one of the things that I'm

34:21

so deeply grateful for about our friendship,

34:24

and the list is very long, is

34:26

that you and I, as artists

34:29

and sensitive people, have a

34:31

real ability to rest in our

34:33

friendship and talk about our anxiety

34:37

and you you

34:39

are also having a really

34:41

important public conversation

34:45

and about anxiety

34:48

and about mental health. And I'm

34:50

I'm curious how

34:52

those voices lived

34:55

together because there is

34:57

a ferocious confidence in saying

34:59

I'm going to go towards that which I love and

35:03

and there's the other thing. And so when

35:08

did did the anxiety come

35:11

later? Or or did the confidence

35:13

and the anxiety the kind of passion and

35:15

the pain did they coexist? Always they

35:19

manifested in different in different ways as

35:21

I got older, I the

35:25

amount of confidence I needed to be able to

35:27

make a decision like that, you're absolutely right, is very

35:31

much like that of the confidence of a young white

35:33

man like I was. I

35:36

was just giving some poetry slam, but

35:40

but it absolutely was. I like there,

35:42

I there, I was at a great

35:44

university um, studying

35:47

for a studying for a

35:49

job that I have the utmost respectful, which

35:51

is teaching, And I was

35:54

going, no, I'm going to be

35:56

a musician, Like there's nothing

35:59

that there was nothing that would

36:01

suggest that it would work for me right, that that

36:03

decision was was the right one to make. However,

36:07

there was no voice at that time in my head

36:09

that was saying, don't do this, You're not good enough. There

36:11

was enough, There was no voice in my head that was saying

36:13

that. That voice came later.

36:16

Now that voice has been with me for a very

36:18

long time. That voice that tells me I'm

36:20

not good enough has been with me since I was a

36:22

child. It

36:25

has it

36:28

has found its way into the

36:30

forefront of my decision making as

36:33

I've turned into an adult, and also as

36:35

I have started to have my decisions be

36:39

be dissected in front of me in real

36:41

time. I have a very strange

36:43

relationship with with my

36:45

industry. I say have a very strange relationship with

36:49

with with the

36:51

critical response to my work, not

36:54

because I don't want to hear like

36:56

bad reviews or anything, because I

36:59

fundamental believed that for art to exist,

37:01

it needs to exist freely, and criticism

37:04

of art is just as important as the creation of it. The

37:07

problem that I went through is I I was under

37:09

a certain level of scrutiny that I think stunted

37:12

certain parts of my growth, not

37:14

only as a musician and as an artist, but

37:16

also as a man. So that voice definitely

37:18

came later, but it

37:21

was, you know, as we've been talking

37:23

about this whole time, It's always been there with me.

37:25

Like it both came suddenly

37:27

and had been gradually growing over

37:29

time. I grew

37:32

up in a house that was very

37:35

I have no I

37:37

have no obvious memory of ever being told

37:40

not to express my emotions. You

37:42

know, I don't think. I don't think I was ever explicitly

37:45

encouraged to either, but there's been that.

37:47

There was no point in my childhood, for

37:49

example, where I feel like my emotional

37:53

my evoctional growth, my my emotional growth

37:55

was stunted by you know, my family or anything

37:57

like that. I came from a place where discussion

37:59

and debate was important and we all talked

38:01

a lot, so I know I always had

38:03

the freedom to feel, which also

38:05

makes me take more seriously the way that I feel

38:08

now because it wasn't The

38:10

hat I have for myself hasn't

38:13

come from tragedy.

38:15

It's been in me for a long time, and

38:17

it's and it's grown, and I've allowed it to and I fed

38:20

it, you know. But that's

38:22

really it is really interesting to think about it like that, because

38:24

I've never actually thought about it like that before. I

38:26

get asked a lot similar questions

38:28

like that about whether you know my anxieties,

38:30

did they come with the career or what triggers

38:33

them? And my response

38:35

has always been They've been with me for a long time. But I don't think

38:37

I've ever quite taken seriously the fact that they

38:39

have they have lived inside

38:42

of me for as long as they have done,

38:44

and that and that there have been moments

38:46

of absolute confidence in my life where they have stayed

38:49

quiet and allowed They've allowed me to make some decisions,

38:51

and they're not allowed me to make others. But

38:53

but they do they that voice as

38:55

louder as I'm getting older, like

38:58

much louder m. Do

39:01

you find then that music

39:04

is a way for you to exercise

39:09

those demons a bit too, to

39:12

to quite literally let those feelings

39:15

out of your body, you

39:17

know? Or or

39:20

does creating and

39:22

making something also

39:24

just happened alongside

39:28

the feelings? Is it a is it a

39:30

processing mechanism

39:32

or something else? I

39:35

honestly don't know. I honestly,

39:38

I honestly don't know. I

39:41

I really don't know. I've

39:43

been. I've been. I've been challenging their

39:46

words, right, I've been,

39:49

But I've been I've been challenging this part of myself

39:51

quite um, quite

39:53

arrogantly over the last year and

39:56

really trying to look at myself

39:59

in that out of a way. Why do you

40:01

call that are again? Well, because

40:03

because a I'm doing it for me and and

40:06

and I'm not doing it for anyone else, but

40:08

also I'm I'm doing it possibly in

40:10

spite of possibly

40:13

doing it in spite of myself. I don't know. It's

40:16

it's a very I think self criticism

40:18

is so important. I think

40:20

I think self awareness is so important.

40:24

It's something I take quite a lot of pride in actually,

40:26

is being like a self aware of person

40:29

and something that other people have complimented

40:32

me for. Like I remember being in in meetings

40:34

with my being in meetings

40:37

with like the head of my

40:39

record label or the record label I'm signed

40:42

within America, the I'm

40:44

signed to Ireland in America, and

40:46

the head of Ireland in the US

40:49

is a is a guy called Darkest, and I've

40:51

known him for years. He signed me in the UK,

40:53

and then he moved to head up the

40:56

U S office of the same record label, and then he

40:58

signed me out there as well. But I remember when

41:00

I went out to America last year to meet him,

41:02

um and just like catch up with him and stuff.

41:05

He he point blank

41:07

says it to me, there is there is no one in the industry.

41:09

There's no one. There's no other artist that he

41:11

knows who is as self aware as I am.

41:14

And he knows a lot of people, and I take

41:16

it as a compliment. I think it's such a necessary part

41:18

of my creativity. But what

41:21

it what it does allow me to do, is

41:23

it it allows me too

41:26

much space to be. It allows

41:28

too much freedom to that part of me, which is

41:30

something I try and dissociate from by you know, giving

41:32

it, giving it the sort of

41:34

terminology as in to reference it as

41:36

another person or another part of me, Like

41:39

I give it a lot of power. I hand over a lot

41:41

of power to it. I think the reason I call

41:43

it arrogant is because I know I'm giving it that power,

41:45

and then I'm also choosing to fight that power. It's

41:47

but it's my decision. I'm the one who's doing it. No one else

41:49

is doing it. I mean, sure,

41:54

but it's also part of

41:56

you. It's also part of your brain chemistry,

41:58

it's it's part of your logical

42:00

wiring, it's part of your humanity.

42:03

And I would wager that being self

42:05

aware, being being

42:08

sensitive means you

42:11

you're sensitive to a lot of things. And if

42:13

you're self aware, then you

42:15

understand what you're sensitive to in yourself.

42:18

And and I think there's a lot of people who

42:20

don't do the work there who

42:23

then are moving around in the world like

42:25

battering rams. You know, people who have experienced

42:28

a lot of pain and haven't done the work to get

42:31

clear on it or process it, who

42:33

then are just putting that

42:36

pain onto other people. You

42:38

know, there's there's

42:40

a lot of I think, negative

42:43

risk to not looking inwards. So

42:45

I don't know. I love people who are

42:47

willing to do it and who

42:49

do it courageously and honestly.

42:52

I I was asked

42:56

by someone that I love a lot recently

43:00

having a big sort of shocker, deep

43:02

esoteric conversation about life. Weird

43:08

possibly, I mean, we've never done that, couldn't

43:11

possibly? Um, And

43:14

I was asked we

43:16

were talking about it was like a two

43:18

sided question, one of those school of life

43:20

things, and it was, what's

43:22

the worst thing that's ever been done to you? And what's the

43:25

worst thing you've ever done?

43:28

Is that? Like, would you rather find was

43:31

it one giant whole sized duck or a

43:33

hundred duck size horses? Exactly? It's

43:35

not that kind of question. Different. I mean, I

43:37

honestly I would just like to have a hundred duck sized

43:39

hoss. True, it would be my my little

43:42

pony dream come true. But

43:45

but the thing that I

43:47

realized was the

43:49

answer to the second part of the question was,

43:52

Look, there's some people who love me who would

43:54

say I what

43:57

worst thing, like, you're a great friend, You're a great

43:59

ally. There's bo who don't love

44:01

me who probably list various

44:03

things that to them would answer

44:05

the question. But what

44:08

I realized was for

44:10

me, the worst thing I've ever

44:12

done is when

44:15

as a coping mechanism

44:17

for not quite knowing how to handle something that's

44:19

happening that is not okay,

44:22

or as a people pleasing mechanism

44:24

when I don't want to hurt someone's

44:27

feelings by telling them what my truth is.

44:30

The worst thing I've ever done is when I've

44:32

turned my back on myself, when

44:34

I've known what I needed, when I've known

44:38

what the right course of action is,

44:40

even if it's going to be painful, and I haven't

44:42

done it to try to keep the peace. I

44:45

haven't done it to try to be a good soldier

44:47

or a good coworker or whatever.

44:49

When I have turned my back on myself,

44:52

then every decision that's come

44:54

from that turning away has

44:56

been bad. Yeah, you

44:59

know it. It's a it's a domino eft. So

45:01

the route for me is when I turned my

45:03

back on myself, and and

45:06

and a couple of years ago, I finally had to say,

45:08

I'm never going to do that again. I'm just not. From

45:11

here on out, this is going to be different.

45:14

And and I share

45:16

that with you and everyone

45:18

listening at home. I forget

45:20

that that's happening sometimes, but here we are

45:23

vulnerability our um. I

45:26

share that only to say

45:29

that I deeply

45:33

do not believe it's arrogant to

45:36

search within yourself, to seek the

45:38

truth inside yourself, to know yourself

45:40

well enough that you

45:42

are so clear, so

45:44

aware, as you put it, about

45:47

who you are and how you've

45:49

come to be, that you

45:51

look at yourself, you know, looking

45:53

looking yourself in the eye rather than turning

45:55

your back on yourself, means that

45:58

that the decisions you will make and

46:00

then the way you move in the world will be done so with

46:02

honor and integrity. And so, as

46:05

a friend who loves you, I would

46:08

challenge this idea,

46:10

this sort of you know, British

46:14

tendency of self deprecation that

46:16

you have in space, which is so fun,

46:19

possibly know what you're talking about. You

46:21

have like you have the best sense of humor

46:24

and it's fun at the pub but in but

46:26

in these deeper moments, I

46:29

would I would love for you to view that

46:31

quest and that willingness

46:34

to examine yourself as something really honorable

46:36

rather than arrogant. Yeah. I think it's

46:38

an incredibly fat point. I think it's something I don't give

46:40

myself enough. I don't I don't

46:42

treat myself with enough patience to be able to think about

46:44

it like that every now and then. But that's what I'm here.

46:47

I know, that'sespecially what you're here for. You now, I know it's

46:49

that's fair. That's in a friend contract that we have.

46:52

Yeah, now, I know. I yeah,

46:55

we should probably tell the people because

46:57

I realized we did this on our on our Instagram

46:59

live on on album released,

47:02

but we haven't done it on the podcast. And I'm

47:04

sure there's all these people being like, wow, these two

47:06

really love each other. Wonder how they got to be best friends.

47:08

But yeah, we met yesterday.

47:11

You know it's fine. Um,

47:13

so we've been friends for over

47:16

just over five years now, and you

47:20

know it's weird, right, And

47:23

so it started really

47:26

because your first

47:29

record made such waves

47:31

in my friend group, which most

47:33

of my listeners know. Music

47:36

is kind of everything to you

47:38

know me, and all of the all of the

47:40

pals, and I

47:43

was just so jealous

47:46

because all the buds had

47:48

been going to shows. You were

47:50

doing shows in l A. And I

47:52

had some friends who saw you in New York, and

47:55

you had met a bunch of my closest friends

47:57

and everyone was becoming friends. And I working

48:00

in Chicago and I had missed like three

48:02

shows and was just pissed about

48:04

it. I was like, if I missed one more, Jack Garret, so

48:06

I swear to God, and uh,

48:09

I was coming home for a weekend and

48:13

or maybe no, it was my hiatus. I was

48:15

home over this summer. That's what it was. You

48:17

were playing a show at the Troubador and

48:20

Aaron and Lauren and Kenny

48:23

said, come with us, We're gonna go

48:25

see Jack Garrett. And I was like, thank God,

48:29

we came to your show. And it was the

48:31

most sort of transcendent, insane

48:34

experience I'd had as an audience member

48:36

in a long time. And we

48:38

all hung out afterwards and

48:41

and I said this on our Lives. The vibe

48:43

was just yeah,

48:46

like it kind of felt like we'd

48:48

all known each other forever. And also

48:51

you were so adored by by

48:53

some of my best friends. So like, my joke is

48:55

always like, oh, you've been pre screened, like you're

48:58

I know you're cold. So and

49:00

I decided we were going to go on a friend date the next

49:02

day and we went to lunch at Grassias

49:04

Madre. Uh have

49:08

good Mexican food in California. I

49:10

didn't tell you it was Vegan. Sorry about

49:12

that. I totally forgotten about

49:14

that. I I just remember. I just remember not having

49:17

a choice in the matter. No, we were just going.

49:19

I remember I remember not yet, not only not

49:21

having a choice in going and having breakfast

49:23

with you, but literally just being like, so

49:25

where do we go? And You're like, oh, no, I know the perfect place to worry

49:27

about it. I'm like, no, I need to know the name of it. You're like that

49:31

here, just meet me here, just meet me here. It's fun.

49:34

It would be great. And yeah,

49:36

we just we had the best conversation.

49:39

That was so fun. And I remember thinking,

49:41

my friends are smart. They were right

49:44

not so my hunch was

49:46

right. I love him. And

49:49

you were talking in a

49:51

very funny manner. You were talking very

49:53

much like two of my best friends

49:55

who lived in Chicago, who became your close

49:57

friends through our friendship. But my

50:00

my friend Michael, who's married to this badass

50:02

woman named Lydia. And he always used to say to

50:04

people, Yeah, you think I'm cool, but then you're going to meet my wife

50:06

and just love her more. Oh

50:09

yeah, that's that's literally what I say about my wife

50:11

to every single person. I mean, that's what

50:13

you love to say about Sarah. And so you were telling

50:15

me, you were like, oh, well, you know my girlfriend and I because

50:17

she was your girlfriend at the time, we're moving

50:20

back to Chicago, and you know,

50:22

she's from from

50:24

not too far from there, and she's

50:26

got this job and we're going to move back there and

50:28

and yeah, I mean we're friends, but you'll meet Sarah

50:30

and then you'll love her more than me and you'll never talk to me again.

50:32

And I was like, I don't really think so. And

50:35

and this is the first time that we've spoken to each

50:37

other's is then So I was right, because you know, well,

50:39

you know, you can't be mad.

50:42

I wasn't. I wasn't far. I

50:44

mean I spoke to you a little bit, you give me

50:47

you called me Steve. It was a very awkward

50:49

situation. So sorry, but

50:54

I remember being so I

50:56

just thought it was so sweet that you spoke about Sarah

50:58

the way that Michael speaks about idea. And

51:01

then I said to you, I said, oh, where are you

51:03

guys living when you move to

51:05

Chicago from London, when

51:07

you moved to America from another country,

51:09

where are you going to live? And you said,

51:12

Uh, we're just gonna we

51:14

don't really know, We're gonna probably just like

51:16

look at some apartments online and sign a lease.

51:20

I was like, I'm sorry. I

51:24

didn't know to not do that until

51:26

you said don't do that. So technically

51:29

it's I would say, it's your fault for not having told

51:31

me. Soon wonderful, I'm

51:34

at least I could rectify the thing that I did.

51:37

So so, dear listeners,

51:39

and most of you know, I have not

51:41

a small amount of social anxiety around strangers.

51:44

So you have to understand how special check Carett

51:46

is. Because I said, you can't possibly

51:48

do that. First of all, you need to come

51:51

to Chicago and see what neighborhood you want to

51:53

live in. And secondly, you need to come to Chicago

51:55

and also understand how neighborhoods work.

51:58

No, and I said, I I've just moved

52:00

and I have this apartment and I've

52:03

got all this space. Why don't

52:05

you guys come and stay with me for a few weeks. When

52:07

you arrive and you can look around

52:09

and see where you want to go. You have to

52:12

go see these buildings in person. You can't sign a

52:14

lease on the internet from a foreign country.

52:16

And as you've said many a time, which honestly

52:19

has been perfect, you said

52:21

the very jack thing which you say, which is I

52:24

can possibly. No. I wouldn't want to do that. I wouldn't

52:26

want to I wouldn't want to be I wouldn't want to be a burden.

52:29

I couldn't possibly, I said, But

52:32

you could, it would be fine. And

52:35

and so then over the next couple of weeks,

52:38

every time we spoke, I was like, Hey, how's

52:40

it going. Oh, you know fine. We thought we had an

52:42

airbnb, but it fell through, and we thought

52:44

we were going to sign a lease, but but we it

52:46

turns out this is wrong with this building. And

52:48

I was like, hey, Jack, I still have a guest room. You and Sarah

52:50

are more than we're going to come. No, we could can

52:53

possibly. No, I wouldn't How how could how could

52:55

I? How could I still

52:57

look my mother in the eye. That's not that's not the British

52:59

thing I could just so weird to me. I'm like,

53:01

hi, because because I am such an Italian

53:04

grandmother or not even mother, and I'm

53:06

like, come all over, let me cook for you.

53:08

Are you hungry? I know I fed you an hour ago, but

53:10

are you hungry again? Now? You know I

53:13

like to host. You know, but you you

53:15

understand how ridiculous this is though, right? I

53:17

know. I know we've told this story a couple of times,

53:19

and I know that I always joke literally in the same

53:21

bit. I think I put the same jock every single time when you're

53:23

telling this story, which is you understand how ridiculous

53:25

that is, right, But but also and to

53:28

take it seriously for a second, you understand

53:30

how ridiculous that is. Right. We

53:32

were strangers. We

53:34

were strangers. Yeah,

53:36

But no, I can't explain

53:38

it because again I don't like that many people.

53:41

I really don't like. I love it everybody, but I

53:43

don't like everybody. You know what I mean? No, I know, and

53:45

I get what. I get what you're talking about because I have a similar

53:47

thing, and and the trust was there and I knew it

53:49

because you would you wouldn't drop it. And

53:51

the thing, the thing, the

53:54

thing that I knew that made it like, but

53:56

but this is the thing is it's like I didn't I

53:59

remember telling error when I got home

54:01

that i'd like the a that i'd

54:03

met you, be that we'd had breakfast the next

54:05

day and see that you had invited us to stay

54:07

with you and Chicago. And it was Sarah

54:09

who was just like, no, absolutely, not that ridiculous.

54:11

No that's not that's ridiculous. There is no way

54:14

that we're going to stay with Sophia.

54:16

But you kidn't know, Like she

54:18

was very adamant that this is not the thing that was going to

54:20

happen, and I was equally like, yes, of

54:22

course that's not happening. We're not

54:25

mad people. But

54:27

but the thing that was amazing is that you kept emailing

54:29

me, you kept chasing up, you kept asking me like

54:31

the places they're just use it if you need to, and

54:33

the and the thing was there there was a point

54:36

where I was very aware of the fact

54:38

that we we didn't have a place, and that our tickets

54:40

were booked. We were supposed to move to Chicago

54:43

on X day. But here's the thing is that we

54:45

weren't supposed to Sarah, my

54:47

my girlfriend at the time was supposed to I

54:49

was going to be on tour. So we spent

54:51

we spent about two weeks packing up all of

54:54

our crap and putting it into boxes

54:56

and shipping it to Chicago, having no idea

54:58

where it was going to go. It was just going to be hell didn't

55:00

like a in storage for a bit. But

55:03

Sarah was going to get on a plane and go to Chicago and

55:05

she needed someone to stay, and we didn't have anywhere

55:07

to go. And I remember I remember

55:09

sending you an email being

55:11

like, hey,

55:14

but so how

55:17

serious were you about that? I

55:19

felt so vindicated because you know, we talked

55:21

about it, and I remember I followed up with

55:23

you three times. There's like, again,

55:26

my family, as I mentioned,

55:28

like you know, my mother's side where this big Italian

55:30

family, and then so much of the rest of my family is

55:32

Jewish. And there's this adage that when you want

55:34

to convert to Judaism, you go to the temple and you

55:37

knock, and the rabbi turns you away three

55:39

times because he

55:41

wants you to be serious, you know, like really

55:43

you have to be committed. And so I

55:45

was like, I'm going to follow up with you many

55:48

times just to let you know that I'm here

55:50

and I mean it and I can't

55:53

believe that works and

55:55

uh and then I get and then you go,

55:57

hey, so um

56:00

possibly click. I

56:04

to the point, dear listeners,

56:07

Jack was on tour. So sweet Sarah,

56:09

who I had never met but had

56:12

I had been promised was the best person on the planet,

56:14

showed up with deffl bags at my apartment

56:17

from London and was like, hey, girl,

56:20

I have I have the email. I

56:23

have the I have the email. I have the email where

56:25

I introduced the two of you. Ont

56:28

July two thousand and fifteen is

56:32

the day that I introduced introduced

56:34

the two of you. And it's literally just like yeah,

56:37

it's just exactly what it is. Because that's the thing is.

56:39

I was like, cool, um, so I'm

56:41

going to hand this over to you guys now because I have

56:43

to go on tour for the next three months.

56:45

Like that's that's what happened. I can't believe

56:48

I did that to the both of you. But

56:50

this email, this email is literally like

56:52

Sarah, this is Sophia. She is so

56:54

very kindly offered you a place to rest your weary

56:57

head. Come the date that we were moving. Sophia,

56:59

this is Sarah the love of my life and one of the many reasons

57:01

I'm moving to Chicago. And

57:04

then yes, Sofa has already explained, we had some

57:06

issues finding a play sad faced, had landlords

57:09

and flatmates fall through and not keep their word. Thank

57:11

you so much for opening your home to Sarah and I as we

57:13

are trying to find our footing. I'll leave the rest of

57:15

you too, And literally every single so every

57:17

email that follows are

57:19

small novellas written

57:21

by Sarah and then you in return.

57:24

It's just like paragraphs and paragraphs of the

57:26

of Sarah being like, you, Angel,

57:28

I can't believe you're doing this for us. This is absolutely unbl

57:31

like thank you, thank you, thank you, and then you're being like, oh, don't be

57:33

silly, it's fine, you'll be either ever,

57:35

don't worry about it. Well

57:37

and honestly, it's truly one of the

57:39

greatest gifts that you gave to either of us,

57:42

because your wife is one of my best

57:44

friends on the planet. We were

57:46

we were so immediately attached

57:49

to the hip. We binged so

57:51

many Netflix shows together. We got on like a

57:53

rotation of our favorite delivery. By

57:55

the time you got home, we were like Tuesday night we get

57:57

Indian food? Did

58:00

it? And you were like hello, I was

58:02

like, I'm literally here for seventy two hours and I have to

58:04

leave again. I don't know what. I don't know what

58:06

day it is, let alone food. Honestly,

58:08

it was such a fun I don't know what

58:11

like five months maybe I

58:13

know it might have been all in all,

58:15

but I think it was less. I think it was like it might have been

58:17

like three months, and we started

58:19

to get some places. I think we moved. We moved

58:22

into that into that apartment, um

58:24

yeah, in Greek Town pretty quickly afterwards. That

58:26

was a really incredible time

58:29

in my life. Like, honestly,

58:32

for both Sarah and me, that was such a it

58:34

defines such a beautiful

58:36

moment not only in our relationship but only but

58:39

also just the ages that we were. What

58:41

was that five years ago? So I was I was twenty um

58:45

yeah, and and like moving to Chicago

58:48

on a whim in the middle of an

58:50

album campaign, like

58:53

touring around the world. I literally I think I I

58:56

mean I could find it out, but I think I came

58:58

to Chicago after the first US like two

59:00

weeks. Sarah was

59:02

was with you, um and even then I came

59:05

on a Friday and I had to leave on a Sunday, like I

59:07

was in and out, and you took such

59:09

good care of us, And honestly,

59:12

forever, forever indebted to

59:14

the kindness that you showed us at that time, because it was

59:16

so so defining for

59:18

us, like that neighborhood in Chicago, living

59:20

in America at that time. Everything

59:22

about it I look back on it was such funness.

59:25

Um you know it was. It

59:27

was a time when I really started to shape who I've ended

59:30

up becoming and who I am continuing to become

59:32

as a as an adult man. And

59:35

I and I that's, you know, in part of that

59:38

to to your friendship and to finding

59:40

you and that crew of people in l A who

59:42

I miss dearly right now but

59:44

still talk to all the time and see every single time

59:47

I'm back over there. Like I don't know, I

59:49

I have found I

59:51

have found friendships really hard to navigate

59:53

in my life, really really hard. I

59:55

either put too much trust or not enough into

59:58

people who are either not willing to accept at

1:00:00

it or willing to accept it, and I just can't read

1:00:02

it very well. And and

1:00:04

the thing that the thing I find so baffling about

1:00:07

being introduced to the group of to

1:00:09

the group of friends that I now have both

1:00:13

in you know, in America and in the UK

1:00:15

and Europe and all around the world.

1:00:17

Is I have finally started to

1:00:19

believe that that they like

1:00:22

me. And I know we talk about

1:00:24

this a lot, but like the level

1:00:27

of imposter syndrome that I have felt my entire

1:00:29

life with all of the friends that I've had, with

1:00:31

the career that I have, with the way that I feel about

1:00:33

myself, just the the constant

1:00:36

whisper that seems to sit

1:00:38

in the back of my mind that

1:00:40

just says everything

1:00:43

is better than you and

1:00:45

you shouldn't be here, Like

1:00:48

the constantly whispering that sort of mantra

1:00:50

to me is obviously detrimental

1:00:52

to my mental health into the way that I feel about

1:00:55

myself. But it's taken me five

1:00:57

years and I can officially believe

1:01:00

it when I say that, like we're friends,

1:01:03

that you know that Sarah loves me, the

1:01:07

that my I'm trying to

1:01:09

think of, Like you know, the people

1:01:11

I've heard in the past, not

1:01:13

only will they not hate me forever,

1:01:16

but they probably forgot the thing that I

1:01:18

am still obsessing over now. They

1:01:20

probably forgot about it two days after it happened,

1:01:23

Like I just, yeah,

1:01:25

I'm incredibly thankful for that time. I'm incredibly

1:01:28

thankful for the things that have happened to me. Since it's

1:01:31

weird being an adult. Yeah,

1:01:34

being an adult is weird, and

1:01:36

it's kind of cyclically

1:01:39

weird, right. You you

1:01:42

learn a lesson, you have a growth spurred, and

1:01:44

then the next one starts and you're

1:01:46

like, God, this is because because because

1:01:48

the lessons that you learn, they get hidden in

1:01:51

new experiences. That's the problem.

1:01:53

Like, that's the thing that I find so

1:01:56

hard to pinpoint is

1:01:58

like I learned pretty big lesson a

1:02:00

few years ago with a with a really good friend

1:02:02

of mine who I was working very closely with,

1:02:05

and and through

1:02:08

a story that I don't

1:02:10

enjoy telling because I don't enjoy reliving it.

1:02:13

I

1:02:14

I lost a friend

1:02:16

of mine because I was betrayed by them.

1:02:19

And it's now and it stayed with me so

1:02:21

so prominently that I just it

1:02:23

created a sense of paranoia

1:02:25

and me that I am just desperately looking

1:02:28

to see it everywhere. And

1:02:30

the time when I thought I had finally gotten through

1:02:32

it and I've gotten through to the other side, I

1:02:34

saw it starting to happen with a new friend, like

1:02:37

just this weird little moment where I suddenly shot

1:02:39

me back like four years because

1:02:42

because the lessons the

1:02:45

lesson I learned was was like specifically

1:02:47

for that person in that time, and

1:02:51

the lessons I'm going to learn in the future

1:02:54

the same but different. It's the bucks.

1:02:56

We're back to the box. Like yeah,

1:03:01

I, I I say on my show and

1:03:04

the live show that I've been touring over the last few months.

1:03:07

Obviously I'm not touring at the moment, but um

1:03:09

that I also accidentally

1:03:13

stole the title from you My

1:03:15

My, My work in progress tool.

1:03:17

I totally forgot. I remember you getting in touch

1:03:20

being like, oh my god, you call it work in progress. That's

1:03:22

so great. And I went, oh my god, I'm the worst friend of the

1:03:24

world. How could I not have realized that you have

1:03:26

a podcast that's titled the same thing. But

1:03:28

no, I went on a tour that I called that I called

1:03:30

a work in progress tour, the whole point of it being

1:03:32

I was playing these songs before they were going to be released

1:03:35

like months later, and

1:03:38

and I said this every night that the thing I've learned

1:03:40

about my emotional journey is it is cyclical. There

1:03:42

are lessons I've learned in the past that I will learn again

1:03:45

in the future because I'm going to continue to grow

1:03:47

and I'm going to continue to need reminders of

1:03:49

just how to behave as a

1:03:51

human. I'm going to keep needing to check in

1:03:53

with myself. And that's

1:03:55

you know that I'm speaking with self awareness

1:03:57

again. I'm doing the same thing. It's it's

1:04:00

yeah, it's healthy, and it's good in

1:04:04

it's healthy and it's good within reason. Well, when

1:04:07

we think back on lessons,

1:04:09

there's one thing that really stands out to me and

1:04:11

I I just find it so interesting

1:04:14

because again, what we perceive from

1:04:16

the outside is so often not what's happening

1:04:18

on the inside. And not

1:04:21

that long after we became roommates,

1:04:24

um in inten

1:04:28

you had a really crazy year. You

1:04:30

know your you

1:04:34

you won this insane award, it's

1:04:36

the Britts Critics

1:04:38

Choice Prize, and you won

1:04:40

the BBC sounds of

1:04:43

these were these were Yeah,

1:04:46

that pretty? That pretty? Can you explain

1:04:48

to the audience what those are so

1:04:51

that we can then talk about how they

1:04:53

felt to put it, to put it into a context

1:04:55

that is really that is way simple

1:04:57

to understand. So the Brits Critics Choice Award

1:05:00

the BBC Sound Pole are

1:05:02

two accolades that are handed out

1:05:04

to they're handed

1:05:07

out to a new artist,

1:05:09

musician who's um starting

1:05:12

to you know, do things. In

1:05:14

the history of those two is what so I can I can put it

1:05:16

like this, This explains it probably in the best and clearest

1:05:18

and the most concise way. In the history of those

1:05:20

two awards being handed out, there are only

1:05:22

I think four artists who have won

1:05:25

both of them in the same year. Um

1:05:28

Adele won both of them in the same year. Sam

1:05:30

Smith won both of them in the same year, Ellie Golding

1:05:33

won both of them in the same year, and I won

1:05:35

both of them in the same year. Um.

1:05:38

That puts yeah, I mean, it puts

1:05:40

into context the relevance

1:05:42

of those awards. When you say those four names

1:05:44

and side by side it a sorry,

1:05:46

four names, three names side by side. It also

1:05:49

puts into context where

1:05:51

I sit amongst that, um

1:05:53

and what that possibly could have led

1:05:55

me to think about myself in yeah,

1:05:59

as as of yeah, as I kind

1:06:01

of tried to process

1:06:04

what the fun was going on. Yeah,

1:06:08

it was a weird, a weird. Yeah,

1:06:10

it's you know, their awards. You don't explicitly ask

1:06:12

for you kind of get handed them. And

1:06:17

they're incredible awards that create

1:06:19

a ridiculous kind of opportunity.

1:06:23

They don't, you know, they don't come without problematic

1:06:27

and systemic issues though, um

1:06:30

and I yeah, yeah, And that's

1:06:33

what I'm curious about, because to

1:06:35

your point, when you win an award or

1:06:38

awards like those, and and let's

1:06:40

use a Dell for comparison, everyone

1:06:43

assumes like, oh, now

1:06:45

your life is a racket ship. You're probably

1:06:47

worth a ga jillion dollars and everything

1:06:50

is different, and you're like, hey, I'm still

1:06:52

trying to put out a record and figure

1:06:54

out how to be an adult. And

1:06:58

everything doesn't just get solved of it's

1:07:02

complicated. There's there's then an amount

1:07:04

immense amount of pressure. There's a lot of eyes

1:07:06

on you. I'm curious

1:07:09

rather than what people were assuming it felt

1:07:11

like, I'm curious what it felt

1:07:13

like. And

1:07:16

and was that a time do

1:07:18

you think that that perhaps

1:07:21

the anxiety voice got louder? I

1:07:24

mean, it definitely did get louder. It

1:07:26

was it was inavoidable. I was so out of control

1:07:28

of it as well. I didn't I didn't know how

1:07:30

to see it coming, the voice.

1:07:33

I mean, but it

1:07:35

disguised itself in the voices

1:07:37

of the other opinions about me that I

1:07:39

was open to at the time, or that I was

1:07:42

aware of at the time. Obviously,

1:07:45

initially receiving those awards created

1:07:47

such an immeasurable elation

1:07:49

in my mood, like these

1:07:52

these career defining things. Um,

1:07:55

I was aware that, you know, it

1:07:58

didn't mean it could start. It

1:08:00

didn't mean I could start taking my foot off the gas.

1:08:02

It mean I started, I would have to put it down

1:08:05

harder. I'd have to work harder to really prove myself

1:08:07

as being worthy of these awards, because that's the other

1:08:09

thing as well as those two awards are handed out to artists

1:08:13

to be eligible for the Brits Critics

1:08:15

Choice. For example, at that time, I wasn't

1:08:17

allowed to have released an album, so

1:08:19

I I you know, And that's my

1:08:22

biggest disagree with it. Disagreement

1:08:24

with it at the time was that it was an award

1:08:26

that was awarding It was

1:08:28

awarding potential rather than actually

1:08:30

awarding anything, which I found

1:08:33

very conflicting, very confusing at the time, but

1:08:35

you know, still incredibly thankful for it.

1:08:37

Still had to go on TV and accept

1:08:39

the thing, and and and be very thankful

1:08:41

for it, but I did have questions

1:08:43

and issues, and I did not

1:08:46

have at the time a immediate support

1:08:48

structure in place to help

1:08:50

support my my issues

1:08:53

and and and my my questions.

1:08:57

I didn't. I had

1:08:59

a port team of people, but

1:09:02

they were being kept at bay by

1:09:04

the person I referenced earlier, someone who was very close

1:09:07

to me, who who I ended up I

1:09:10

ended up feeling very portrayed, betrayed

1:09:12

by the

1:09:14

awards were presented as exactly what you said,

1:09:17

the shore fire things, you know, put

1:09:19

them into contact with everyone else, especially at a time when

1:09:21

I was I was making music that people were finding

1:09:23

hard to pigeonhole. So I ended up becoming

1:09:25

the artist who was hard to pigeonhole. But you

1:09:27

know, rather than rather that, than

1:09:30

than being you know, than

1:09:33

being miss genre as

1:09:35

like an artist that I was, and I liked that. It

1:09:37

was a challenge to kind of explain the music

1:09:39

that I made because on one hand it was put but on the other

1:09:41

hand it was you know, alternative R and

1:09:43

B. But on the other hand it was you know, bedroom producing

1:09:45

music or um. But then

1:09:48

you know, there's an unavoidable songwriter

1:09:50

sing, a songwriter stringthen that bow

1:09:52

I I don't know. I liked watching people

1:09:55

struggle to figure out what I was doing. And then

1:09:57

these awards came along and suddenly that was it. I

1:09:59

was the guy who won these awards, you

1:10:01

know. And the reason

1:10:04

why I think me winning those awards at that time

1:10:06

is so fascinating is because the industry,

1:10:09

especially in the UK at that time, was in disarray.

1:10:11

That the music industry was was

1:10:14

was was so was so

1:10:16

on the back foot about what was happening with streaming

1:10:18

and what was happening with Spotify. It

1:10:21

was it was not thinking

1:10:23

about the future of music. It

1:10:25

was it was trying to from

1:10:28

what I experienced of it and from what I could see,

1:10:31

it was trying to solidify

1:10:33

like it's future as a business

1:10:36

rather than the future of it as like a creative

1:10:38

thing. It me being at that time

1:10:40

a symbol of the future of the of the sound

1:10:42

of music. No, that's

1:10:44

not what like the industry as a whole was concerned

1:10:47

about it. It It was concerned about keeping and keeping

1:10:49

the business afloat. So

1:10:52

I don't know. And then on top of that, added to the fact

1:10:54

that I was just making music that that

1:10:57

wasn't the sound of two thousands sixteen,

1:10:59

like there weren't people making the

1:11:01

kinds of music that I was making. I don't think, um

1:11:05

uh not not to then, yeah, not

1:11:08

to imply that my music was better or worse,

1:11:10

it was just different. I don't know, I

1:11:12

just kind of I still have these questions today.

1:11:14

The one thing that I've really learned, the one thing I've really kind

1:11:16

of come to accept, is is the questions

1:11:18

are okay, and I might have them forever. I don't think

1:11:20

I'm going to get answers for them. I don't think

1:11:22

anyone has the answers for them. I think,

1:11:25

yeah, I mean, I think

1:11:27

that that's fair. I think that getting

1:11:29

comfortable with certain questions is

1:11:31

fair. And I also think for

1:11:34

so many of us, when

1:11:36

you have these run ins occasionally with these

1:11:38

big moments of success, when

1:11:41

you're young and perhaps not

1:11:44

fully ready, sometimes

1:11:46

something gets in the way. Sometimes the

1:11:48

conversation around streaming gets in the way.

1:11:50

Sometimes, you know, I

1:11:54

I signed this great, big production

1:11:56

deal and then the studio that I was supposed to be

1:11:58

producing with went into a merger

1:12:01

and they were like number

1:12:03

crunching and firing executives for nine

1:12:05

months while I was

1:12:08

developing content. And I've

1:12:11

managed to actually develop a bunch of stuff. I

1:12:14

really love that. I

1:12:16

don't think I was actually ready to take

1:12:19

out yet I made. I made

1:12:21

something that I really care about. But I

1:12:24

I was trying to I

1:12:27

was trying to maintain a pace I was used to which

1:12:30

actually wasn't good for me. And

1:12:32

I needed to slow down. And I think

1:12:34

that whether it's your experience

1:12:37

with the streaming timing or my experience

1:12:39

with the timing of a corporate merger or whatever,

1:12:42

sometimes something forces you to slow

1:12:44

down so you can look in. And

1:12:47

I think for a lot of us who are used to overachieving

1:12:50

and who are kind of obsessed with doing

1:12:52

a lot, we have

1:12:54

to be forced to slow down. Sure,

1:12:57

And and I don't know, maybe

1:12:59

that's you trying to put purpose on something where

1:13:01

it doesn't exist. But I also am

1:13:04

a pretty big believer in the fact that purposes

1:13:07

around and I

1:13:09

think that I think that there are these big indicators,

1:13:12

you know. I it's funny to

1:13:14

like, do prep work for an interview is one of your best

1:13:16

friends, but I was. I was really

1:13:18

like, I was so struck by

1:13:20

Around that time, you told the BBC

1:13:23

that when you put your first album

1:13:25

out you stopped dancing in public,

1:13:27

that it something happened and you stopped

1:13:30

feeling comfortable in your body. And

1:13:32

I think about that if I may as like

1:13:34

almost a sign or an indicator that

1:13:36

that there was something that you needed to look

1:13:39

at or or process for yourself,

1:13:41

or some space that you required. And I

1:13:44

don't know. Sometimes the way that we get space

1:13:46

is frustrating, but it

1:13:48

matters so I whether it's

1:13:50

whether it's talking about a realization like that,

1:13:53

like how you've worked on that feeling, or

1:13:55

it's talking about the fact that while you were

1:13:57

in this really up and down time you you record,

1:14:00

did a whole album and then decided to

1:14:02

scrap it, like there there were things

1:14:04

that were happening that you were

1:14:07

working to understand. And I wonder

1:14:11

when you when you think about that recording and throwing

1:14:13

an album away, feeling disjointed

1:14:15

with your own or disconnected to your own

1:14:17

body, how do you think about

1:14:19

that? Now you know what kind

1:14:21

of a break did you need? What?

1:14:24

What do you understand about the lesson? Maybe

1:14:26

in the timing in hindsight, h

1:14:30

in hindsight, sorry, excuse me, in hindsight.

1:14:32

The the issue that I had with with

1:14:35

with something slowing me down at that early

1:14:38

in my career, like for example, specifically

1:14:41

those those awards. Is I was just getting

1:14:43

started, like and I think that's

1:14:45

that's the thing that can that's that's

1:14:47

the thing that I think confused me the most is I

1:14:49

was just getting started and I was

1:14:51

just about to really do something, like

1:14:54

to grow in a way the I

1:14:57

don't know, it's it's it's it's it

1:15:00

dangerous to go back and think of it hypothetically

1:15:04

simply because that timeline doesn't exist for

1:15:06

me, you know, and to think about it in a way in

1:15:08

that goes to the question that goes back to the question you're

1:15:10

proposing, is it's led me to a

1:15:12

version of myself that I feel way more assured

1:15:14

about. I don't I don't

1:15:16

know who I would have been if I had been unchallenged.

1:15:20

Then, not that I would have been completely

1:15:23

unchallenged, because you know, um,

1:15:26

but you know, music journalists

1:15:29

and critics exist and they're there to challenge work.

1:15:31

That's the you know, it's a huge part of

1:15:33

what they do and it's a hugely important part of

1:15:36

of the music that gets made and released. But I

1:15:39

was I was challenged by exactly what

1:15:41

you're saying, like some sort of I don't know, like

1:15:44

some sort of faithfulness and

1:15:47

it and it really hurt,

1:15:49

and it really confused me, and it it really

1:15:52

destroyed my It

1:15:54

destroyed any

1:15:57

semblance of confidence I had in myself. And

1:15:59

I was very confident. I am a very confident

1:16:01

person. I think I enjoy being a confident

1:16:03

person. It means that when I really love

1:16:06

something that I've done, I really

1:16:08

love it and and

1:16:10

that's such an amazing feeling to have as

1:16:12

a as as someone who creates music

1:16:15

from silence, is to sit

1:16:17

back and look at the space that you filled and

1:16:20

to go that's worth being there

1:16:22

like that. Truly, that song is brilliant.

1:16:25

And I think the thing that the thing that I've been

1:16:27

able to really the

1:16:31

thing I've been able to admire about

1:16:33

myself, is that I'm learning to

1:16:35

engage with that part of myself more

1:16:37

and making this record. Making this

1:16:39

record was so fucking hard because

1:16:42

I started it with no confidence.

1:16:45

I started making this record with zero confidence.

1:16:48

I was just bleeding songs and

1:16:50

that was really hard to do because it meant every

1:16:52

song that I made I thought was crap. By

1:16:55

that point, I've already written those eight songs that I

1:16:57

trashed, you know, I'd already written

1:17:00

the bulk of an album. This would have

1:17:02

been two years ago I had I had about eight songs

1:17:05

and they were just they would garbage.

1:17:07

I did not like them, and I and and I

1:17:10

go, I go back to them now one

1:17:12

of no I know, but because

1:17:15

because so I've and I've ended up actually using

1:17:18

some of them on the album, but

1:17:20

in different forms. So like there's lots of outros

1:17:22

or middle eight or verse ideas from those

1:17:24

songs that ended up getting making their way onto the

1:17:26

record. For example,

1:17:30

mender Heart, which is a song that

1:17:32

that I just put out, that came out on Volume two

1:17:35

of of Love, Death and Dancing. The outro

1:17:37

of mender Heart was from a song that I scrapped

1:17:41

and I needed

1:17:44

an outro for that song, and my brain went literally

1:17:47

just copy and paste that from from that

1:17:49

place and it might work. And I copied and pasted

1:17:52

it and had to do some like magic edit bits and it

1:17:54

just worked perfectly. And I built on top

1:17:56

of that. So I so I know that, like I

1:17:59

know that there is cyclical versions of myself

1:18:01

in the future in the past that are constantly

1:18:04

aiding the creativity of what

1:18:06

I'm doing now, you know, Like

1:18:08

there's there's melodies I've written that

1:18:11

I wrote for songs that I haven't

1:18:13

finished because they weren't for that song. There for another

1:18:15

song instead, there's there's songs I've not

1:18:18

written yet. The melodies I'm writing now

1:18:20

are going to be suited for you know. I

1:18:24

in the in the interim between phase

1:18:26

and love, death and dancing, I

1:18:31

I disassembled myself

1:18:34

because I needed to see what was what what

1:18:36

felt broken. Something was broken, and I needed

1:18:38

to go in and see what it was. And and

1:18:40

and in disassembling myself

1:18:43

there wasn't an obvious crack anywhere. There

1:18:45

were just old, weary parts. And

1:18:48

that's what made me was just like tiredness

1:18:51

and and luggishness and

1:18:54

and and and

1:18:56

and and and a

1:19:00

an unwillingness to to work

1:19:02

cohesively as like a finely

1:19:05

tuned mechanism.

1:19:07

And when I put myself back together, rather

1:19:09

than so like to disassemble myself

1:19:11

and see that nothing was broken, instead of just that's

1:19:14

just what I was like. Yeah, I could

1:19:17

I shine some stuff and an

1:19:19

oiled pieces and sure, but

1:19:22

when I put myself together again, that there's no there

1:19:24

was no certification, There

1:19:27

was no reason to believe that putting myself back together

1:19:29

again was going to mean that I would then work

1:19:32

fine. And what

1:19:34

I ended up doing is I was building myself back up

1:19:36

by going to therapy, by learning

1:19:38

to talk to myself better, by doing by

1:19:41

by doing research into my actual like mental

1:19:43

health. That's why I

1:19:45

thought I was building myself up together. What I was actually

1:19:48

doing was breaking the parts, you

1:19:50

know, like I disassembled this version of myself.

1:19:52

Thought I was putting it back together again, but actually I was

1:19:54

just I was breaking the parts that were in front of me. And

1:19:56

that's that's when I that's

1:19:59

when I wrote those songs. That that was

1:20:01

me attempting to build myself up again,

1:20:03

you know, and and this and these

1:20:05

songs that may get released at some point if

1:20:07

I am able to turn them into things

1:20:09

I'm proud of, but like they

1:20:11

represent me trying so desperately

1:20:14

to be someone I wasn't, which is someone

1:20:16

who I was when

1:20:19

I made Phase, and I was I was young, and

1:20:21

I was naive, and I could afford to

1:20:23

make the mistakes

1:20:25

that I made. I don't know why in this interim

1:20:27

period, I was so desperate to go back to that

1:20:30

version of myself because it was the only certain

1:20:32

version of myself that I could see. Because

1:20:35

I couldn't see who I am now yet, you

1:20:38

know, and who I am now is

1:20:41

is way stronger because

1:20:43

who I am now is able to put my hand up and

1:20:45

say I'm full of broken pieces, you

1:20:48

know. And that's what I'm writing about. That's what I want to write

1:20:51

about. That's the person I want to be. I want to admit

1:20:53

to that, and I want to know that those pieces are there.

1:20:56

I don't want to try and fix them unless they need fixing.

1:20:59

I also don't expect myself to be able to live

1:21:01

with them forever right well.

1:21:03

And and that's one of the things that excites

1:21:06

me about, you know, the

1:21:08

version of this conversation that we had on that Live

1:21:11

a few weeks ago, that so many people

1:21:13

reached out and said, you know, thank you guys for talking

1:21:15

about mental health in the way that you did, and

1:21:18

and the conversations we have offline a

1:21:20

lot which which thematically

1:21:23

in my mind right now, I'm realizing,

1:21:26

really, especially

1:21:28

in the last year, center so much

1:21:30

on that idea of simultaneous truths.

1:21:33

How you can be at once

1:21:36

hype or self critical and also confident,

1:21:39

how you can understand that you're an artist and also

1:21:41

question whether you make anything of merit, how

1:21:45

how to your earlier point, There

1:21:47

can be all of these unanswered

1:21:50

questions that might actually

1:21:52

be unanswerable, and perhaps

1:21:56

the

1:21:58

exploration and the artistry come from

1:22:00

pondering them and seeing what

1:22:03

answers come up day by day, but understanding

1:22:05

that those questions will always be

1:22:08

there. Is Is there freedom

1:22:10

in understanding that you don't solve

1:22:12

the puzzle of yourself? Yeah,

1:22:14

that's that's a huge that that exact

1:22:17

premise has been a huge part of my emotional

1:22:19

awaitening in in in learning

1:22:21

that like I

1:22:24

say this a lot in interviews

1:22:26

that I'm doing at the moment, because I like

1:22:30

not that I talk in sound bites,

1:22:32

but I just I just believe in the things that I'm

1:22:34

saying at the moment. And one of the things I'm saying

1:22:37

a lot is I refuse to believe

1:22:39

that my emotions are problems that need solving.

1:22:42

No one's ever no one's ever asked me to question my

1:22:44

happiness. No one's ever asked me to to

1:22:46

to ask myself or to

1:22:48

challenge my my positive

1:22:50

emotions, and yet I'm constantly asked

1:22:52

to do that about my my depression and my sadness.

1:22:56

And my argument is funk

1:22:59

that my emotions aren't

1:23:01

problems that need fixing. I am who I

1:23:03

am, and if what I am is a is a

1:23:06

mess of broken parts, surely

1:23:09

in being able to see that that's what

1:23:11

I could be is

1:23:13

a step in the right direction of being able to accept

1:23:15

that that's what I am, to know that there's room

1:23:17

for improvement, to not to not to not accept

1:23:20

that as it as as okay cool,

1:23:22

and therefore the world should accept me. No, I

1:23:24

think there are things about myself that need

1:23:27

improvement. Of course there are. I'm I'm

1:23:29

you know, human

1:23:32

perfection doesn't exist as

1:23:35

as as much as

1:23:37

I can't tell myself that when I'm writing a song

1:23:40

or producing a piece of music, it just doesn't

1:23:42

and it never will. That the

1:23:44

act of asking the question, am

1:23:47

I okay? Is

1:23:50

it?

1:23:51

I know? It's it sounds

1:23:53

so, it sounds so like abstract but

1:23:56

but like but it's so it's

1:23:58

so relevant to what to

1:24:00

what this album is about, to what the language around this

1:24:02

album is about. We just announced

1:24:04

this new project that's up on my website called

1:24:08

called A Call and Response. It's this thing

1:24:10

that my team and me have been working on for months

1:24:13

and we finally got it together. But

1:24:15

what it is is a place on my website where

1:24:18

anyone can go and um

1:24:21

submit either a call into the ethera or

1:24:23

respond to somebody else's call. The

1:24:25

premise of it, there's a little but there's a little biogue that

1:24:27

goes with it that just explains about how it's relevant

1:24:30

to my album, and how it's relevant to love, death and dancing

1:24:32

and the way I've been feeling and the

1:24:34

emotional enlightenment

1:24:36

that I feel like I've achieved. But the

1:24:39

premise of it is that the act of asking a

1:24:41

question is in itself an act of

1:24:43

self love to ask something

1:24:45

that doesn't necessarily need an answer, but to know

1:24:47

that it just needs asking in the first place. The opening

1:24:50

lyric of time, why is it not enough to be fine?

1:24:52

I never answer that question. It's not there

1:24:54

to be answered. It's just there to be

1:24:56

proposed, like why is it not

1:24:58

enough to be fine? I don't want you to answer that. I

1:25:01

don't want myself to answer that. I just need to know

1:25:03

I can ask that question, because God, I

1:25:05

think about it all the time. M hm.

1:25:07

You know that that whole song is filled

1:25:10

with those kinds of ideas

1:25:12

and sentiments, and one line that's you know, afraid

1:25:14

to look inside yourself, afraid you'll find that in our

1:25:17

glass is just a glass with sand inside. My

1:25:19

favorite lyric on the album, and it

1:25:22

doesn't need an answer. It proposes a thought.

1:25:26

It doesn't want a response.

1:25:28

It just needs to exist and breathe. You can

1:25:30

respond to it, that's the beautiful thing about it.

1:25:32

It's an idea. You can respond to it in any way that you

1:25:34

want, but it's not asking you to do

1:25:36

that. And I need to learn

1:25:38

to do that for myself. I need to learn to not expect

1:25:41

an answer from myself if I think I

1:25:43

am a difficult question at

1:25:45

times. M hmm. How

1:25:48

do you think you've

1:25:51

Because there's something as both

1:25:53

a fan of your music and as

1:25:55

your friend, there's something

1:25:57

so beautiful about witnessing where

1:26:00

you are in this period and also

1:26:02

what you're making. And

1:26:05

it isn't lost on me that there

1:26:07

was a time where you didn't feel

1:26:10

comfortable in your body and

1:26:12

and in the larger context of mental

1:26:15

health, maybe in your brain.

1:26:18

And here we are celebrating your

1:26:20

new record, which is actually

1:26:22

titled Love, Death and Dancing,

1:26:26

and you put out this beautiful

1:26:29

series of videos. It's a it's a partially

1:26:32

it's partially a visual album

1:26:35

and it's you dancing.

1:26:37

You you quite literally have gotten back in

1:26:39

your body. How

1:26:42

How did you know you were ready to kind of come

1:26:44

home to yourself? Why?

1:26:46

Why? Why the

1:26:49

series of videos that

1:26:52

sent her around dance? I

1:26:55

I didn't. I didn't know. I

1:26:58

didn't know that. There wasn't ever a

1:27:00

point where it was like, cool, I'm ready, let's go dancing.

1:27:03

There was just a point where I knew

1:27:05

that it was going to be an important part of the message.

1:27:08

Like I knew roughly

1:27:10

what I wanted the album to be cool, I knew

1:27:12

what it was about. I also just knew how it made me

1:27:14

feel like these songs make

1:27:16

me want to move in ways that I haven't moved

1:27:19

before. And

1:27:21

the dancing came from the video concept.

1:27:23

The video concept was this. It was, you know,

1:27:26

what was widely regarded as a bad

1:27:28

idea, but it was an idea that I

1:27:30

had, which was I'm gonna be

1:27:33

in front of a camera and I'm going to dance for

1:27:35

every single song. That's how it started. And

1:27:37

I and I got I.

1:27:42

I. I coaxed my friend

1:27:45

Tom Clarkson, who's an incredible

1:27:48

writer and the director, someone I've worked with a lot

1:27:50

um someone you've hung out with in Chicago before when

1:27:52

he came to visit us big love

1:27:55

that man, I

1:27:58

uh yeah, I heard him into

1:28:00

helping me do it um and he

1:28:02

did so. And the

1:28:05

first the first questions and the questions

1:28:07

that we kept asking ourselves were, Okay,

1:28:09

why again me being

1:28:11

a stickler for needing to know that

1:28:14

the details means something? Why

1:28:16

why dancing? Why just me? Like

1:28:18

a big One of the first big arguments we had actually

1:28:20

over the creative of it was he wanted more people

1:28:23

on camera and I refused. I

1:28:25

was like, no, this has to be me. This has to just

1:28:27

be me. And it's not because I want to prove

1:28:29

it to myself, but it's because that's what this

1:28:32

whole album is about. This.

1:28:34

This album is about me. It's not about anyone else.

1:28:37

I I have not written this for anyone else. I've

1:28:39

written this purely for myself. You

1:28:41

Know. The SoundBite I have about that is I've

1:28:44

satisfied a hundred percent of my target audience

1:28:46

with this album because it's me. I love

1:28:48

this album and

1:28:50

and I want to show that in everything that I do.

1:28:53

I don't want there to be another face on this, not

1:28:55

because I want to take all the spotlight but because

1:28:57

this is to the best of my ability and

1:29:00

accurate depiction of exactly who I am and

1:29:02

how I feel, there should not be

1:29:04

anyone else's face on it, right, And

1:29:06

when you've done the hard work of

1:29:08

going in and excavating and breaking

1:29:11

and putting back together, that

1:29:14

that's a reclamation of self.

1:29:16

Yeah, exactly. It's

1:29:18

not lost on me that you stopped dancing

1:29:20

and with this record and this

1:29:23

clearer sensibility about who you are,

1:29:25

how your brain works, what your emotional life

1:29:27

looks like, you've come

1:29:29

back into your body, that you've begun

1:29:31

to dance again, that you've you've owned

1:29:33

a space again. It's

1:29:36

it's very metaphorical, but it's also

1:29:38

quite literal. Yeah,

1:29:40

and and done and done so in the video through

1:29:43

through a characterized version, caricaturised,

1:29:46

caricaturized, sure

1:29:49

version of myself, just like

1:29:52

yeah, like the the story of the video. Like,

1:29:54

so, what we have is we we ended up. Out of the twelve

1:29:56

songs on the album, we picked eight and we've made

1:29:59

we've videos for them. We filmed

1:30:01

them all in four days, which was

1:30:04

not fun, but it was fun. Um

1:30:07

and each video is me

1:30:10

moving and presenting the

1:30:12

song in a different way. Um. So They're all

1:30:14

little vignettes that they stand on their own,

1:30:16

but we're also releasing them one, releasing

1:30:18

them as like a long form film where they

1:30:20

can play one after the other. And for

1:30:23

those of you watching at home, you'll notice that the beginning

1:30:25

shot and the last shot of each video is

1:30:27

the respectively

1:30:30

last shot and then beginning shot of the song

1:30:32

before and after. And because

1:30:36

because the story that I was trying to create is

1:30:38

one that also has found its way into the album,

1:30:40

which is just my emotional journey. It's my

1:30:42

story of the last few years. It's

1:30:44

it's you know. The The video is the

1:30:46

story about and an arrogant

1:30:50

version of myself who is obsessed with

1:30:52

performing to a camera. And

1:30:54

the camera begins to the

1:30:57

camera begins to sway, and it begins

1:30:59

to move away, and it begins to get bored of its

1:31:01

subject, which is me, and I, in a

1:31:03

in a desperate bid to win

1:31:06

back its favor, you

1:31:09

know, thrust myself and throw my body

1:31:11

around just to get it to look at me, and

1:31:13

it does so begrudgingly. It doesn't want to.

1:31:16

But the film follows me as I begin to break

1:31:18

down the reasons why I want to do that. Who's

1:31:20

behind the camera. Why am I so obsessed with performing

1:31:23

to it? Is it me

1:31:25

behind the camera and I just obsessed about accepting

1:31:27

myself? Why do I feel the need

1:31:29

to be the only person in front of the camera on my

1:31:31

own? And ultimately it leads

1:31:33

to a moment in in the

1:31:35

long film where I dance but

1:31:38

not for the camera, And that's the moment

1:31:40

when the camera decides to want to see me again.

1:31:42

Is because I'm purely doing it for myself.

1:31:45

But my favorite bit about the video is that it

1:31:47

ends with me realizing

1:31:50

that the camera's come back, and so I start to

1:31:52

perform to it again, and and

1:31:55

and we end the film

1:31:58

with the very first shot of the very first song,

1:32:01

indicating that the whole thing is just cyclical

1:32:03

in the way that we've been talking about. That this that

1:32:06

realization I have for myself of like needing

1:32:08

the camera, but do I need the camera? Okay,

1:32:10

I don't need the camera, but now the cameras following

1:32:12

me again, so I might as well turn around and need the camera.

1:32:14

But now I need the camera, but do I need

1:32:17

the cat? Like that cyclical way

1:32:19

of thinking. I wanted to represent that

1:32:21

as best I could because it's something I've been so

1:32:23

obsessed about over the last few years, and

1:32:26

it's something that so that's one

1:32:28

of the core messages that lives within every

1:32:30

single song on this album. Me

1:32:32

dancing in front of the camera was

1:32:36

I mean, yeah, I wanted to prove for myself I

1:32:38

could do it, because, like I said, when when

1:32:40

things started going well for me in two thousand and sixteen,

1:32:43

I lost my confidence in a lot

1:32:45

of what I did, and one of those things was dancing in public.

1:32:47

And I used to love doing that. Me and my wife fell in love with

1:32:49

each other because we would do dance off at

1:32:52

three am at the not Inhll

1:32:54

Arts Club. And I just

1:32:56

stopped doing that one day, and

1:32:58

that was the saddest thing to see her

1:33:00

not know why that was, and for

1:33:02

me to not really know why that was either, And

1:33:05

it was just because I didn't love myself enough

1:33:07

to feel like I could do that. I

1:33:10

still don't know if I'm there. I did it in front of a

1:33:12

camera because I had to, But I

1:33:14

don't know. We'll see. Just put on put

1:33:16

on like I love you, and get

1:33:19

me drunk enough and then we'll see what happens. You

1:33:21

know, I'm always down for the dance party, No,

1:33:23

I know, but I get

1:33:26

it. It's it is an interesting thing

1:33:28

because hearing you talk about

1:33:30

that, I can trace when I've

1:33:33

been going through something uncomfortable

1:33:36

and kind of lost my will or

1:33:38

or my ease in

1:33:41

movement, like where suddenly I don't

1:33:43

feel like I

1:33:45

I don't feel like my body is mine anymore.

1:33:48

And and yeah, I've noticed

1:33:50

it. Get hypersensitive

1:33:53

as well, like you notice the difference and then suddenly

1:33:55

you go, will hang on, why is that there? And it makes you hyper

1:33:58

aware, hyper sensitive of it, which then numbs

1:34:00

you two more. But it's so strange, it's such

1:34:03

It is really interesting. How

1:34:07

because obviously there's there's an incredible

1:34:11

amount of fodder for art in

1:34:14

exploration of self, in in

1:34:16

really getting responsible with you

1:34:19

know, your mental health, in in looking

1:34:22

yourself in the eye in these ways

1:34:25

that I think so many of us need

1:34:27

to do. How does

1:34:30

technology play a role in this stuff? For you?

1:34:32

Because I think about how intensely

1:34:36

tech has changed. I think about, you know,

1:34:38

going back to the beginning of this conversation, I was

1:34:40

talking about how we can stay

1:34:42

in touch, which we have through our whole friendship

1:34:45

on on face time. You know, we can

1:34:47

we can have this conversation into

1:34:49

different countries during a pandemic. Uh

1:34:52

and and look at each other the whole time,

1:34:54

which is so insane and cool.

1:34:57

But I wonder, you know, I

1:35:00

I know you made phase on your MacBook

1:35:02

using logic, and and

1:35:04

now we're getting to see these

1:35:06

Instagram live shows and these Facebook lives

1:35:08

shows that you're doing, and we get to be in your studio

1:35:11

with you, which has all the bells and whistles and gadgets.

1:35:14

What what is what

1:35:17

is the role of of

1:35:19

technology and how it's changing? How how

1:35:21

is that working with your music and impacting

1:35:23

what you're making. I

1:35:26

think, I like technology and music has always been

1:35:30

but I mean I'm

1:35:33

always on I'm always on side

1:35:35

with it. I think. I think like I

1:35:38

taught myself to produce music because I didn't

1:35:40

know there was any other way of doing it. So like I

1:35:42

got I remember getting my first laptop

1:35:45

and trying to make songs on it,

1:35:47

not knowing that, not

1:35:50

knowing that, Like I guess the

1:35:53

done thing is that you would have a producer

1:35:55

that would do that in a more like

1:35:57

classic way of making a record, for example,

1:35:59

But I, as you know, seventeen eighteen and just

1:36:01

doing it in my bedroom I

1:36:05

I always I

1:36:08

find technology to

1:36:10

be such a useful tool. I

1:36:13

also am guilty of using it as a crux

1:36:15

a lot. Sorry, I'm guilty of using

1:36:17

it as a crutch a lot of the time. I rest

1:36:19

on it too much, and I and I and I rely

1:36:22

on the same things over and over again to kind

1:36:24

of do the same thing over and over and

1:36:26

egg again. But the thing that

1:36:28

it's enabled me to be able to do is it's

1:36:31

and the and the reason why I don't think I'll ever look back

1:36:33

and do this in any other way is I

1:36:37

never consciously made

1:36:39

myself become the quote

1:36:42

one person band,

1:36:44

right. I never I never sat down and

1:36:46

when oh, this is this is the right

1:36:48

thing to do. I just did it because I

1:36:50

didn't know there was any other way to do it.

1:36:54

And the only way I was able to do that is because

1:36:56

I had the technology that enabled me

1:36:59

the tools to be able to do that, you know, making

1:37:01

a song. And this goes back to what we were saying at the beginning.

1:37:03

With learning all the different instruments that

1:37:05

I that I can play it

1:37:08

it makes me be able to think about how

1:37:10

to arrange and produce a piece of music from

1:37:13

the from the point

1:37:15

of view of the

1:37:17

version of myself that plays the base, from the

1:37:19

version of myself that plays the keyboard, from the version

1:37:22

of myself that plays the trombone. You

1:37:24

know, I'm able to think of music production

1:37:26

from those different points of view, and

1:37:28

I can also sit behind a laptop and an engineer

1:37:30

and program something myself. I need

1:37:35

it to be able to make the music I'm

1:37:37

currently making. You

1:37:39

know, I need the laptop, and I need the synthesizers

1:37:42

I've got around me, and I need all the plugins that I use.

1:37:44

That's the thing as well, is that, like I've got all these toys

1:37:46

in here, but half of the stuff I use is in

1:37:48

this laptop that I'm talking to you one right

1:37:50

now, Like half the instruments and and

1:37:52

the and the and the effects and everything

1:37:54

it's in the box. Um. You know,

1:37:56

depending on who you ask, that's blasphemous.

1:38:00

Depending on who else you ask, it's a godsend. I

1:38:03

The only thing that I know, the

1:38:05

only thing I know to be true, though, is what I

1:38:07

need is something that creates speed. Speed

1:38:11

is so important. It's so

1:38:13

important. I can't I can't waste

1:38:15

time plugging something in if I've got an idea. Now,

1:38:17

I need to know that I can load something up,

1:38:19

whether it be a patch on a plug in or just plug in a

1:38:21

keyboard that I know is going to give me the sound I need. I

1:38:23

need to know I can do it quickly. While I'm still riding

1:38:26

the wave of that idea. I can't spend

1:38:28

what I have found to be something that is detrimental

1:38:31

to my creative process. When I'm in other studios,

1:38:33

I can't spend twenty minutes to set

1:38:36

something up because

1:38:38

the idea has gone, the moment's gone. I can't hang on

1:38:40

to something for that long. So it's really important

1:38:43

to me that I have the technology available to

1:38:45

be able to make the music I

1:38:47

make quickly and efficiently. That being

1:38:49

said, I try not to rely on it too much. Like I said,

1:38:51

if i feel like I'm getting too dependent on something, I'll

1:38:53

switch everything up and and and do something completely

1:38:56

different. Like I've got. I've got two setups

1:38:58

running at the moment in my studio. I've got my like

1:39:00

songwriting setup, which is, you know, my

1:39:02

laptop with my with all my plugins,

1:39:04

and I've got this very elaborate io

1:39:06

system that enables me to be able

1:39:09

to play any since that I can currently see

1:39:11

at any point depending on whether

1:39:13

I've got it armed or not. You know, that's great

1:39:15

for creating stuff and making songs. I've

1:39:18

also got to the side on a table

1:39:20

I'm looking at over there, um an analog

1:39:22

system, something that's not plugged into a computer. I've

1:39:24

just got a few sense and a sequence is set up

1:39:27

that I have to program manually myself. Completely

1:39:29

different ways of looking at and making music. Not

1:39:32

something I have ever done before in my life. I've

1:39:34

just you know, I've I've got

1:39:36

a couple of sense that allowed me to do stuff like that.

1:39:39

I'm a bit of a sponge when it comes to music,

1:39:41

and I learned very quickly, and luckily

1:39:43

I'm still doing that even is um getting

1:39:45

older. I haven't kind of lost that that

1:39:47

that ability yet, so I'm still

1:39:49

just trying to rely on that. But the beautiful thing about technology

1:39:52

and the age that we're living in is we have we

1:39:55

have decades of technology

1:39:57

that the acts as are predecessor

1:39:59

to us. So what I'm really enjoying doing at the

1:40:01

moment is finding technology that was used

1:40:03

thirty years ago. Because

1:40:06

because my body, my brain is

1:40:08

not built to look at that

1:40:10

technology and use it instinctively. I've

1:40:12

grown up with screens all of my life. I've grown up

1:40:14

with phones in my hand, you know. And here

1:40:16

I am going back looking at like

1:40:20

when I was making When I was making this record,

1:40:22

I was making it with. I was making

1:40:24

some of it with a producer called Jack Knife Lee who's

1:40:26

based out in California, based out in l a

1:40:28

UM's based out in Topanga, and

1:40:31

he has the largest synth collection I've ever

1:40:33

seen in my entire life. The most amazing

1:40:36

thing about working with him was I was

1:40:38

using I'm using technology that was built

1:40:40

forty years ago, used that was built fifty

1:40:42

years ago, you know, And I'm a twenty

1:40:45

I was at the time. You

1:40:47

know. It's almost twice as old as I am.

1:40:50

But the instinctive, like my hands,

1:40:52

knew where to go, they knew what to do, they knew how to

1:40:54

touch it, they knew what to turn to make the

1:40:56

noises that I needed to make, Like it

1:40:59

ten oology and music for me, for the

1:41:01

music I make is just they

1:41:04

blend so beautifully into each other.

1:41:06

I've made things before though where I've depended

1:41:08

on it, on it too much and I can hear it. But

1:41:11

this this album, I've not done that.

1:41:14

I don't think I've done it. I really hope I haven't done it.

1:41:17

Now this album feels, it feels a lot more

1:41:19

organically made. I was able to use the instruments

1:41:22

I needed, but again, none of it got

1:41:24

played if I wasn't playing it. You know that,

1:41:26

And that's my that's my rule. Well

1:41:29

I love it. Why why

1:41:31

release the album in

1:41:33

volumes rather than just

1:41:36

as a record? Oh? Well, this actually this,

1:41:38

But this lends itself quite nicely to the technology

1:41:40

conversation. It's purely from

1:41:43

a standpoint of that's how people

1:41:46

consume music. I there

1:41:48

are two ways in which you can listen to the album once

1:41:50

it's available on June twelve, UM.

1:41:52

The two ways being in the four volumes.

1:41:55

Those four four volumes are only going to exist

1:41:57

online. They're only

1:42:00

to exist on on like

1:42:02

streaming platforms. The other

1:42:04

version is the physical version. The other version

1:42:06

is on CD and vinyl and curse set

1:42:09

or whatever and download. And that version

1:42:11

has a completely different playlist, So it's not just like volume

1:42:13

one followed by two, three, and four. It's

1:42:16

track one to track twelve, completely different

1:42:18

playlists in a completely different order. The purpose

1:42:20

behind that for me was because

1:42:23

the listening experience is and should

1:42:25

be different, and the technology now allows

1:42:28

you to be able to to facilitate

1:42:30

that experience to be different, to intend for

1:42:32

that experience to be different. When I'm streaming

1:42:35

music, I'm in a completely different headspace too, when

1:42:37

I'm listening to vinyl, and I am

1:42:39

a consumer that does both right.

1:42:41

So I'm not trying to target

1:42:43

the same wallet twice, but I am trying to target

1:42:45

the same consumer twice by offering the same the

1:42:48

same album, just in a different format.

1:42:51

When I'm streaming music, I am playlisting

1:42:53

it. I'm using it in bite sized chunks. My

1:42:56

brain is just it's thinking differently. It's

1:42:58

it's it's talking to its self differently. When

1:43:01

I'm listening to a vinyl, I'm ritualizing

1:43:03

the music that I'm listening to. I'm taking

1:43:05

the I'm taking the vinyl out of the sleeve. I'm

1:43:07

placing it gently onto my onto my

1:43:09

turntable like I am

1:43:12

physically engaging with them with with

1:43:14