musical mondaze

For some, mastering an instrument is their calling. For others, it is a part of their legacy. For singer/songwriter A.J. Croce, his pull towards music is a complex concoction of both. As the son of folk icon Jim Croce, it’s easy to suggest that music is a genetic carryover, but the talented pianist and multi-instrumentalist is more apt to suggest that it was a musician’s work ethic, the desire to perfect the art of becoming an accomplished songwriter, that was ultimately passed down to him.

We recently sat down with Croce for a frank discussion about his new album “Just Like Medicine,” how the collection of songs represented him at the time, and why he almost walked away from music.

TrunkSpace: What kind of headspace do you find yourself in when you’re writing and putting together a new album? Is it something where it becomes sort of all encompassing for you or do you find yourself having to step away and put some distance between the music?
Croce: I’ve done a lot of them now and they all kind of happen in different ways. Sometimes I write over a period of time of a couple years and then pull from that stuff. I find when writing a bunch of music, I might have a few different kinds of songs going, but there’s a similarity between certain kinds of songs… similar chord changes or certain things are being used just because my head’s in that space, and so I need to do it over a period of time where I can process different ideas and be a little more creative in that regard.

And then the recording process is a totally different thing. I kind of look at 18 months or two years worth of songs that I’ve written. And there could be 100 songs, 20 songs, or it could be any number of tunes that I pull from to make an album. And they’re not even always mine. It might be someone else’s song that I like. And I kind of go, “Okay, what am I trying to do? What’s the story behind this?” And as an independent artist for so many years, since I left BMG in the mid 90s, you really need to have a story. You need more than just, “Here’s my music.” You really need to have something that has something interesting behind it, and so that’s been a big part of the process with this record is, what is this about?

TrunkSpace: So with that in mind, what was “Just Like Medicine” about?
Croce: There were a lot of challenging things that happened in the last few years. My kids are grown, my wife and I have moved from California to Nashville again (it’s our second time living there), and all kinds of good stuff and all kinds of hard stuff. Selling my house. I was broke. I had tax problems. I had all kinds of psychological problems with a million different things going on, and meanwhile, touring and trying to keep a career. Trying to do a million things at once. I put all of that into this record and it starts right where I wanted it to. I had to get out of my head. I had to change my perspective.

TrunkSpace: It sounds like putting the album together was a therapeutic process for you?
Croce: Yeah, it was just like medicine. Not to be corny, but I think that that was…

“Cures Just Like Medicine” was the last song written and it was one of the first recorded. And I think it was that I had this feeling about it, like, “This really sums up this album.” I feel like I’ve lost all these relationships and I’ve kept these other ones, and I’ve found the people that mean the most in my life. I think as you get older, you kind of make your own families, not just literally with having kids and seeing them grow up, but with the people that you don’t have anything in common with. Even if you grew up with them and you love the memories of everything you’ve shared with them, you don’t necessarily have anything in common any longer.

TrunkSpace: And it starts to feel like you’re trying to push a square peg through a round hole just to carry on the relationship.
Croce: Exactly, and then you find yourself really living in the past, you know what I mean?

TrunkSpace: Absolutely.
Croce: Because that’s the only thing you really have in common is that past experience. So, that became really clear in that song, and I sort of understood where I was at in a way. “Move On” and “Gotta Get Outta My Head” and “The Other Side Of Love” and all of these things… they were telling the same story, but I don’t think any as potently, for me, as that one. And so it became the title track. Whether it becomes the single or not is irrelevant in a way, but for me, it sums up the content, at least where my head was.

TrunkSpace: You mentioned going through some challenges throughout the period of writing the material for this album. Do you find that you’re a more prolific songwriter during those emotionally challenging times for that reason, because it is a lot like medicine?
Croce: It can vary. Sometimes having no emotional attachment to something allows me to write more fluidly but less convincingly. In my life, I’ve been a writer for years at a time, where I didn’t have a record come out. I was doing cowrites. I was writing for Warner/Chappell Publishing, or I was writing for EMI or BMG or whatever it was. And I’ve been with so many different ones over the years as a writer, as a songwriter, and I think it was like… there were times when I was writing for other people and I was just doing five cowrites a week in Nashville, and there was a compromise with everything. And you get really, really good at a technically good piece of work, but creatively it’s less improvisational. Or less original.

TrunkSpace: And you must get used to working within deadlines in that circumstance.
Croce: Yeah, you’re writing a specific song for… it could be anyone. It could be George Strait. At the time I remember every single writer was writing for a George Strait record. It was only going to be 12 songs, but there was 350 or 400 writers that were all competing to get songs cut on that record. Just an example. There were hundreds of records like that, and it’s like, “He needs an up-tempo thing like his last hit,” or, “Wynonna needs this thing,” or “Reba needs this thing.” And then things started to change a little bit in Nashville and I left, and when I did, during that time, the business changed a lot. Producers started being the writer, and during that period of time when I was away from that, I had no compromise in my writing and a ton flew out of me because I was just like, “Wow.” There’s no one saying, “Oh, that’s not commercial.”

TrunkSpace: It must be freeing to no longer have your creative POV focusing within certain parameters?
Croce: And it’s funny moving back to Nashville. I find it’s really an interesting time there, because it’s like a friend of mine was saying… it’s like the new Greenwich Village. All the guys that I wrote with or worked with in my teens and 20s in Nashville, if they’re still there or still alive, then they’re doing stuff in a very original fashion. They’re not constrained either, and for the first time in their lives, they’re not constrained because they’re not necessarily going to get a song on a Taylor Swift record, and if they do, it’s because they’re writing with her. And that’s the way songwriting works now, the artists are cowriting their stuff. Some are great writers and some of them are new to it.

TrunkSpace: Was there ever a moment where you said, “You know what? Maybe music isn’t my path? Maybe this isn’t what I’m supposed to be doing?”
Croce: Yes. Oh, yeah. First time that happened was… I remember I was at a subsidiary of RCA and everyone got fired. The whole label got kind of folded into another BMG company. I got a call from the head of the label and he just said, “I wanted to let you know…” And this was right when my second record came out, so it couldn’t have been worse timing. Just as I was promoting it. It was a challenging thing. I had a good manager and I got my masters back at that time. He arranged it. And then I had another manager for a period of time and he was just burning bridges. It was a challenging period.

The same day that I heard about the label getting folded into another label, I got a call from a German blues label that was distributed by Virgin in the United States, so they had great distribution. And they said, “Do you want to make a record?” And I said, “Yeah.” And they said, “Well, would you make something that’s kind of blues influenced that’s like a rock ‘n’ roll record or whatever you choose to do?” And I said, “Well, the roots of what I’ve always done is in that vein. Soul music is part of what I do, and a little blues, and jazz piano was the roots of what I did.”

So, when I got there, it was with a totally different budget and we were not traveling on buses anymore and we were not flying first class. All of a sudden, my whole perspective of music changed because I went from having huge record budgets and travel budgets and tour support to being on an indie out of Germany. Even though it was distributed by a big company out of England, it was just totally different. And at that time, that was kind of like… doing that was kind of like a career ender.

So yeah, there’s been a lot of times where I felt like, “This is it, I’m done for and I can’t make a living anymore.” So there was a period where, a couple of times, I quit. I just quit touring. I was like, “I can’t do it. I miss my kids. I miss my wife. I committed to these relationships and I’m not even a part of them.”

TrunkSpace: You hope to control the music, but in doing so, you can lose control of other aspects of your life.
Croce: Right. Exactly. So now I’m on tour. I’m in Columbus, Ohio, in a hotel and my wife and I travel together almost everywhere, and it’s a different world. It’s a different kind of thing. When she decides she wants to come out, she does. And that’s most of the time. And then when she doesn’t want to, she doesn’t. And that’s really cool for us, because I have a life that was really hard to have before.

“Just Like Medicine” is available August 11 from Compass Records.

People have been enjoying the music of Peter Himmelman for decades, some without ever having realized it. As a successful composer for Hollywood film and television projects like “Bones” and “Judging Amy,” the Minnesota-native’s work has trickled into our subconscious and has been hummed from our lips, but it is his moving and thought-provoking solo work that stays with you on an emotional level. His latest album “There Is No Calamity” would be a page turner if it were a book, each track representing a chapter in a story that becomes more clear the deeper you dive into the context.

We recently sat down with Himmelman to discuss how his albums are journal-like records of his life, how he views his legacy, and why some people don’t make their dreams a reality.

TrunkSpace: Your discography features dozens of albums, both solo and as a member of bands. As you look back over those albums, how do you view them in terms of your life? Do they define specific periods in time for you?
Himmelman: It’s a good question. It has a little bit of meat on it for me, which I like to dive into. I started doing a little thinking about my catalog lately. I think because for reasons, good or ill, I never made an album with the intention of like, “I’m going to just get a single here” or never was I prodded by any record label to do so. It seems as though I was always given a lot of license just to write things that I was interested in, reflections of what I was thinking at the time or snippets of conversation.

Into that extent, you’re absolutely right. They leave a very journal-like record of exactly where I was at the time. My oldest son, who’s 27 now, he says for him, he remembers all those records when he was a kid and what they meant to him then and now. It’s almost the same way I remember when he was going to school and he was playing with trucks or something when he was four. They all have an impact.

I think they’re drawn from very personal observations and what meanings that were gleaned from those observations as opposed to a calculated look at songwriting. I’m not deriding that. After my first solo record, which was called “This Father’s Day” and it was based around a song that I had written for my dad when he was dying of lymphoma, that was really the change for me from tactical writing, which I still can do and sometimes do some of. I never feel, especially now, compelled to put those on my records. Especially now since making records has become just more of a personal passion than a means to deriving an income.

TrunkSpace: From a listener standpoint, putting on a song can instantly trigger of a memory. Same thing with smells. You smell a certain dish, you’re reminded of your childhood. To be involved in the creative aspect of those songs, there must be a different level of that memory trigger?
Himmelman: Yeah. Your question now sparked something in me. Some of the songs that I am most connected to, and you have to understand that I write when I go through these periods of writing a lot. The most connected songs, at least for me, they were always born out of some kind of mystery. I was in a mood, and this just sounds like an old thing that people say, but they just pour out. In that sense, what I’m trying to get at is that they are often as mysterious to me as to a listener. Those are the kind of songs that I like in general. They’re fairly oblique. People can bring their own story to the song and it gives me a hint as to what was going on subconsciously in my life during those periods… periods of struggle, periods of joy, periods of youthful lust, or whatever. It’s all in there. Look, whereas I never had a giant hit or anything, I’m always scanning the horizon for, “So what is fulfilling about this?”

There’s something deeply fulfilling about looking back and seeing what I consider for myself a rich treasure trove or legacies.

TrunkSpace: You mentioned your son. Being able to have that recorded history, and it doesn’t necessarily have to be music… it could be anything… it’s a great thing to pass down to your kids because so many people don’t ever really get to KNOW their parents.
Himmelman: I was going to actually finish that sentence and I thought better of it. Maybe that’s too… but you took it.

Yeah, the legacy piece is something I never thought about. Maybe I was just too young to think about it. The more we know about our parents and their history, it’s always fascinating of course because we derive from them. So much of what they went through is a part of us, whether experimentally or genetically… however these things pass down.

Yeah, I think of the legacy not so much for the public, but for people close to me. Furthermore, when I write songs, the audience for them, at least in my mind who am I writing for, it’s usually just one person or a couple people. It’s not a mass. It’s a note to my wife or a couple musician friends of mine that I’d like them to hear or some person I think I’ll never get to talk to. It’s always a very small group. My kids are always in there, too. There’s certain things, probably certain things I won’t say in a song.

TrunkSpace: Knowing that those people you’re speaking to in the songs are listening?
Himmelman: Yeah. There’s a lot of restrictions on my candor in general. I realize it’s going into a public forum. While I am free to write and try to purvey myself as somebody who writes from the heart and so on, let’s be honest, I’m always circumspect about exactly what I’m going to say. That would be disingenuous to say I’m just writing everything my id suggests I write. Just like I’m not going to say anything in real life that would cause great offense or consternation to somebody.

TrunkSpace: You mentioned that the songs are representative of those periods of struggle or joy. Is songwriting almost a bit of a therapy? Is it a therapeutic practice to be able to get those emotions out?
Himmelman: Yeah, I think it is. It’s like when I’m in the kind of fecund zone of writing where things are just popping out like a hamster giving birth to a litter of 20 hamsters. They just come out. Contrasting with right now, I have zero desire to sit down on my piano, which is right in front of me.

TrunkSpace: Is the creative something that you can’t force?
Himmelman: I could force it. If somebody said to me, and this sounds crass, but anyone that writes for a living, you know how this works. If somebody said, “Look, I’m going to pay you X amount of money and I need a song by Tuesday” and that amount of money was meaningful to me, I would place myself in a position that that song would come out. In other words, I would force myself into the mood and what resulted from the mood most likely would be totally real and good. It used to be like that when I was on a label and you had to adhere to a schedule. There’s something really great about that because I need the advance check to pay the rent and then I’d be in the position to do it.

Now getting back to your premise as songs being therapeutic, yeah, once I’m in that mode, things start to emerge. I start to understand a lot about myself when some of these songs come out.

TrunkSpace: With that in mind, did you discover or learn anything about yourself in making “There Is No Calamity”?
Himmelman: Yeah. I think this is… I remember a story about Prince. He went with his wife at the time up to Northern Minnesota and looked at a lake. It’s a story I heard from a journalist who has this giant trove of unpublished Prince stuff. So they’re at the lake and it’s just so placid and cold. He was there for 10 minutes and he was like, “I got to get back to my studio. I got to write.”

Sometimes I feel that way, that the world in my head is sometimes more interesting than the world around me. That’s kind of a sad thing to say. There is something very engaging about one’s own thoughts and one’s own meanings of expression. It’s so fulfilling that sometimes it’s hard for other experiences to compete with that.

TrunkSpace: In a lot of ways, that goes back to what we talked about earlier about our parents. When you’re a kid, how you view your parents is sort of superhero-like in your head. The more you learn about them, you start to realize that they’re human. A lot of times what’s in our head is almost more interesting in a way. More fictional.
Himmelman: Yeah, and more perfect. When things come out into the open, if you want to just use songs as that metaphor, for some people, and I talk about this a lot in my book and so on… for some people, making and manifesting the fruits of their imagination is a dangerous thing. I have a friend of mine who is about as good a musician as you’d ever want to find and is really a fine songwriter/producer. I met him when he was pretty young and he, of course, wanted to make a record. That record has yet to come out and he’s no longer young. I believe that having something orbiting in your head where it is in a pristine state certainly is not subject to judgment, one’s own or other people’s judgment. It lends a very pallid sense of fulfillment. That is to say that it doesn’t lend no fulfillment. It’s like, “If I were ever to make a record, it would be amazing.” But if it comes out and it’s less than amazing and people criticize it, it could, in some people’s mind, it could kill them. Bringing things out into the world, it has its risks. It has, I guess, its dangers. I just find it’s fulfilling to not only dream up things, but to make them manifest. I suppose that’s why there’s so much material out there that I put out.

TrunkSpace: Humans are complicated beings.
Himmelman: Yeah, we’re so complicated. You’re so right, and the layers. If you keep this stuff to yourself… I have a thing where I’ll play stuff for a very select group of people. Maybe it’s one or two. I get excited about it. I’ll play and I’ll share something with somebody, get some feedback, get the fire going with some tinder or some kindling. Then, oh yeah, I’m using that to get over these hurdles of my own about my own fears. I have my own little techniques to push me, which is to say that it’s not as though I don’t have these same fears.

TrunkSpace: So often artists put all their creative eggs into one basket. They find their baby and they can’t focus on doing anything else. What’s so fascinating is that you have so many different creative outlets, even helping other creative people find their own outlets. Is it hard for you to shut down your brain and step away from that creative mindset?
Himmelman: I think so. I have had a couple of personality tests done that people have run on me. There’s certain people, I guess this is where I fit in, that thrive on a degree of adversity. Maybe that’s universal. In other words, getting something to be a simple habit or rote behavior that you just easily process over and over. It would seem like an agreeable thing. “Yeah, let’s just do that. Churn out some money.”

A lot of people would do that so that they could make money so that they could do something like touch a whale shark in the South China Sea or something. It isn’t the work that they do that they love so much, it’s the money that they earn that will allow them to do what they love. For me, the manifestation of these creative things is what I love and the challenges they present and the little hurdles.

That said, I wonder if I’d have had a huge hit, let’s say one of my albums, “Flown This Acid World”, had just been a massive hit and I had a ton of money from that, it’s possible that I wouldn’t be doing all these different things. You could say the reason I do it is just because I felt I had to. I had to keep moving and then there would definitely be truth in that, too. Then again, going back to my dad, he was the type of person who always was reinventing himself, always in an entrepreneurial sense.

Some of the stuff I’ll tell you sounds funny. We’re from Minnesota. He was the first guy to bring in Japanese motorcycles to Minnesota. Suzukis. I remember him getting a motorcycle shipping quote and thinking he was being silly but he was being deadly serious about bringing this motorcycle over. At that time, it seemed like, well, whatever. A motorcycle was a Harley Davidson or a BMW. You didn’t have a Japanese motorcycle, which was synonymous with shit made in Japan. He brought that in. He had the first 8-track tape store in Minneapolis. That sounds like a joke, but…

TrunkSpace: Not at all. It’s part of the equation. You don’t get to cassette, you don’t get to CD, you don’t get to digital without the 8-track.
Himmelman: Right. That was a huge, huge step that you could have the music of your choice in a great sounding stereo or in your car. I would watch him as a kid. He had a security camera business that got later bought out by Honeywell way too early. I mean way before we made any money on it, but all these different things. For me, that was just natural. This idea of reinvention. This idea of just taking the fruits of your imagination and making them manifest.

“There Is No Calamity” (Himmasongs/Six Degrees) is available now for digital download and will hit stores August 11.

Not many lead singers will bring their guard down long enough to allow themselves to be so candid and exposed that their fans can see beyond the rock persona to the inner workings of the creators themselves. In a day and age where so much of how people present themselves is based on how they are perceived on social media, it is refreshing to see someone in the public spotlight question the very spotlight itself. In fact, much like the literary greats of the past, Broadside frontman Ollie Baxxter seems to question everything, an attribute that often leads to complete artistic freedom.

We recently sat down with Baxxter to discuss the band’s latest album, touring a new Europe, and why he wants the universe to believe in him as much as he believes in himself.

TrunkSpace: “Paradise” has been out for about a week now. With all the buzz that was circulating the album prior to its release, did you guys feel any extra pressure to deliver in a particular way with the material?
Baxxter: Yeah. I was a little scared because I knew it was a little poppy and a little less… slightly aggressive, if you want to call it that. I was afraid that we were going to lose the core pop punk kids, but at the end of the day, we are a band that has kind of always driven home the same kind of energy at our live shows and the same kind of lyrical content. And they always knew that we’ve been weirdos, so I think they could have just expected an album like “Paradise.” Keeping that in mind, I was less scared to put it out towards the end and it was just more nurturing towards the idea of, “Hey, guys… I know you’re not closed-minded assholes.”

TrunkSpace: Well, and your own personal influences are so diverse in terms of the style of music you enjoy, so why wouldn’t Broadside show some sonic diversity?
Baxxter: Exactly. I don’t appreciate the corruption of the idea of the pop industry, but I love the idea of a formula of sound and being able to dress something up a certain way. But the true artists… the Michael Jacksons and the Boys II Mens of the world… they can incorporate those testaments of things that actually matter like human to human contact, but dressing them up as something else so that the world will actually listen. Because we’re all distracted these days, so it’s nice to be able to provide an outlet on both sides of the frame.

TrunkSpace: So was the move towards a more pop-friendly sound a conscious one or did it just kind of happen organically?
Baxxter: We consciously set out to do it, but we didn’t know how deep or how far we would take it. We wanted to be more marketable, but keep the things that matter to us like the consistency of the lyrical content. There’s a guitar solo on the album for Niles. We just wanted to make sure that everyone was happy, and at the same time, we also wanted to let the industry know that we were a band that was consistent and that we were looking for growth. We wanted to show people that we could grow and that people would grow with us.

TrunkSpace: How did you guys approach recording the album given the new direction?
Baxxter: We went with the same producer, Kyle Black. We did our last album and then the State Champs album came out and that kind of peaked our interest because we were like, “This is kind of a poppy sound for sure, but it’s still got the grit of a rock album.” And that was the thing… we didn’t want to go full on bubblegum pop. We still play our instruments and still perform, so we kept that in mind. We just liked his (Kyle’s) overall sound and thought sonically that he killed it. We wanted to keep that little bit of grit of what we were putting out to the world.

TrunkSpace: It can take a long time for songs to be written and for the songs themselves to be recorded and released. With that being said, have you guys already moved on creatively from where your heads were at when you put together “Paradise” to where you are now?
Baxxter: We have this good balance within the band. We’re all different creators, so we’re all doing something as an outlet on the outside. Our guitarist Niles is into photography. Dorian is into producing and writing with other bands. And I’m a writer so I write a lot of stuff on the side. I get a lot of my outlet stuff through there and then when it comes to Broadside, we like to give the material the allotted time that it deserves to fully get the record out there.

If it were up to me and my ADHD ass, I would just be like, “Yeah, let’s write a new record tomorrow.” But, apparently you can’t do that if you play an instrument. (Laughter)

This record isn’t a forever type of record. I knew this record was going to be a summer 2017 stamp on music and knowing that going in, I kept that in mind when writing the lyrics. I really wanted to focus on things that were going on right now for the people of right now.

TrunkSpace: Your own personal creative outlet is writing. Do you find that you’re able to do a lot of that internal creating when the band is on the road?
Baxxter: Absolutely. I’m the guy that always has a journal. If you want to call it a diary, that’s fine. (Laughter) I have a journal with me and I’m always writing. I’m a big reading snob, so on tour one of my favorite things to do is to go into old bookstores. Even in the UK, because I romanticize everything, just being in the UK and being able to write in bookshops and shit like that… I’m really inspired by the ambiance of things. It can be tough in the van sometimes because the guys never shut the hell up, so in times like that it’s difficult, but when I get to the venue I try to challenge myself and write something, even if it’s pointless.

TrunkSpace: Being on the road has so much structure to it, so it must be nice because then you can at least know when you’ll be free to get lost in your own head. When you’re home, sometimes life just gets in the way.
Baxxter: For sure. With the last tour, it was with a bigger band and it was considered “A market” so we had to load in a lot earlier, which allowed me a lot of time throughout the day. I don’t like to write when I’m particularly emotional about anything. I don’t like to write when I’m too upset or I’m too excited because it just comes out as chaos, so I like to try and write at the end of the day because then I can represent the entire day. It’s tough, but I do like the fact that there was a schedule on this last tour. Plus I’m a big fan of going out and eating food too. That’s one of my things. That’s one of everybody’s things, but I love to find some good Asian cuisine wherever we are because I’m a sucker for it. I could eat noodles every day all day.

So, those two things are the me things that I make sure get done. I’ll announce to the band, “Yo, guys, I’m going to go write” or “I’m going to go find some noodles.” They’re usually on board with the noodles.

TrunkSpace: And you guys are scheduled to head back over to Europe soon, right?
Baxxter: Oh yeah. In September. I’m so excited.

TrunkSpace: Knowing about everything that been going on over there and with the heightened level of awareness around possible future attacks, does the band have to approach this tour in a different way?
Baxxter: It’s definitely a scary scenario, but I would hate to treat any situation as if things were to come. I think the venues are taking a step with their security and their handling of that scenario. It’s unfortunate, but you really just can’t control those awful acts. I don’t want to go into it being afraid because I would hate for someone watching or even a passerby to feel that energy. At the same time, it’s almost necessary at this point to kind of think that it is at least a realistic possibility.

TrunkSpace: We saw something interesting on your Twitter feed a few days ago. You wrote, “Dear Universe, believe in me as much as I believe in me.” What was your inspiration for writing that?
Baxxter: As much as I want to believe that I am climbing this ladder of success, which I am because I’m doing interviews like this and all sorts of things, it’s all just material. In the back of my mind, I can’t help but question what the fuck am I doing. What is my purpose and what is my value? I often get caught up in this idea of material possessions and it’s a financial situation. Like, if I had more money, then I’d be happier. And I hate that because it’s not necessarily true, though it would change a lot of stuff. But I feel like I’m giving so much of myself to the world and that sounds so diva-ish because I choose to do it, but I’m putting out a lot and I’m really trying to inspire people. People tell me all of these crazy stories and I don’t respond to all of them because I can’t or because they’re too intense. All I can say is that if you’re feeling this way, you’ve got to speak to a professional doctor or your parents need to get help. I carry this weight around and I raise my baby brother and my baby sister and I think, what is my worth? What is my value? And I really just want to be able to turn the noise off for a day and write consistently enough where I can get the first chapter of my book done or more of my poetry written. It’s not a financial situation. It’s just the world is so burdened and sometimes I carry it around with me. I feel like because I’m a weirdo hippy, I ask the universe to just silence all of the stuff around me so I can focus because a lot of this is so distracting.

TrunkSpace: We certainly live in a day and age where there is so much white noise and negativity swirling about. It’s hard to escape.
Baxxter: Yeah. And that’s the thing, even when I’m on the Internet and I’ll post something that has value to me… it will get half the amount of attention as a fucking photo of me. And you’re like, “I’m flattered, but it hurts to know that I have to grab your attention in three seconds for you to find value in me at all.” As an artist, it’s the worst thing ever because I don’t feel like I should be competing with a certain type of person. I don’t want to compete. I want to create freely in my own head knowing that it will be read and received. It’s frustrating because you’re right, there’s so much white noise and everybody is like, “Look this way. Look that way. Look this way.” It even hurts when I’m like, “Hey, vote for us for Best Underground Band on Alt Press Award.” That’s a big ass accomplishment and we’re going to be on the TV and shit like that, but I still feel bad asking people to do that.

“Paradise” is available now on Victory Records.

Much like her music, Katie Von Schleicher is an open book. In sharing thoughts on her songwriting process, the Maryland native offers insight into the inner workings of her soul, a place that sparks of creativity but that also has a dark, melancholy side. She isn’t sure if sadness is a direct influence on her art, but admits to going there from time to time. It is an emotion that is audibly apparent when listening to her debut full-length album “Shitty Hits.”

We recently sat down with Von Schleicher to discuss her recent European tour, performing in Manchester two days after the bombing, and how therapy has made her a more confident musician.

TrunkSpace: You recently returned from a European tour, right?
Von Schleicher: Yeah. I was opening for Aldous Harding in Europe.

TrunkSpace: What was that experience like?
Von Schleicher: Oh my God… it was such a luxury. It was so nice. We had a tour manager. I’ve never had that before.

TrunkSpace: We saw you post a picture of him on Twitter. He seemed super psyched. (Laughter)
Von Schleicher: (Laughter) He’s so funny. It was interesting. My boyfriend is my bandmate so it was me and him and then Aldous and her boyfriend are bandmates, so it was two couples and a tour manager.

TrunkSpace: Oh, man. He must have felt like the super fifth wheel.
Von Schleicher: (Laughter) Yeah. He would FaceTime his wife, so it was all good.

But, I’ve never toured in Europe before so that was a pretty incredible experience.

TrunkSpace: Did you find a particular country or region to be more drawn to your music than others?
Von Schleicher: I’d say major cities. In London the show went really well. I’ve only been there to go to the Globe Theater and mess around in whatever their Times Square is, so it was nice. Now I have a label over there in Full Time Hobby, so it didn’t feel touristy, which was really nice. That show was at Omeara and it was a sold out show. The thing about Aldous Harding audiences is that they’re there to listen, at least that was my experience. Everyone was silent, so it was pretty amazing in London. Paris was also really nice. And I’d say Hamburg was another really good show and Berlin.

I don’t know what it is about German people, but they clap a really long time after the set is over. (Laughter)

TrunkSpace: Europe has been going through so much lately and yet the people there seem so strong and defiant against the idea of being scared.
Von Schleicher: I definitely got a sense of a different reality that people face in Europe. Whatever we’re saying, our country is not filled with insurgents. When I was in Calais and we were crossing over to England… we were on the highway and we hit a bit of traffic and all of a sudden these guys, like ten guys, just ran out into the middle of the highway and were pulling at the backs of trucks trying to get in and smuggle their way over. It was really strange. We weren’t listening to music or anything. It was just this weird silence of when something is happening but you don’t understand really what’s happening. And then I couldn’t really get that image out of my head the whole time. I don’t deal with, in a daily life, driving down the highway where I see people fighting for their lives.

And then we played Manchester two days after the bombing.

TrunkSpace: That must have been unnerving.
Von Schleicher: I felt really somber about the show. Not tense because of safety, but just a little bit on edge.

TrunkSpace: When you’re playing in that type of atmosphere, does it change the way you deliver your songs in a live setting?
Von Schleicher: That’s a good question. I think it did, but I don’t know if it was in the right way. I think I felt a little more hesitant almost. My songs can be pretty dark lyrically and there’s something that can also be self-indulgent to that. Or maybe you feel that it’s self-indulgent when there’s an actual tragedy in a town that you’re visiting. So my songs are pretty dark and my banter can be pretty irreverent and crass and jokey in between and I didn’t feel like that was the right tone I wanted to put forth. But that may have been the wrong impression that I had. I just felt hesitant.

TrunkSpace: The people of Europe seem to be strong in that they will not lock themselves inside. They are still going out. They are still living their lives.
Von Schleicher: Yeah, and they are serious music fans. It was a complete luxury to be able to go over there and tour, especially when you play New York shows and although New York audiences are filled with great audiences and great musicians, people keep it closer to the vest here.

TrunkSpace: Well, and New York must be difficult too just because there is so much competition, not only in terms of live music but entertainment in general.
Von Schleicher: Yeah. I definitely don’t feel like I’m one of New York’s main attractions. (Laughter)

I think there’s something really humbling about it though, which can either be soul-crushingly humbling or adorably humbling. Going somewhere, having a tour manager, staying in a hotel, having a green room… if you play enough shows in New York just being you at clubs and then you experience all of that, you’re like, “Wow, this is more than I even need.” So, maybe it’s good to get humbled to the scene here.

TrunkSpace: So when it comes to music as a whole, how important is it in your life in terms of needing to get it out of you?
Von Schleicher: That’s a question that I think I only doubt the answer to when I’m feeling depressed or worried about my future or whatever sort of existential feelings. I need it, but I’m not a tortured artist or anything though either. I’m trying to come to terms with the idea that I need it, but do I need to commodify it. Is that something I also need? If I get depressed for a few days, I won’t play music for whatever reason… I’ll feel extra self-critical or maybe I’m just lazy or I’m doing other stuff and I don’t play. And I do feel that it affects me, but I don’t wake up and just go, “MUSIC!” I’m very attuned to sound and silence is one of the best ones as well.

TrunkSpace: On those days that you’re not tapping into the creative aspects of music, do you still rely on it as a listener?
Von Schleicher: I keep having to remind myself to listen to music more. At work we listen to music constantly, so I am listening to a lot, but right now I’m kind of in need of some new music. I feel like I’ve hit a point where I’ve listened to my favorite albums a ton of times and obviously that ebb and flow occurs.

TrunkSpace: For a lot of people that’s seasonal. Summer becomes autumn and suddenly you want to tap into some of your favorite music.
Von Schleicher: Yeah. Everything for me is cyclical and seasonal. Writing happens in seasons. Editing or producing or whatever it is. I think the expectation with being an artist is that you’re irrepressible. Every day you’re T.S. Eliot and you go work on poetry from 10 AM to 7 PM or something. (Laughter) But I think a lot of it is more cyclical than that… the listening and the making of it. I think you need to take time off and absorb other things too.

TrunkSpace: So in terms of songwriting, when are you at your best? What mindset do you need to be in?
Von Schleicher: The simple one is just, feeling open. There’s an openness that I need to feel to feel creative and I go through phases of feeling not open. Sometimes I feel like I keep reading the same books or doing the same things on a loop. Right now I’m thinking about another album and I feel a lot more observant than I do when I’m not thinking about a new album. Or maybe I have to be observant to even think about doing it. And I’m just reading and walking around and looking at stuff and being like, “What’s my question?” That sounds really trite, but I get onto some kind of thematic idea that propels me to create it as a body of work… as an album… not just a group of songs.

TrunkSpace: A lot of times you hear songwriters say that happiness is a creative killer. Do you feel that applies to your music?
Von Schleicher: (Laughter) No. My songs are pretty sad though. Some people write when they’re only happy. I’m in Central Park right now and I’m between therapy appointments, which is my new life right now. I’ve decided to go to therapy and I’ve been curious about the idea of anti-depressants too. And I don’t know… I pick life over the idea of me being a brilliantly tortured artist. Whatever that means. I’m 30, so I’m a little bit older, and the desperation that I felt when I was like 22 to just get the songs out there and be a legend or whatever you think when you’re listening to a lot of Lou Reed… now I feel like I just want to be happy to be myself and be around people on a daily basis. So that’s more important. I don’t know if it helps the songwriting or hurts it.

TrunkSpace: So do you mean that some people may be hesitant to take anti-depressants because they’d be worried it would turn a switch off on their creative brain?
Von Schleicher: Possibly. Yeah. Everyone has a different philosophy, but I feel like songwriters and poets tend to have a lot of philosophies about their existence. I feel hesitant to take them. I’m totally on the fence. Not because it will mess up my songwriting, but just because then I’ll be dependent on a thing. I don’t know. It’s a tough call, but I feel like I’ll always have something I’m probably complaining about in case sadness really does influence the songwriting. (Laughter)

I will say that going to therapy made me a more confident person and I think being more confident makes you better to other people and more honest. But also, it makes you able to produce music, so it’s not just the songwriting but it’s also the confidence to make an album that has more moving parts and things beyond just the sad genesis of the songs.

“Shitty Hits” is due July 28 from Ba Da Bing Records.

 

Showmanship has entered the building!

He rocks. He rolls. He rhythms. He blues.

Los Angeles’ own Clownvis is a unique island in a sea of interchangeable acts. You can’t quite put your finger on just what the enigmatic entertainer is all about, but then again, mystery is as sexy as a cotton candy body spray so let his undefinable talent pour all over you.

We recently sat down with Clownvis to discuss his Thin Lizzy tradition, his wacky early shows, and if we’ll ever see him on a bill with Andy Kaufman.

TrunkSpace: When you take the stage and look out at the audience, what’s the first thing that goes through your head?
Clownvis: Usually, “Damn, what town is this again!?”

TrunkSpace: Do you have any rituals or follow any pre-show superstitions?
Clownvis: I suppose there is lots of little rituals I have while getting ready. But I shouldn’t really jinx myself by talking about them. I can tell you I always listen to Thin Lizzy in my dressing room.

TrunkSpace: What about post-show? We’d have to imagine those jumpsuits of yours get funkier than the music itself!
Clownvis: Suit funk is a real problem, cause I do work up a sweat on stage every night. Plus booze being splashed and big guys squashing me into their sweaty armpits for photo ops. But in the frenzy of a post show meet and greet, there’s all kindsa smells going around. The cotton candy body spray has been my saving grace, cause even when the suit smells bad, people notice the cotton candy smell first.

TrunkSpace: When you’re performing live, is it more enjoyable to pop the Clownvis cherry of someone who is unfamiliar with your music or to rock the socks of existing fans?
Clownvis: I’d say it’s 50/50. Usually the crowd is made up of people that are into my stuff, and then their friend that they dragged along that has a fear of clowns. A common compliment I get is, “I hate clowns, but I actually liked you!” I appreciate that response. It’s fun to win people over. It’s cute.

TrunkSpace: How has your stage show changed since Clownvis first climbed his way out of the primordial music ooze to where you are today?
Clownvis: My early shows were wacky as hell. And not so much in a good way. I didn’t really have my hands on the wheel of what I was doing, I just knew I liked to sing and goof off. I’d call my early stuff performance art bullshit if I saw it today. But my years in the Los Angeles comedy scene really shaped the act that I tour with these days. Night after night. Do or die crowds. Nobody gives an inch unless you really pull it out of them. I learned to take people on a journey and dance around reality in a way that makes it easy for them to suspend their disbelief.

Also, I fill the suit out better these days.

TrunkSpace: People mature as they get older, and as a result, their art matures. Would you say that is the case with your music?
Clownvis: Unfortunately no. I can’t say the word mature has anything to do with the progression of my music or stage show.

TrunkSpace: As you’ve mastered the art of your art, have you also mastered the art of makeup application? How long does it take you to get show ready?
Clownvis: People always say that, ask me about my makeup. Look, I’ll tell you right here and now, I wake up like this. Before I hit the stage my stylist hits me with some mousse or gel or whatever and I pull up my socks and slip on the suit and go put on a show. Other than that there’s not much prep besides a drink and some Thin Lizzy.

TrunkSpace: Your belt buckles are BIG. What else about Clownvis is big?
Clownvis: Thank you very much. I have big expectations. I have big dreams. I have big plans.

TrunkSpace: We can’t imagine that it would ever be the case, but if there were Clownvis haters/hecklers at a show, how would you handle it so as not to interrupt the cotton candy body spray love of the rest of those in attendance?
Clownvis: Hecklers are generally pretty easy to deal with, but I rarely have them. My tactic is to just talk over them and then go into a song that drowns them out. I have a microphone so I really can’t lose.

TrunkSpace: Sticking with the idea of cotton candy body spray love… is there anybody in existence who can fight off its overwhelming (odorwhelming?) powers?
Clownvis: Honestly noone has ever said, “Oh my God, what is that smell?” in a bad way about the cotton candy body spray. It’s got 100 percent approval ratings from every nose that has had the pleasure to sniff it.

TrunkSpace: You seem a bit like a super hero stuck in a world of everyday folk. If this was a very special world, what would your super power be and would you use your great power with great responsibility?
Clownvis: I would be able to fly and I’d fly all the damn time. I don’t think I’d do anything bad. Just fly around.

TrunkSpace: We can’t help but imagine a show where the bill was Andy Kaufman and Clownvis. If Andy was alive today, how do you think that would play out?
Clownvis: Hard to say how anything with Kaufman would ever play out. But some people say he is still alive, so I’ll have my agent look into putting something together.

TrunkSpace: What do you want out of your career… nay, your LIFE… that you have yet to achieve?
Clownvis: I really want to be a spokesperson for a product. I don’t really care what product. I’ll hawk anything if the price is right. I want to be like Larry the Cable Guy and have my picture on products at Walgreens.

TrunkSpace: What else can fans of your music and cotton candy body spray look forward to for the rest of 2017?
Clownvis: LOTS of touring between now and the end of the year. All across America. See dates at www.clownvismafia.com. Dates being added all the time. Also, I am currently working on an album with some amazing musicians. Not sure when that will be out, but it will be worth a listen for sure!

Death Cab for Cutie guitarist Dave Depper is stepping out on his own with his first solo album, an endeavor that is both thrilling and terrifying for the Portland-based multi-instrumentalist. “Emotional Freedom Technique” was released last Friday and features a family of synth pop songs with an underlining emotional arrested development theme, one that Depper admits he has since climbed out from underneath of. With two more solo projects already in the early stages of creation and a new Death Cab album due out next year, the future is looking stage light bright for Depper.

We recently sat down with Depper to discuss his musical boyhood dreams, his inspiration for becoming a solo songwriter, and the experience of watching other musicians learn his songs.

TrunkSpace: We’re starting with a heavy question out of the gates. If we asked 15 year old Dave what kind of musician he wanted to be when he grew up, would his answer be different than how your career has ultimately played out?
Depper: Well, it would probably be pretty similar. I think I am kind of living out my teenage dream at the moment, which is pretty nice. I guess if I was really living my specific dream, I would be playing guitar for Blur or Pink Floyd, but Blur has a guitarist who is still doing quite well with them and Pink Floyd is not a band anymore.

But yeah, I always wanted to be a guitarist in an active rock back and I’m doing that. It’s great.

TrunkSpace: So did that early snapshot of a dream ever involve a solo career?
Depper: No. Not at all. I really didn’t have any designs on being a solo artist at the time, other than it seemed like one possible avenue to being a musician. But I wasn’t one of those tortured teens who had music fighting to get out of me like I hear so many of my favorite songwriters say. “Yeah, I just wrote songs all through high school and they were bad but then they got good and then I got a band.”

It wasn’t something that really called to me. I was just more interested in honing my craft as an instrumentalist. Early on I really enjoyed joining lots of bands and playing in as many different styles of music as I could. That’s just kind of the way things went seemingly forever, up until they stopped doing that. (Laughter)

TrunkSpace: So did you consciously set out to take a solo side path or did it just sort of happen?
Depper: It’s kind of a combination. As music became more and more a component of my day to day life… like, I spent most of my 20s with a day job and playing in bands and moonlighting on the weekends or at night and then I gradually started touring more. By the time that I had played with several bands in my mid to late 20s, I was curious why I hadn’t been compelled to write my own music, so I started doing it. I was like, “Okay, I’m doing this. I’m writing songs.” And I just really disliked everything that I did. I just felt like that everything I did sounded like a bad imitation of whoever I was into at the time, whether it was R.E.M. or The Police or Death Cab for Cutie. Every time I did something, I asked myself, “Does this have a reason to exist? What is this doing better or differently than anything that I enjoy?” And I couldn’t answer those questions.

Fast forward a couple of years and I randomly agreed to play this thing called The 20 Song Game with a group of friends where you are challenged to write and record 20 complete songs in 12 hours. You did this with three or four friends and then you all get together at the end of the day and you play each other your songs. It’s this crazy kind of creative exercise that puts you in this sort of panicked creative state where you just have to use every single idea possible because otherwise you won’t have anything. You have so little time to work on everything.

I definitely wrote a lot of terrible songs that day as well, but there were a couple of things that really stood out that just sort of weren’t like anything that I had ever done before. When we were all listening back to each others’ songs, my friends commented on them. “That was really interesting. I didn’t expect to hear that out of you.” And they were these two songs that actually ended up on the “Emotional Freedom Technique” album… in different forms. One was only a verse and chorus and one had different lyrics, but the genesis of those songs were that day and it was like a lightening bolt struck me. I was like, “Oh, this is what I sound like and this actually doesn’t sound like anybody else but me.” Once I figured that out, it was like this dam had burst and I just started writing dozens and dozens of songs and it was just an amazing gift to realize that about myself that day.

TrunkSpace: So did that creative exercise also inadvertently change up your songwriting process?
Depper: Yeah. I think what it made me realize was that in order to effectively accomplish a goal or work towards something, I need to have a framework to work within, otherwise I get paralyzed by option anxiety. I’ve played in the hard rock bands. I’ve played in gentle folk bands. And I just couldn’t decide what to do and once I figured out this template of melancholy synth pop, I was like, “Okay, I can work within this.”

And so I think that no matter what kind of music I end up making or albums that I set out to do, as long as I have a mission statement of a sub genre at least, I’ll be a lot better at working on something.

TrunkSpace: A lot of times when an artist releases their first solo album to the world, they’re doing so in a way where they are working on building their fanbase, but due to your involvement in Death Cab for Cutie, you have an established fanbase. Does that put added pressure on you?
Depper: Definitely. It’s a strange double-edged sword. I actually started this album like five years ago and it was largely complete before I even got the call from the guys to play with them. A lot got done on the album since then too, but really this album was made in my bedroom by a person who kind of didn’t really know what he was doing and it certainly was not intended as this big solo bow from Death Cab for Cutie’s guitarist or anything like that. So it’s coming out in this very different situation than I expected it to.

That said, it’s amazing to have a fanbase who, even if they don’t directly all come over from Death Cab world, at least there will be some curiosity about it, I figure. It doesn’t sound like Death Cab for Cutie at all, I don’t think, other than there is a similar thread of emotional sincerity going through it, but… I’m very happy that it doesn’t sound like Death Cab because I really don’t want to be compared to them and not because I don’t like them. Ben Gibbard writes incredible songs and is beloved and I’m pretty terrified to be compared to him in any way. I’m happy to kind of have this weird, separate sort of spacy thing going on. And they have been incredibly supportive and wonderful about the whole thing. I was pretty scared about presenting it to them and being like, “Are you guys okay with me doing this?”

So, I’m happy about it, but it is a little bit nerve wracking, yes. (Laughter)

TrunkSpace: Does it feel different playing songs that are wholly yours?
Depper: Oh God, absolutely yes. With Death Cab, it’s this feeling of being a part of this amazing machine that is so good at what it does. Before I was in the band, they had been honing their craft for a decade and a half and it was an amazing kind of spaceship to board and to be a part of it.

I’ve so rarely been in a situation where I’m sort of calling the shots. The first rehearsal we had for the record a few weeks ago… you should have seen the look on my face. These four people learned my songs and the bass player was playing bass lines that I had made up and… it was this crazy feeling hearing this thing come alive that sort of wasn’t alive before. But then it’s kind of up to me to be like, if we have played the song three times, is it good enough? I don’t know. Do we need to run it again? That’s sort of an objective decision making thing that I’ve never really had to be in charge of, so I’m definitely learning as I go. And we haven’t played a show yet, so I can’t really report on what it feels like to play a show yet, other than I’m super terrified about the whole thing. (Laughter) But looking forward to it as well. It’s sounding amazing in rehearsal and the band is great.

TrunkSpace: Because this particular project was five years in the making, do you feel like your creative brain has already moved beyond where some of the messaging in these songs is at?
Depper: Absolutely. And the album was finished… mastered… a year ago. I’ve been sitting on it this long. So with the messaging, yes. The record addresses a very specific period in my life that was three or four years long of sort of this emotional arrested development and disconnection from relationships, both romantic and platonic. I was very much in that when I wrote the record and was sort of getting out of it by the time I was finishing it. And I’m firmly out of it now, but I’m really proud of the statement that it makes on that level and I think it’s kind of all I have to say on that subject. I love how it turned out, but I’m definitely turning my mind to other areas for future things that I’ve already started working on and that I’m stoked about.

TrunkSpace: So as you look towards the future and your career as a whole, where do you see your solo career falling into things?
Depper: Well, it’s cool. I think barring unforeseen circumstances, Death Cab is going to be Death Cab and we’re going to release an album next year and tour it. And before that, things were much more freelance for me. I would kind of join touring bands for six months to a year and then the second that I would be done I would need an income and so I would have to join another. It was very hard to plan my life, even three months in advance. Now I’m part of Death Cab and I don’t need to jump around. They’re home for me. I can kind of be more methodical about how I plan things out and so my goal is just to record, record, record… kind of all the time. And I can do that whenever with them… on tour or whatever because I have a mobile rig… and just release things whenever we have a lull in activity. It’s super freeing and super exciting to look forward to that.

“Emotional Freedom Technique” is available now.

 

Boston native turned LA transplant Joe Dias is looking to move music forward, blending elements of rock, hip hop, and pop to make his own definable sound. Born from a diverse range of musical influences, Dias’ songs are given life on the guitar, an instrument he took up at age seven, and are placed into a cocoon within the studio where they emerge as something entirely different.

We recently sat down with Dias to discuss his love for rock, his desire to create musical uniqueness, and where he’s hardest on himself in the songwriting process.

TrunkSpace: You’re set to drop a new single “Something Better” to the masses. What does that feel like?
Dias: Man, I can’t wait, honestly. It’s going to be incredible. I’ve got nothing but good, positive vibes for the release of this song and I’m hoping that it goes very successfully and I can broaden my fanbase and entertain the fans that I have.

TrunkSpace: Is it a track that you recorded recently?
Dias: I’ve actually had this song for about six months now and I’ve just been waiting to plan the correct release for it because I wanted to release it professionally instead of just dropping it because it’s a really good song. I wanted to take the right steps.

TrunkSpace: That’s got to be difficult… to have something you’re proud of and have to sit on it for so long?
Dias: Trust me! But I’d rather people actually hear it… a good amount of people… instead of just dropping it. I want to use it as a tool to build myself up.

TrunkSpace: So as you look forward in the career, is a strategic approach to releasing new music something you’re going to try and do at all points now?
Dias: Definitely. I’ve been thinking about that a lot more. I used to just make whatever I wanted to make, whether it be a Hip Hop track or a rock track or a pop track. Now I’m trying to create a definitive sound and create a vibe that can be a brand. That’s what I’ve been focusing on mainly. I want this to be a long career. I don’t want to have to do something else. I want to do this.

TrunkSpace: And that seems to be the real trick in a career in music… maintaining longevity.
Dias: Yeah. It’s maintaining it AND creating something original because if you just follow the trends, the trends are always going to change on you and you’re never going to stand for one thing.

TrunkSpace: You mentioned creating tracks based on varying genres. You cite a wide range of influences in terms of the sounds that inspired you and we’re curious if you always had diverse tastes when it came to music or did you enjoy different genres at different points in your life?
Dias: I grew up listening to nothing but classic rock. My dad had all of these CDs and I would find a CD and listen to it over and over again, whether it be Led Zeppelin “IV” or the Eagles’ “Hotel California.” I would listen to all of those tracks and they really, really spoke to me. Then I started learning how to play all of those songs on guitar. So, I would say that it started out with rock, but then as I grew up, I got into a lot of Hip Hop… listening to 90s Dre, NWA, and stuff like that, in high school. And then recently I’ve been into 60s R&B like Sam Cooke where people just sing and you feel their pain. That’s the kind of singing that I want to do.

There’s just so many good singers. I love Percy Sledge. (Singing) “When a man loves a woman…” I just love those songs when you feel it. I know I like it when I hear it.

TrunkSpace: You listen to someone like Smokey Robinson on vinyl and man, it sounds so warm and inviting. You can’t always capture that in a digital space nowadays.
Dias: Yeah. Vinyl is really coming back. People are all about the vinyl nowadays. It’s pretty cool. People are just sick of not holding a record.

TrunkSpace: Some artists are even releasing cassettes as well.
Dias: Times are weird right now. Things are all over the place. I feel like we’re going backwards and forwards at the same time.

TrunkSpace: We actually saw a photo on your Twitter account where you posted a picture of yourself wearing a Pantera shirt.
Dias: “Cowboys From Hell,” man! (Laughter) Actually what happened with that shirt… a friend’s mom is obsessed with Pantera so we’ve been listening to Pantera and we were at a thrift store and I was like, “No way!” I have been listening to Pantera going to the gym and stuff. (Laughter)

TrunkSpace: So as you’ve absorbed all of those influences into your own songwriting, how long did it take you to sort of find your own voice as a songwriter?
Dias: I would say very recently. I’ve always known that I didn’t want to abandon my rock roots. So many people love rock music and there’s just no one making… there’s a lot of bands making rock music right now, but there’s not many people pushing it forward into a new realm. That’s kind of why people say rock is dead, but it’s definitely not. I work at this rock store and teach little kids how to play “T.N.T.” by AC/DC and I watch them get so hyped about it. It’s definitely not dying any time soon. People just need to say, “Rock is still cool and let’s push it into new directions.” People are pushing Hip Hop into new directions, but not really rock music.

I want to be on the charts. Who doesn’t want to make a million dollars on a song? But I also want to stay true to everything that I’ve done. I like the sound of electronic music, but I don’t like how every single EM track is formulaic. It’s predictable. I hate predictability in music.

TrunkSpace: So was the guitar your gateway into music? Was that your first instrument?
Dias: First instrument, definitely. I started when I was seven. I miss the guitar. I miss the guitar on stage. That’s very lacking right now, but it’s still kick ass in my book. I’m trying my best to promote that.

TrunkSpace: You write most of your songs on the guitar, but when you put on your production hat to bring your other influences into the mix, do the songs themselves change a lot?
Dias: Yeah. Completely. And sometimes lyrics get rewritten. Melodies get changed. Everything kind of switches up a little bit. The original production demos are a lot slower. They just change up and you get those drums in there and you can feel it. Usually your gut, when you’re making music, will tell you where it needs to go.

TrunkSpace: When you’re working on the songs, where are you the hardest on yourself as an artist?
Dias: The lyrics. The lyrics are really hard for me sometimes because I know what I want to say, but I just don’t know how to say it all of the time.

TrunkSpace: Do you write from experience or do you take more of a storyteller’s approach?
Dias: Usually from experience, but sometimes I do these weird stories that don’t happen, but I like to tell it like they’ve happened. Sometimes I write little fictional stories in songs. It’s fun.

TrunkSpace: Well, and what’s great about that is, it might mean one thing to you when you wrote it, but the listener might have a completely different interpretation.
Dias: Yeah, that’s the magical thing about it. At the end of the day, everyone’s going to think of it in a different way and that’s the coolest part.

For years James Elkington has been performing, recording, and collaborating with artists like Jeff Tweedy, Richard Thompson, Michael Chapman, and Tortoise, to name a few. As someone who genuinely enjoys the confines of a creative collaboration, the British-born musician had not deliberately set out to write his own solo material. After exploring the untapped world of a new tuning on his acoustic guitar however, the songs started to come to him and a family of tracks were born, ultimately becoming his debut solo album, “Wintres Woma.”

We recently sat down with Elkington to discuss how going solo means being proactive, why he felt it was time to put together the album, and how he has decided to let his career lead him as opposed to trying to lead it himself.

TrunkSpace: Knowing that you played and arranged most of the instruments on “Wintres Woma,” does it feel like the closest thing musically to being wholly yours?
Elkington: It does. Yeah. It does. (Laughter) That’s the short answer.

That’s kind of a big question. I’m still trying to get to the bottom of that because I’m interested in lots of different types of music and I’m interested in operating in those different types of music and how I react when I’m put in those different musical situations. I’m a big fan of collaborating and being in other people’s bands. I like the idea of being able to move around in different areas. I think for awhile, for a few years there, that was really all I wanted to do. I liked the pace of it and the spontaneity and the creativity of it. You would think that writing your own material is ultimately sort of more creative and more fulfilling, but it’s also a lot more work.

TrunkSpace: And when you enjoy the collaborative process, it also has to be a bit creatively lonely.
Elkington: It is. And it’s all proactive as opposed to when you’re working with other people, it’s a combination of being proactive and reactive… and that is quite energizing in a way because something is always happening. But when you’re on your own and nothing is happening, it’s not much fun. It’s something that I used to do a lot more of 10 years ago and I got tired of it to the point of where I just really wanted a break. And a lot of people, when they need a break, will just stop doing music, but I saw this other area where I could move into where I could still have fun doing it.

The last few years have been a bit more of a roller coaster and in that time, I sort of got the energy and the enthusiasm again for writing my own stuff. Plus, I think for awhile there I didn’t really have much that I wanted to say… or at least not much that I wanted to say to myself. And that changed in the last year or so.

TrunkSpace: So does that mean that the songs that represent the album are all relatively new?
Elkington: Well, originally I wrote a little collection of songs all in this guitar tuning that I’ve been operating in solely for this project. I came up with a little family of songs and at that point, once I started to feel like that maybe I had a record… or at least maybe a direction… then I did start reaching back to some songs that I had written awhile ago but hadn’t really known what to do with. I found that some of these song were just kind of like in waiting for the right opportunity. There were songs that were a little more introspective and a little more guitar lead and I kind of rearranged them to fit more with where I’m at now. But it’s only a couple of songs. It’s pretty much all new. There are even songs on there, a couple of songs anyway, that I wrote like two weeks before I recorded the album.

TrunkSpace: We read that you recorded the entirety of it in five days. That seems like a creative sprint.
Elkington: Yeah, preceded by a sort of six year lull. (Laughter) That’s the thing, I think a lot of people who write music or make things will tell you that sometimes the wheels are turning and you don’t even really realize that it’s happening. I think I spent a lot of time subconsciously deciding what my next move would be, if I even bothered to make one. It had the appearance of a sort of fully formed burst, but in actual fact it was kind of meditated on for quite awhile.

TrunkSpace: In laying down the tracks so quickly though, it also enables you to not overthink things and move away from the curse of all musicians… perfection.
Elkington: Yeah. And some people are very good at disarming that process… that kind of human process of second-guessing yourself. I am not good at disarming it. In the past, I feel like I’ve been guilty of overworking things and worrying about too much being left to chance. This record is much more of an experiment for me in kind of trying to let that stuff go. People involved with the record will tell you that I did not do a good job of that either, but for me, it was a step up in letting go. (Laughter) There’s some stuff on there that I previously wouldn’t have let fly on records that I had been involved in, but I don’t know… in the last few years I’ve just been involved in a lot of other people’s projects, which really were left much more left to chance and I would very quickly have to improvise something for a show or a recording. Those parts would always end up being my favorite part of what I contributed to it, so I sort of tried to allow that space in this for things to just happen.

There’s a song on the album called “Wading the Vapors,” which has a really long and amazing cello solo in it. I kind of hoped that it would be a cello solo that would be book-ended by this one verse of lyrics, but other than that, I didn’t really have much of an idea for it. I just recorded myself playing this guitar line for three minutes and then tried to figure out how to fill it in and turn it into a song. I didn’t know that it was necessarily going to work. I hadn’t tried it out beforehand. And there are a few things like that on the record where I just sort of tried it and not really put myself under any pressure to have a result at the end of it, but instead, just let it be.

TrunkSpace: Music doesn’t have to have rules, but a lot of times, musicians place rules on themselves.
Elkington: Yeah. And I need those too. I’m kind of more creative within parameters, if that doesn’t sound like too much of an oxymoron. (Laughter) If I know where the boundaries are and I know what I’m dealing with, then I can sort of come up with something, which is why this guitar tuning was such a part of writing these songs. I didn’t really know how to operate that tuning, but partly through trying to set up boundaries for myself and partly through laziness of not wanting to retune guitars between songs and things, I just decided that whatever I was going to do was going to be in that tuning and I just had to deal with it.

TrunkSpace: So do you think that if you didn’t focus on that particular type of tuning that this album would have never come to be?
Elkington: That’s a good question. This whole process of working with this tuning really started out as almost… I compare it to almost like a doodle that you do in your spare time or when you’re on the phone. It started out as this little meditative practice and it kind of snuck up on me. I surprised myself that I had managed to come up with some songs. So I have a feeling that if I hadn’t started working in that little area, there’s a good chance that I might not have really written an album. At least not right now. I think I might have done something else, but I’m not sure what.

TrunkSpace: It’s amazing how a creative spark can turn into a fire.
Elkington: Yeah. The last few years, for me, have been quite sort of… I’ve been busy and quite fulfilled in a lot of ways. It really all started from me kind of letting go of having too many preconceptions about a career in music or anything like that. I just sort of let all of that go. I decided that maybe that wasn’t for me. This was right when I started playing in other people’s bands and just started doing it for the fun of it just to see where it would lead, as opposed to trying to lead it myself. And things have worked out much better for me since I have just gone with the flow, so to speak. So, I’m trying to invite a little bit of that into my personal creativity.

“Wintres Woma” drops June 30.

Anyone who listened to the radio in 1991 or watched MTV in the age of actual music videos has emphatically sung along with Mr. Big’s “To Be with You,” the hit single from their platinum-selling sophomore album “Lean Into It.” Nearly three decades later, the band is continuing to write, record, and tour the world and doing so on their own terms now that the music industry has been flipped on its head. Their ninth studio album, “Defying Gravity,” is set for release July 7.

We recently sat down with bass player Billy Sheehan to discuss how their record label originally despised “Lean Into It,” the process that went into recording their new album, and how being crushed to death by those who adore you may not be the worst way to go.

TrunkSpace: When the band first got together, did you ever think you’d still be talking about Mr. Big almost 30 years later?
Sheehan: Well, I guess in the back of your mind, when you’re putting a band together you hope that it’s THE band and it’s going to stay together forever and your kids are going to hang out together, but it doesn’t always work out EXACTLY that way. But we came pretty close. We’re still here. We had a little break for a few years, but we were back together in 2009 just like we were when we started. I’m really pleased. I’m a fan of a lot of bands and a lot of music and I’m always disturbed when I hear that they don’t like each other and stay in separate hotels and have different tour buses and don’t speak to each other and they don’t sound check together. It’s like, “C’mon, if you’re up on stage having fun, that doesn’t happen off the stage?” (Laughter) Fortunately I’m not a good enough actor to make it to fake it like that, so we really do enjoy hanging. We have a good time together and performing on stage. We’re not faking it. When it looks like we’re having a good time, we actually are. So that lead to a longevity that we’re extending into 2017 and we’re still enjoying it. And in many ways, enjoying it even more.

TrunkSpace: So much has changed in the industry both in terms of how it operates and how people consume their music. Has that changed the experience for you guys?
Sheehan: Well, in some ways, some things haven’t changed much because we had an ethic early on that we were in touch with people. We’d get fan mail, we’d write back. I’d throw a couple of pics in an envelope and we’d always send it back. To this day I’ll get an email from somebody that says, “Back in 1984 you sent me a Talas bumper sticker.” (Laughter) It’s good that now that we have the Internet we can directly communicate with everybody. And generally on Facebook and via email and several different formats, I respond to everything I can. It’s an overwhelming task, but I go at it pretty heavily to make sure that I respond to people. So that part of the business has remained kind of the same for us, however of course, the record business as we know it is pretty much gone. There’s no big budgets. Fortunately for us we don’t need a big budget to make a record. We did this in six days. We can do the inexpensive version, which is almost better for us because we actually play, so going in and playing is always, for us, superior than piecing things together in different cities. That’s exemplified on this record, of course.

But yeah, things are different. I think that in some ways they’re actually better because the one thing that you can’t substitute is a live performance. You can fake it with a lot of digital trickery in the studio. You can pitch correct vocals. You can punch in and punch out and fix timing and fix errors easily after the fact if you need to. We don’t rely on that. Occasionally once in a while there’s a thing that we just have to change. There’s no two ways about it. That ONE note… there’s no way that can stand, so we’ve got to go in and fix it, but… it’s a microscopic amount. We rely on what we do live and because of that live performance, and because it can’t be downloaded, we’ll always have something that we can do that is alive and fresh. And being in a room of your peers and people of like mind as an audience member and seeing a band that you love, that experience… you can’t do that in virtual reality. You can’t do that as a download. You’ve got to be there and you’ve got to see it and smell it and feel it. That’s what we do. That’s what we’ve always done, so in spite of everything changing around us, fortunately it has kind of come back to a situation where the thing that we do best, in my humble opinion, or the thing that we love best rather… is the thing that’s really happening today in many ways.

TrunkSpace: During that time when the labels were in control by way of being in control of the money, did that mean that they also had more of a say over the creative? In the case of Mr. Big, did they try to squeeze themselves into what you were doing in terms of songwriting and recording?
Sheehan: We did have a lot of pressure. Fortunately for Mr. Big, our manager was a guy named Herbie Herbert. He was a legend in the music business. In the Woodstock movie, he’s seen moving Carlos Santana’s amps around. He’s one of the founding fathers of many aspects of the music business that we know of today, so he had a lot of power. When we presented “Lean Into It,” the album with “To Be with You” and “Green-Tinted” and all of those songs on it, we presented it to the label and they HATED it. They despised it. They were not going to release it. They wanted us to go back in and start over again. Fortunately we had our manager Herbie who went into the offices of Atlantic Records and got into a, literally, screaming shouting match with the then president, Mr. Doug Morris. He finally got them to agree to release it, but they said, “We’ll release it, but we’re not going to do anything. We’re not going to have anything to do with it. We’re not going to promote it. We’re not going to do anything. You’re on your own. Fuck you, get out of here.” (Laughter) And that’s how we launched “Lean Into It.” Fortunately our manager was powerful enough that he knew the right people to get us the right airplay and he got us on the right tours. Eventually he found the right promotional people to get “To Be with You” to be played on the radio and then BANG, we had a hit record. All due to our manager. Completely.

So that helped us in many ways, to keep a powerful manager. It helped us to keep that influence of the label off our backs. We’d do our best to cooperate because we liked our label. We liked Atlantic Records and I don’t dislike Doug Morris. He’s a very successful music guy. But fortunately we didn’t have a lot of pressure. It got to the level to where they would strongly suggest things, but we didn’t necessarily have to do it. We would do it sometimes to keep the peace to some degree, but fortunately we were in a great situation with our management.

TrunkSpace: Did the label want “Lean Into It” to be more like something else that was released around that time?
Sheehan: I don’t even know what their idea was, but I remember we were in the middle of doing interviews… we were doing interviews for the “Lean Into It” record, talking about the songs and all that good stuff. We had just delivered the record to the label and now the publicity was starting and all of a sudden I heard, “Billy, I’ve got to talk to you for a minute. They’re not going to release the record.” (Laughter) I go, “Whaaaat?!?!” (Laughter) So all hell broke lose and Herbie flew to New York and they literally had to call security over the argument that had ensued in the office. But in the end, we got our way. Thank you, Herbie!

TrunkSpace: So with “Defying Gravity” being your ninth album, what did you guys want to bring to it that you didn’t bring on the previous eight? Was there something new that you wanted to try or perhaps a different approach?
Sheehan: Well, what’s old is new again and the fact that we brought our original producer in, Kevin Elson. He did our first four records with us. We had our greatest success with him and amazing times from the beginning of the band, right on up to our greatest success. He’s a dear friend and a wonderful guy and a legendary producer. He grew up with and did the live sound for Lynyrd Skynyrd. He was on the plane with them that crashed, survived, and Herbie hired him instantly to do all of Journey’s live mixing and production of their records. He’s quite a storied and legendary guy with amazing ears and just a wonderful sweet man. So, the problem that it brought with it, as we started reminiscing about the stories back in the old days and laughing about it, we go, “Wait, we’ve got to shut up! We’ve only got six days to do this record! We better hurry up!” (Laughter)

So that was one thing that we wanted to bring into this record. We didn’t know how it would turn out, but I think we have a record that sonically is a little bit more like our earlier records, but still has a lot of the features that are modern in 2017. A good combination of the two. You never know when you combine things. When you’re making stew or soup and you put whatever in there, you’re never sure how it’s going to come out in the end, but we got lucky and I think what we had in the end represents a lot of the band sonically from our earlier days. There’s no subwoofer, deep, low end bass that was non-existent back in those days. Sonically it’s more in tune with a regular rock record as opposed to a digital feast or cornucopia using sonic trickery. It’s a rock record and I think that’s good for us to do. I think with Mr. Big, that’s the kind of band we are and that’s the kind of record that I think works best on us.

TrunkSpace: So in terms of the songwriting itself, how much time spans the creation of the tracks on the album? How far back do they go?
Sheehan: We went back a few months. We got together… myself, Pat, and Paul… and did what we initially did. We come up with some ideas and songs and send them up to Eric and see what he can add or subtract from them and then he sends them back down to us. We did that a bunch of times. But when we went into the studio, we didn’t have 11 complete songs, by any means. We had two or three that were pretty much done, but every time we tracked a new song we kind of had to map it out all new right then and there, which again like I said earlier, it was kind of good to have that pressure on you because you can take unlimited time on any project and when you do it just seems to drag on and lose it’s spirit and lose it’s soul and it’s fire. So, we could see each other playing and I’d look up and it would look like Pat’s going into the part where the chord changes, so I better change there too and by chance I’d get it right and it would work out. We arranged a lot on the fly and I think that was a beneficial thing also.

TrunkSpace: Did part of that arranging on the fly magic also play into having Kevin back with you guys?
Sheehan: Very much. He knows when to put his hands on and when to take his hands off. When things are going smooth and fine, he sits back and just makes sure everything is sounding right. When things slow down, he’ll say, “Okay, maybe this part and maybe not that and maybe this and not that.” He’s never dictatorial and always pleasant and easy and open to suggestion. It’s a real joy to work with someone like that. I’ve worked with producers that it’s just, “It’s my way or just leave!” and that’s not really conducive to an experience that you’ll want to reproduce on the road. (Laughter)

TrunkSpace: You’ve worked with many other artists over the course of your career, including David Lee Roth. In working with different people and on different projects, does each become it’s own unique experience or does it all start to feel like the same process?
Sheehan: It can be very different. Some aspects of it are the same. Basically you want to get your rythm section… the drums and the bass… that arrangement down and then you start to flesh our more guitar parts and vocal things. That’s kind of a basic. There’s some things that make sense. But everybody’s fingerprint, cornea, DNA… they’re all different and that adds up to a different personality and a different dynamic. When you get in a room full of four people and change one, the whole thing is different again. It doesn’t seem like it should be that way, but it really is quite different. As a fan I know every time I saw a band change members, it always threw me. Sometimes it was okay, but not very often. I always like the original chemistry that I fell in love with. So, similarly when you’re putting a record together in the studio, there’s a dynamic that happens with every person that’s involved. Even with people who are kind of on the outside and not really involved, they still have an influence on how it goes down. So it seems to me that, to your point, that it is very different is the more accurate one.

TrunkSpace: A lot of times people are not always comfortable with the mass exposure they receive when something like “Lean Into It” hits on such a massive, global scale. How did you view all of the attention at the time?
Sheehan: Well, we rolled around in it. We put our heads under the water and it was incredible. It was an amazing experience. And it happened all over the world too. We were number one in 14 countries. There were about four or five times where we were actually in danger… legitimate physical danger from crowds. We showed up in Singapore one time and they announced what flight we were coming in on and there were about 4,000 to 5,000 people at the airport and no one to get us. We were supposed to take cabs to our hotel, so we had to stay behind customs and then the police showed up and they tried to get us into cars. Kids were pushing and the police had billy clubs and pistols hit the floor as we ran. We managed to get there and there were kids camping out in the lobby. And this happened a bunch of times. We didn’t want to see anyone get hurt, so that was a concern of ours, but I guess if you’re going to die, dying being crushed by people who love you would not be the worst way to go. (Laughter)

After amassing thousands of fans worldwide and releasing five studio albums, Louisville’s Coliseum decided to call it quits in 2015. Singer and guitarist Ryan Patterson stepped away from the band but not music itself, quickly beginning to write material that would become the foundation for his new solo project, Fotocrime. Patterson was hoping that his latest endeavor in music would be a complete departure from the experiences of his previous band, and so he went to work, eventually entering the studio to record “Always Hell,” his debut EP.

We recently sat down with Patterson to discuss how Fotocrime is the best representation of him as a songwriting in the moment, why he wanted to change the way he was used to singing, and how going solo can sometimes be a lonely undertaking.

TrunkSpace: Having spent so much time in a band atmosphere and having an established fanbase by way of that band, was it a daunting task to, in a way, be starting over with your latest project Fotocrime?
Patterson: Certainly. It was a big challenge that I was, wanting to accomplish myself, creating a record entirely on my own and doing something without that safety net of a band and with band members. Of course now I have people who are playing with me live, but yeah, it’s exciting and scary. It’s a big leap of faith and it’s nerve racking, but it’s cool because there’s a lot of hopefulness and a lot of that feeling of that you don’t know what’s coming next and it could be really great or it could all fall apart. But, it was time for me to do that. Writing wasn’t exactly entirely different from how I’ve written in my previous band, but I wanted to just challenge myself and see what I could accomplish, which is something I always want to do with music. And so for this, to try to make this new leap and just see what happened, it was exciting for sure.

TrunkSpace: You mentioned how the songwriting process was not much different from the way you were used to working, but is the result the best representation of you as a songwriter to date?
Patterson: I think it’s the best representation of the moment, and I think that’s the goal with anything that you do. I think anything that I’ve ever done, especially within the last seven years or so, is accurately representing me at the moment. Coliseum did that certainly and other side projects I do, if it’s something I’ve written or if it’s my playing… I think it always represents me. Even years ago in early Coliseum days or when I was doing bands when I was younger, it was certainly a snapshot of the moment and that’s what you want with recording and writing. I think with Coliseum, starting with our third album “House with a Curse” and onward, I think that was when it really represented me more fully than anything I had done because I would try to take leaps forward in terms of songwriting and how I approached it and how it represented me. I tried to look more in the big picture and long term and how things were being represented. So with Fotocrime, certainly it’s the purest distillation of self of anything that I’ve done because no one else other than J. Robbins who produced it was involved or even heard it or… anything. It’s very unique in that way and I’ll probably keep using the word exciting, but… it’s exciting and scary in that way.

I also don’t think that it casts a shadow negatively on anything else I’ve done in the past. It’s just a separate thing and of this moment just as that was of that moment.

TrunkSpace: Oftentimes a fanbase does not want to see or hear their favorite artist grow beyond a particular sound. Is the hope that Coliseum fans will follow you to Fotocrime or do you expect to start a new fanbase?
Patterson: Some of both I hope. I hope that people who have followed my music will continue to follow it, but of course I hope to reach new people. With Coliseum I think it was hard for us to be pinned down. We changed a lot over the course of 12 years… a lot of evolution and a lot of different things. People that might have been fans of our early work, weren’t fans of our later work, or, some knew our later records but didn’t know our early stuff at all. One thing I was happy to do, as hard as it was to say goodbye to something I worked on for so long and had represented me for so long, is that I was happy to let the history and some of the baggage of being in a long term band go. I was really happy to start fresh. I’m happy to say that that is everything that I have done, but this, Fotocrime, is brand new. It can go wherever it wants to go and it doesn’t have all of this history that can be a great asset and also a great hindrance.

TrunkSpace: Is part of that the fact that there are less creative constraints when you don’t need to use the rest of a band as a springboard for every idea that comes to you? And, on top of that, you aren’t having to work on a schedule that works for everybody and you can just write when you feel inspired?
Patterson: Yeah. That’s definitely a big bonus with working on your own, but it’s also difficult. Sometimes when there isn’t a rigid schedule, it’s hard to maybe get yourself into that mindset if there’s not a practice planned. I had a lot of false starts with trying to get this going, but once I did, it went really well.

It’s interesting. I don’t want it to be lonely, you know? (Laughter) I’m trying to figure out how to make that work. I did all of this on my own and there’s a lot of material that’s unreleased that will be released at some point… that was recorded at the same time as this EP. Now I have people playing with me for the live shows, so I’m unsure how things will develop and if I’ll continue to do everything on my own when recording or if we’ll write and record together. That kind of remains to be seen, but… I don’t want it to be an entirely solitary endeavor.

I knew I would never play it alone. I just didn’t think that would be visually appealing enough for this kind of music, but… I don’t know. We’ll just see how it goes. When I went to record the record, it wasn’t me alone. I was working with J. Robbins who was a producing/collaborator for many, many years. He’s someone I feel extremely comfortable with and someone who makes me feel safe and confident when recording. He has a great assistant named Matt who worked on the record with us. I was staying at J.’s house with his family so, I felt like I was kind of going into a family environment to make the record itself and now that there are people playing with me… one is Nick from the band Young Widows that I’ve been really close with for many, many years and a woman named Shelly who I’ve known for a long time… so it’s nice to feel comfortable in these situations but still have that ability to be standing on your own in the way that you want to, but be surrounded by great people that are helping you out and apart of it at the same time. Hopefully it’s going to have all of the benefits of being in a band, but none of the drawbacks. (Laughter)

TrunkSpace: Was there anything within the recording process that you wanted to try that you hadn’t attempted in the past in any of your previous projects?
Patterson: So much of Fotocrime is new. All drum machine and program drums, which I’ve only done with demos before. I’ve been writing demos for quite a long time using that, but I’ve never released anything with those type of drums. I knew a lot of things that I listened to, a lot of the classic bands who are really important to me, used a lot of programming and early drum machines. So I knew I could do it and it was appealing. There’s a lot of synthesizer… analog synth and digital synth. A lot of arpeggiating and step sequences and sequenced synth stuff, which I had done a tiny bit of in Coliseum, but not to this extent. So pretty much everything.

The way I’m singing… trying to sing in a different register and find a different voice than Coliseum so it doesn’t sound like the same thing. I was really hoping for everything to be different. I think “Always Hell,” which is the first song we’ve released, is probably the most similar to Coliseum of anything that I’ve done so far with Fotocrime. That was by design so that we would have something to kind of bridge the gap, but other than that, it’s really outside of my… I wouldn’t say comfort zone, but outside of what I’ve done before.

TrunkSpace: How did you go about retraining yourself to sing in a new register?
Patterson: In terms of the melody I wanted to hear. The guitar tuning isn’t as low as it was with Coliseum. I think there was a level of aggression with the stuff I was doing before that even at our most melodic, and we got pretty melodic, there was still kind of a pummeling aspect to the music that was just kind of inherent in that band. So I am trying to find a place where I don’t have to push as hard and I can relax. And certainly some of it is just finding the songs that work. I wrote a lot of material when I first started writing for this that just wasn’t working. My voice wasn’t happening the way that I wanted it to. I wrote a lot of complete songs that as I started to get to the vocal point, it just wasn’t what I wanted, so I threw them out.

I’m not a person who knows exactly what key works best for me or what my exact vocal range is, but I was just trying to find something that feels more natural and that I’m not reaching for something, which is probably something I feel like I’ve always done as long as I’ve been singing… even from when I was a kid and singing in my band’s in high school. I’ve always kind of been reaching for something. Not necessarily in terms of pitch, but in terms of what I wanted my voice to do and was never able to pull it off. I absolutely feel the most comfortable I ever have with where my voice is with the Fotocrime material.