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[00:00:12] The older I'm getting, the more prevalent it is. You know, these like manic episodes and stuff like that. And it's been very interesting learning about it. And, you know, I was just, I was so scared to know. And then once I knew, I was like, okay, this is what's happening to my brain when I'm like being creative.
[00:00:43] Or it usually only happens when I'm being creative or like, it happens when I play go on tour, you know, like, it's just a bunch of like serotonin, endorphins, adrenaline happening. And it's so hard to shut off. And then I just burn myself into the ground, you know,
[00:01:03] Obviously, I have a lot of artists friends. So I've known a lot of people who have, who have gone through this. And it seems to manifest itself differently for different people. Like I knew one guy who basically had like religious mania, when he would go through it. How does it? How does it manifest itself for you?
[00:01:22] Um, it's a complete like, lack of empathy. And you just like block out what other people want and lock out everything. And I'm like, in some kind of weird zone where it just it almost feels like I'm high. You know, like, and um, I just, my output on like, what I'm doing is so
[00:01:51] Much, but I just, I don't sleep when it happens. And that's like, kind of the biggest problem, because I end up going into some kind of form of psychosis. And by like, day three, I'm like, you know, there's been moments where I've like, kind of came to like, with just like, pants on no shoes, no shirt, like outside.
[00:02:17] You effectively blacked out.
[00:02:19] Yeah. Yeah. Um, I think during, you know, my time, like drugs and alcohol were a way to kind of maintain it, you know, like, I would get so drunk or so fucked up that it would help in, in like, quote unquote, help, you know, for me to crash. Um, but, you know, that's just not sustainable.
[00:02:47] No, no. Yeah. I've found that too, as I've gotten older, you know, it's like your body just reacts in, in different ways. You know, I, I was going through some health stuff for earlier and I got some, I got some CAT scans done. And let's just say, I'm glad I stopped drinking when I did.
[00:03:04] Yeah.
[00:03:05] Yeah.
[00:03:05] Yeah.
[00:03:05] Anything, anything that's bad in there would be so much worse if I was still drinking whiskey, you know, a couple times a week.
[00:03:12] Yeah. Yeah. It's tough. It's, it's a tough, it's just, it really just, I mean, honestly, it just really started coming to fruition, you know, the older I got, like I started just noticing it more, you know, and you can't, you can't beat time, you know, like it just happens. And you got to learn how to adapt with it. You know?
[00:03:35] There's just like a certain energy and a certain creative energy that you have in your twenties. Maybe it was easy to kind of mistake this for some form of that.
[00:03:45] No, a hundred percent. It's, it's, it's just a lot like, it, it, it felt more like, yeah, like what you're saying. It's just like, I was like in the zone being creative, you know, like this is, this is who I am, you know, it's just really hard to maintain.
[00:04:09] And then there's just the whole thing of like, you know, okay, is this how I write music? Is this like a necessary part of it? You know, I mean, there's just that whole thing.
[00:04:25] And that's something that artists have struggled with for as long as psych meds have been available. You know, I've, I'll admit that like I've been on antidepressants and anti anxieties over the years and I've had bad experiences with them and I'm completely sympathetic to the idea that some forms of medication can blunt your creativity.
[00:04:52] Yeah. The way I started looking at it is, well, I just rather write shittier songs.
[00:05:03] Honestly, I just rather write shittier songs and have some kind of some form of normalcy, you know, in my life because I noticed it doesn't really happen as much if I'm really strict on routine.
[00:05:18] If I'm like, okay, I wake up at this time and do my journal, I work out, I meditate.
[00:05:25] When I write music, I take very strict breaks, you know, like I have to have like some kind of like it has to be almost like a military routine.
[00:05:36] And somehow that really does help me, but it's kind of impossible to do that when I'm on the road so much.
[00:05:43] I relate to all of that. I should, I really need to get back into meditation. It was one of those things like I started, I recently went to my first in-person yoga class and these are the sorts of things.
[00:05:55] I mean, you're from, you're from Hawaii, you know, you're in California now. I'm, I'm from Northern California. I went to school in Santa Cruz.
[00:06:01] I'm very in tune with the like hippie lifestyle and a lot of those things, but you know, I, there was some sort of, there's still something in myself that I felt like I had to get over in order to really kind of engage with something like yoga.
[00:06:15] Yeah, no, I get that.
[00:06:18] It's some hippie dippy bullshit. That's what it is.
[00:06:20] It is. It is for sure. It is for sure. But it's, but at the same time, it's like, I, and I don't know, I like maybe this is maybe an under discussed part of getting older, especially as somebody who, you know, was very into punk music.
[00:06:35] Um, is, is this idea of, um, I know in therapy they call it, um, core beliefs, you know, these things that like you've held onto your, your entire life and never really questioned.
[00:06:47] And that's an important part of getting older is questioning why you continue to do the things you do.
[00:06:54] Yeah. You get stuck in your patterns. It's real easy. It's real easy.
[00:07:00] But it's not to say that it doesn't work. Like, you know, I go to yoga, I do yoga. I like that hippie dippy bullshit. You know what I mean? Like it's, it works, you know?
[00:07:10] And I started just thinking about it like it's for me, it kind of started with journaling. Um, if it's going to make me 1% better, I'm that's, that's 1% better. You know what I mean?
[00:07:26] Like it's really hard to kind of gauge everything, but yeah.
[00:07:32] Granted, this is a lesson that we, we all, we either learn or face the consequences, but that you've had to learn a couple of times that it's not first that it's not worth sacrificing your body.
[00:07:43] And at second, it's not worth sacrificing your mind just for the sake of creativity.
[00:07:51] Yeah. Yeah. It's, it's a tough one. Cause it's just, I feel so at home and I feel like I'm in such a like flow state when I'm writing music, you know?
[00:08:06] Like it's, it's one of those things where it's like I start and then next thing, you know, it's two hours, three hours later.
[00:08:12] I'm just like, Oh shit. I have like a song, you know? Um, that's not to say it's that that song is finished. It's just like, I call them drafts.
[00:08:20] Like I just do, I do so many demos before the actual recording. You just gotta, you gotta try it.
[00:08:30] Honestly, like I didn't know it was a real problem. And the way that I was like thinking about it is the way I was thinking about it is just like, Oh, this is just who I am.
[00:08:39] This is, I'm going to go through these ups and downs, really high highs, really low lows. Um, well then I read like, um, Bruce Springsteen's autobiography and he talks about taking meds and I'm like, Oh, maybe this is, there is something to this, you know?
[00:08:58] If it's good enough for the boss, it's good enough for me.
[00:08:59] Yeah, exactly. But, uh, yeah, so it's, it's been quite a journey. I still haven't figured out the, the meds yet. Um, it's pretty hard to do when I'm on the road, uh, this much because I don't have like a blocked out time of like two, three months to this one's not working.
[00:09:22] This one's experiment. Yeah. Cause it is an experiment. Like I tried it earlier this year and it was just, I was, it just tweaked me out a little bit. Just tripped me out.
[00:09:31] I wonder if you had this, I, I, I was, um, obviously not equivalent, but I was, I was diagnosed with OCD, uh, last year.
[00:09:39] Yeah.
[00:09:39] It's that, it's that, that scene in the movie where they like flashback to all of the earlier scenes, like the usual suspects or something. Like suddenly they all make sense.
[00:09:48] Yeah.
[00:09:49] You know what I mean? It's like, where it's just like, Oh, obviously this doesn't excuse, this doesn't excuse anything that, that I've done. Um, but man, like it's made it, it's giving me the tools to be able to kind of manage that going forward. And this really does explain a lot about what I thought was just my personality.
[00:10:09] Yeah. It's crazy. It's crazy when you, when you figure them out, you know, or just not figure it out, but when you find out about it,
[00:10:18] I think figure it out is the perfect way to describe it. Honestly, like that's totally, I think that's totally on point because it's like this, um, it's like this missing puzzle piece that you hadn't had earlier.
[00:10:30] Yeah. And just identifying and knowing it is half the battle right there.
[00:10:34] This album's coming out. Do you feel that all of this has had a marked impact on your music making for better or worse?
[00:10:46] Um, yeah, you know, the thing was, is that, you know, the past couple of years during, during the pandemic and then a couple of years after the pandemic, I started writing for other people, you know, like doing a bunch of co-writes and that was really fun and really easy.
[00:11:07] It took a lot of pressure off of what I make, you know, it's just, I'm able to just like, blah, here's, here's a hook. Here's some lyrics. Here's a riff or whatever.
[00:11:17] And then when it came time to like, do, um, the Fiddler record, start writing the Fiddler record, I was like, kind of scared to drop in on the wave because I didn't want to go manic.
[00:11:36] So it was like this, the wave being the process of making a record.
[00:11:41] Yeah. And I didn't realize I was doing that, you know, like I would write a bunch of songs, keep writing, keep writing. But then I just couldn't get into the wave because I was scared.
[00:11:55] Like I can feel it when it comes on, you know? So once I was like, and that's kind of when I started going into therapy. Like I went, I started going to therapy to figure this out. Like I was like, Hey, I was like, help me write songs.
[00:12:16] It's not even like I was trying to figure out my like mental health. It was like, I got to put a new album out at some point.
[00:12:22] Yeah. Yeah. And, um, we kind of discovered through like trial and error is like, like I had this like kind of wall that was like, I didn't want to drop in into this manic state, you know? Um, so then I just started doing it and just trying to maintain the manicness and the mania. Um, and I just had to deal with it.
[00:12:47] You know, I, I kind of discovered the drafts way for me. Like it helps me maintain like my sanity a little bit where I can do a demo and then just wait a day, do another demo of it, wait another day, do another demo, you know?
[00:13:08] So that helped me kind of like not go full on, you know, and probably not doing meth and heroin probably helped.
[00:13:19] Couldn't hurt. Yeah. It couldn't hurt. I was under the impression that that was something that had happened earlier, but is that a relatively recent occurrence getting just totally sober?
[00:13:29] Um, it's been kind of a journey, you know, like I got sober when I was 27 and, um, I stayed sober, like full on sober for like five years or so four or five years.
[00:13:44] And then just started dipping back in drinking, blah, blah, blah. And then during the pandemic, I kind of went a little cuckoo bananas. Um, and, uh, recently it's just been like, I've been really good or I've been a lot better at like every time I do kind of have a relapse, which I haven't done heroin or meth in like 10 years or something, you know, but congratulations.
[00:14:11] Thank you. But there was like, you know, and during the pandemic there was pills and shit like that I got into and, um, psychedelics and shit. So now it's just been like, I've been pretty strict about like, okay, if I fall off, I just need to get back on.
[00:14:29] Psychedelics are an interesting one. This is like brain chemistry and all sorts of different things in it and it varies from person to person. But do you find that even if you're, I don't know, hypothetically, let's say you just
[00:14:41] decide to do like mushrooms one week that that's going to completely fuck with your sobriety.
[00:14:47] No, I don't think so at all. I'm not like, you know, sobriety to me is like, there's like a lot of lines that people draw, you know, where it's like, can't do this, can't do that, can't do this. To me, it's just like, they have to, I mean, for that's just for some people. That's better.
[00:15:04] A hundred percent. I have a friend that he has a beer and then he fucking one week later, he's like shooting dope and smoking crack. And it's just like, I've never seen somebody go down that fast. You know, um, some people it happens to, uh, for me, it's more of like a gradual thing. So, you know, yeah.
[00:15:25] But heroin's not something you could just dip it, dip it and dip it out of.
[00:15:29] No, you can't do that casually. Can't shoot dope like a gentleman.
[00:15:33] Did the therapist have any insights specific to songwriting?
[00:15:41] Not really, not like specifically, like he works, this guy works with like, um, a couple creative people. Like, I think they're like screenwriters, you know what I'm saying? Like screenplays and stuff like that.
[00:15:56] You don't have the Metallica guy.
[00:15:58] No, no, he's not in the studio.
[00:16:00] Yeah. But, uh, it's not like it wasn't like a, you know, guru guy or something like that. Like a rock therapist.
[00:16:14] Um, such a good racket.
[00:16:16] Yeah, I know. I got to get into it.
[00:16:18] It's like couples therapy for bands, but it, but it sounds like, I don't know, like I know, I know, you know, Elvis left not long ago, but it sounds like you're all still really tight after all these years.
[00:16:30] Yeah. It's, you know, it's a crazy lifestyle we live. It's a, it's, this is like, this is a carnival. We're carnies, you know what I mean? Like we're a rock band that makes money on the road, you know, from t-shirts.
[00:16:52] And, um, I think, I mean, I, I get it. It's like, you know, we got to stay home for a little bit during 2020 and muscling up the energy to go back out on the road, you know, like we've all turned, we're all in our thirties right now.
[00:17:11] And it's like spent the whole twenties. Elvis was 19 years old. Uh, when we started Fiddler.
[00:17:22] Oh, you know, he and his brother were like significantly younger when they just started playing music in front of people.
[00:17:28] Yeah. A hundred percent. They're lifers. So yeah, it's just, it's, it's, I get it. It's, it's like I said, it's like, it's not like we make money from, from anything outside of playing show.
[00:17:47] And the way we can make money on the road is you play a lot of shows, you know, and it's not that much money. So it comes a point where it's like, it's like that thing. It's like you sacrifice your life, you know, like it, it's weird. Cause it's, you, you go out on the road, you make all these friends, but you only get to see them like once every year.
[00:18:14] And then you come back home and then you've had to nurture your friendships here, but you just haven't, you know, because you're not here. It's a tough, it's a tough way.
[00:18:22] Now that you have to a certain extent, the benefit of hindsight, do you feel like your mania may have made you a difficult person to be in a band with?
[00:18:31] Oh, I'm a horrible person to be in a band with.
[00:18:36] Mania or not. Yeah.
[00:18:37] I'm a horrible person.
[00:18:38] Well, I know, you know, it's funny. Like I, I, first of all, I know this was 10 years ago. First of all, congratulations on getting a Nardwar interview, which, you know, to me, that's like getting sort of the peak of the industry.
[00:18:49] But you discussed, I was watching that earlier today. And in that conversation, uh, you discussed the whole, like it, well, now I'm sure you can reflect on real.
[00:19:00] This was horrible habit of writing people's phone numbers on your AM.
[00:19:04] Oh God, that was horrible.
[00:19:07] It was funny.
[00:19:08] It started out as funny.
[00:19:10] Yeah.
[00:19:10] It started out as being funny, but then, you know, I just didn't realize how much, like the bigger we got, the more people would be at the shows and do like call that number.
[00:19:24] But then on top of that, what I didn't realize is that like everything was being filmed.
[00:19:30] A lot of things were being filmed and they were getting uploaded to YouTube and that's just like reach beyond, you know?
[00:19:37] So then they're getting calls from people that weren't even at the show. They just see the phone number.
[00:19:42] Yeah.
[00:19:44] It was just like a fun thing to keep yourself entertained on tour.
[00:19:47] Yeah.
[00:19:48] Yeah.
[00:19:49] I didn't like, and, and during that time, like I was so like broke that I just had like boost mobile phones, you know?
[00:19:56] And like burners basically.
[00:19:58] Yeah.
[00:19:59] So I was like the last one to have like an iPhone, um, in my friend group.
[00:20:04] And I didn't realize like how important a phone number was because of my phone number would change like every like six months.
[00:20:11] God damn.
[00:20:12] You were like everything short of actually selling the drugs.
[00:20:16] You were a drug dealer basically.
[00:20:17] It sounds like in terms of this idea of like, uh, I know it's, it's just always sounds corny coming out of my mouth, but this idea of mindfulness and the difficulty, I mean, you know, everybody knows that being on tour in a band is hard.
[00:20:32] It's, it's hard on, you know, you obviously like you're not touring Rolling Stones, uh, with their like snooker machines level.
[00:20:41] But how, how do you, how do you practice mindfulness on the road?
[00:20:47] It's really fucking hard.
[00:20:50] Just any moment you have, you know, it's pretty tough on the road to be honest, especially just being in close quarters with each other.
[00:21:01] But, you know, every now and then I find my ways, uh, we, especially if we're doing like a van tour with hotel rooms, we try to get like hotel rooms that are hotels that have like gyms in them.
[00:21:12] And that really helps just being able to go to a gym and just like get on a Peloton or whatever it is, you know?
[00:21:20] Um, but most of my mindfulness stuff comes from like, I, I just, I try to just do my journal as much as possible stream of consciousness writing or like, um, you know, mantras and shit like that.
[00:21:40] Um, um, motivational writing shit.
[00:21:44] And then I try to do these like five minute meditations when I'm like tripping out, you know?
[00:21:52] Um, and it's crazy when you're tripping out, how long five minutes.
[00:21:56] This is going to sound obvious, but I found breathing just like really focusing on your breathing is huge when trying to really kind of, you know, gather yourself.
[00:22:06] Yeah.
[00:22:07] Breathing.
[00:22:08] I just do this thing where I'm just like, I try to just.
[00:22:13] Yeah.
[00:22:13] Like breathing.
[00:22:14] It's just, I try to like feel my, myself breathing through my nose.
[00:22:17] I'm like, okay, I'm breathing through my nose.
[00:22:18] And, and if I can do that for five minutes, like I can feel my brain just rest a little bit.
[00:22:25] That's like a little bit of a nap.
[00:22:27] A mind nap.
[00:22:28] I think it's important to like doing what you do.
[00:22:32] And I wonder if the pandemic actually helps this in a way of being off the road for a while.
[00:22:39] Um, you know, really being able to recognize like how fucking lucky you are to actually as grueling as it can be just how lucky you are to like still be able to do this after all these years.
[00:22:53] A hundred percent that, that was, that was the toughest part is just not being able to tour, you know, like I write songs to play shows, you know, like that's the drug for me is playing the shows.
[00:23:09] It's just the crazy adrenaline and it's just fun, you know?
[00:23:15] Um, but yeah, it's definitely a wild one.
[00:23:20] I, I'm very blessed to do this a hundred, like very blessed to do this and I'm not like complaining about it or anything like that.
[00:23:29] It's like, you know, the grass is greener kind of mentality.
[00:23:32] Um, probably going to be playing shows for the rest of my life.
[00:23:36] This is what I love to do.
[00:23:40] Um, maintaining it is, you know, it's the turtle that wins the race here.
[00:23:44] I like your metaphors.
[00:23:46] Um, the surfing one, especially I, you know, I could never, I could never quite figure out how to do it, but I like surfing metaphors in general.
[00:23:54] And, and the one that you gave earlier makes a lot of sense in terms of, it's such an important part to just know when, when to drop in and, and to know like which waves are worth.
[00:24:09] Writing.
[00:24:10] Yeah, that's it.
[00:24:12] It, it started with like my dad's a surfboard shaper.
[00:24:15] So I grew up surfing and, um, he would always say is like, you never remember a wave.
[00:24:22] And that tripped me out because he's totally right.
[00:24:25] Like if I catch a wave, I don't remember the things I do on the wave or anything like that.
[00:24:32] It's like an instant flow state, you know?
[00:24:35] Um, and then it's done and you're like, Whoa, you know?
[00:24:38] And that to me is like writing a song or playing a show is just like an instant kind of flow state jump dropping in on the wave, you know?
[00:24:50] But you gotta wipe out.
[00:24:51] You're going to wipe out sometimes.
[00:24:52] That's life, man.
[00:24:53] Hopefully, um, hopefully like, hopefully you make it out the other side.
[00:24:58] Um, how do you, you know, go sort of with all these changes that you're making in your life?
[00:25:07] Like from a creative standpoint, is it harder to enter that flow state?
[00:25:16] Um, not anymore.
[00:25:18] It was like a couple of years ago.
[00:25:20] It was like just trying to figure out how to do it again.
[00:25:31] It's like I said, it's like you gotta know when to, you gotta, you gotta find the good wave, you know?
[00:25:38] Yeah.
[00:25:39] Um, and you just gotta listen to your gut on that.
[00:25:42] You know, if, if sometimes I'll wake up in the middle of the night and be like, Oh shit, I got this like little hook in my head and I just gotta be like, okay, I gotta go record this right now.
[00:25:51] You know?
[00:25:54] And I used to like, I used to always do that, but then I used to listen back and be like, Oh, this is a bad idea.
[00:26:00] Or I would make a demo and the demo would sound bad and I would just be like, No, this is bad.
[00:26:04] Throw it away.
[00:26:04] It's like, that's when I started just doing like these drafts where I'm just like, okay, this is the first demo and then I'll play it on the piano and make a demo of it on the piano or play it on the electric guitar.
[00:26:16] Cause most of my songs start off with either like acoustic guitar or ukulele.
[00:26:20] I played, I write a lot on the ukulele and I just kind of have to figure out how to do it.
[00:26:29] And by the time we get it, the songs kind of finished, we get into the rehearsal space, the kind of.
[00:26:37] Mantra when we're doing it is like, how do we make this go off live?
[00:26:41] Um, that's kind of like our, our metric is like in the studio, you're thinking about how it's going to play on stage.
[00:26:49] Yeah.
[00:26:50] That's kind of the baseline, you know, of it.
[00:26:54] The structure or the foundation.
[00:26:56] And then we just add stuff on top of it.
[00:26:58] That's necessary.
[00:27:00] Most of it's just taking stuff out.
[00:27:02] That's, that's usually the big part is just like being like, okay, now take this part out, take this part out, take this part out.
[00:27:08] The saying is basically writing is editing.
[00:27:11] Yeah.
[00:27:12] Which, which is true.
[00:27:14] Um, you know, it's funny, it's funny you mentioned the ukulele.
[00:27:17] I know that's kind of like your, your national, your national instrument.
[00:27:21] Um, but I, yeah, I, you know, I've, I've never been very musical.
[00:27:30] Obviously I like music, but you know, I played guitar for years.
[00:27:34] I never really got anywhere.
[00:27:35] And then during the pandemic, I, I got a ukulele and I just, I don't know.
[00:27:43] There's something about just playing a song that just like, I feel like I'm exercising a muscle that's atrophied, you know, that it's tapping into.
[00:27:54] Like I write all day, but I write prose all day and this is just tapping into this other part of my brain that I think feeds everything creative that's in there.
[00:28:06] Yeah.
[00:28:07] And it's a muscle.
[00:28:09] It is muscle.
[00:28:10] You just got to keep working it out.
[00:28:12] You know?
[00:28:13] I mean, it's just a classic thing.
[00:28:17] You know, my, my girlfriend works a lot with Weezer and, uh, rivers was telling me like, I guess Island in the sun was number 74 in a list of a hundred demos or something.
[00:28:35] You know what I mean?
[00:28:36] Like he writes so much and that doesn't surprise me at all.
[00:28:39] Like I didn't know that, but I'm also not surprised at all.
[00:28:41] And it's just, it's kind of like the more you do it, the better you get at it.
[00:28:47] You know?
[00:28:49] It's not like I can just like, all right, we got to write an album.
[00:28:53] Here's 13 songs.
[00:28:54] No, there's like 50 songs.
[00:28:56] You know?
[00:28:57] And then you just kind of dwindle down to like, okay, you know, which ones are the best and which ones like I started like fitting ideas into each other.
[00:29:07] It's like, oh wait, that chorus and this thing would be a good verse in this thing.
[00:29:11] That's a good problem to have.
[00:29:13] It's much better to have too many songs than too few songs.
[00:29:16] True.
[00:29:17] Very true.
[00:29:18] The thing about, the thing about surfing, a thing about surfing, right?
[00:29:22] Surfing as a metaphor is like, you can't, you can't make a wave.
[00:29:26] You can't force a wave.
[00:29:29] But when we're talking about flow state, when we're talking about the creative process, like I'm sure there are days where you feel like, like you need to just kind of woodshop or whatever.
[00:29:39] Is there, can you kind of like at least jumpstart the creative process?
[00:30:12] Yeah.
[00:30:42] Inspiration all the time.
[00:30:43] If you buy gym membership or if you get like a Fitbit or whatever, you're going to go to the gym.
[00:30:50] If you buy a new guitar pedal, you're probably going to play guitar.
[00:30:55] You know, like.
[00:30:57] You'd be surprised.
[00:30:58] Yeah, I know.
[00:30:59] A hundred percent.
[00:31:00] I say that, but then I'm like, I don't know.
[00:31:02] I have a thousand guitar pedals.
[00:31:03] But I'll, I'll just, if I'm not feeling creative, like if I'm not like, oh, I need to write a song.
[00:31:11] I'll just do other things that I know will help it.
[00:31:13] Reading, reading helps a lot.
[00:31:17] Also just like.
[00:31:20] Honestly, a big one too was like getting off of social media.
[00:31:24] I started noticing like anytime I was bored and walking around or waiting for something, I would like pull out my phone and just fucking swipe out, you know?
[00:31:38] And once I stopped doing that, like I started noticing, like I started thinking about ideas and songs more, you know?
[00:31:45] You said something along the lines of drugs and alcohol being a good source of inspiration.
[00:31:50] What did you mean by that?
[00:31:53] It's just.
[00:31:55] Like the things you get into or.
[00:31:57] Yeah, just the stories that come out, you know, the people that you're with, the crazy shit people say, the crazy shit you say.
[00:32:06] It's just not very sustainable.
[00:32:10] After a while, you know.
[00:32:12] And when you find yourself in a place where you're like intentionally getting into trouble to get a song, that is not healthy.
[00:32:19] That's a bad pattern to get.
[00:32:21] That's a really hard pattern to get out of, you know?
[00:32:24] Um, and it's almost like a subconscious pattern that happens.
[00:32:30] You just, it hap, you, you create drama in your life, you know, to do that.
[00:32:36] It's, it's crazy.
[00:32:37] But it strikes me that you, even from like the earliest days of the band, that you've never had an issue being open on records that you like.
[00:32:47] I mean, you, you know, you, you can write some pretty intimate stuff.
[00:32:51] Yeah.
[00:32:52] Yeah.
[00:32:52] Just, it all comes from a place of just, you know, just how I'm feeling and learning how to word it in a way or in the way that I word it, you know?
[00:33:08] Um, like, I also like, like growing up in Hawaii, like my, my length, like my grammar and, and my, uh, English wasn't that great.
[00:33:22] You know, my King's English, like we grew up speaking pigeon and it's just a different kind of way of talking.
[00:33:29] So a lot of my, like I started noticing and my band members actually pointed it out.
[00:33:34] It's like the, the verb and the noun is switched.
[00:33:37] It doesn't make sense, but somehow it makes sense.
[00:33:39] You know, like that's like some Yoda shit.
[00:33:42] Yeah.
[00:33:44] Maybe a fucking drunk ass tweak out Yoda, especially like, you know, mental health, mental health is a scary thing.
[00:33:52] Is that it?
[00:33:53] What is that a scary thing to sing about?
[00:33:59] Not really.
[00:34:01] Like for me, the what's scary to sing about bar is set.
[00:34:07] So like low.
[00:34:11] Wait, low or high?
[00:34:12] Well, pretty low for me because I've just been singing about like my addiction and my, my troubles for, I mean, since I was, since the band started, you know, like even, you know, with our first record, like the first record was never like promoting getting fucked up.
[00:34:33] You know, like it's those lyrics are, if you read the lyrics, they're like, Ooh, this is kind of dark, you know?
[00:34:40] So, um, they all start, like, I, you know, I grew up listening to a lot of like Elliot Smith and kind of sad music.
[00:34:49] Like my, my era was like more like that indie era of getting into music or.
[00:34:56] Like Jason Molina.
[00:34:57] Yeah.
[00:34:58] Uh, like, um, like broken social scene or, you know, uh, I don't know that, that kind of sublime is an interesting one.
[00:35:09] You know, it's funny.
[00:35:10] Like I, I had this thing recently where I'm like, I'm like, you know what?
[00:35:15] I haven't listened to like 40 ounces of freedom for a long time.
[00:35:18] I'm going to go back and listen to it.
[00:35:20] And it's like a lot, like, I think the songs are great, but man, that subject matter does not hold up.
[00:35:30] Yeah.
[00:35:30] Right.
[00:35:30] They were a big one for you.
[00:35:32] Yeah.
[00:35:33] I mean, his, his lyrics are just unbelievable.
[00:35:37] And like, talk about like, like just a ball of creativity and just like a, like an amazing singer.
[00:35:48] Um, and the production is crazy.
[00:35:51] It's, it's some of the like craziest production.
[00:35:55] Um, but yeah, sublime was a big one for me.
[00:35:58] In what sense?
[00:35:59] Like I know like 40 ounces has a lot of like samples on it, but what's so, you know,
[00:36:03] the, the, the, I mean like Robin in the hood, he, it was just him in like with that eight track and just like the crazy, you know,
[00:36:12] it's like, it's art.
[00:36:13] That's just like, blah, free form art right there.
[00:36:15] You know, you know, and the more you dive into the other stuff, you know, like even Santeria,
[00:36:23] I just like read that Santeria was like a part of a seven hour jam, you know?
[00:36:27] And it was just like a piece of it and they pieced it together.
[00:36:31] Like it's, it's very creative how they did it.
[00:36:35] Um, you know,
[00:36:36] it's wild to extract something from a seven hour jam and have it be like one of your biggest hits.
[00:36:42] Yeah.
[00:36:43] To be like a huge pop song.
[00:36:44] Yeah.
[00:36:45] Yeah.
[00:36:45] That's pretty wild.
[00:36:48] Um, so yeah, it's, I, I, I mean like I, I have a sublime tattoo.
[00:36:54] Like I, I'm such a big sublime fan just, and also being from Hawaii, it's like, you know,
[00:37:00] we, we, the only way to fucking find out music was through surf and skate videos.
[00:37:06] No VHS is back then, you know?
[00:37:08] And it's like, they were on everything.
[00:37:11] It was like them and offspring.
[00:37:12] Isn't like bad fish, like the ultimate surf metaphor song.
[00:37:15] Yeah.
[00:37:16] It's, it's amazing.
[00:37:17] It's amazing.
[00:37:18] Sounds like in a sense, like you're kind of, I know you've been in LA for a while, but,
[00:37:22] and I, I know you've been in LA and, and, you know, going back and listening to some old
[00:37:26] interviews that you did.
[00:37:27] I know that like, you kind of started life in music doing production, but it sounds like,
[00:37:34] like now you're on that, um, that songwriting tip that like a lot of like kind of more indie
[00:37:40] artists get, get into.
[00:37:41] It's a, it sounds like you're like, I guess, exploring new avenues of the industry, but
[00:37:46] also maybe, I don't know, have a, probably a pretty good grasp on what makes a song a hit.
[00:37:54] Oh, I wish I did.
[00:37:56] Fuck.
[00:37:56] I'd be making more hits.
[00:37:59] Um, to me, it's just like, like, I love producing, you know, uh, I've, this year alone, I've produced
[00:38:08] three albums for, I think actually.
[00:38:14] Um, and I mean, in the past couple of years, I just had to focus on Fiddler.
[00:38:18] So I stopped producing, but with songwriting, it's just, it's so easy.
[00:38:26] It's what producing is like, you kind of have to like, not level up, but like, you have to
[00:38:32] figure out how to level up your production, you know?
[00:38:36] Um, and I decided to like, not have a real studio and just go laptop because it was just,
[00:38:43] I could see my friends that would build studios, um, to, in the purpose to like produce bands.
[00:38:50] And then it just felt like it was like a big trap, you know, like you get stuck in a place
[00:38:55] and you have to spend money on this shit and dah, dah, dah.
[00:38:58] And you know how much fucking mic stands and microphone cables costs?
[00:39:01] Like, it's just this constant, yeah, it's just this constant, like,
[00:39:06] upkeep you have to do.
[00:39:07] So I just wanted a different way.
[00:39:09] It's like, I went with the laptop and just like a little interface and a, and a microphone,
[00:39:15] you know?
[00:39:16] Um, and I just started learning how to use these softwares more.
[00:39:20] You were on that pretty early.
[00:39:23] And I know that like, I remember, I remember the pushback against Pro Tools.
[00:39:29] And I think at the time, to a certain extent, it was warranted because it just didn't sound
[00:39:33] as good as it sounds now.
[00:39:35] But it seems like you were just willing to embrace that stuff pretty quickly.
[00:39:41] Yeah.
[00:39:41] I mean, it was the cheapest way to do something.
[00:39:43] Yeah.
[00:39:43] That's fair.
[00:39:44] Yeah.
[00:39:44] That's, that's interesting.
[00:39:45] Right.
[00:39:45] I mean, I've never, I've had this conversation with a million people and I've never contextualized
[00:39:50] it that way because it's like, I just remember like, Oh, like doing this on a computer isn't
[00:39:55] punk, but like in a weird way, it kind of is, right?
[00:39:58] Because it's the easiest way to get it.
[00:40:00] It's the most punk.
[00:40:01] To me, the most punk shit is like a fucking laptop with garage band auto tune on and fucking
[00:40:09] Scarlett and just making Kesha records.
[00:40:11] Yeah.
[00:40:12] Just plugging straight in and use the amp simulator.
[00:40:14] Like that's like whatever it takes to get to that thing.
[00:40:18] You know what I mean?
[00:40:18] Like that to me is like, you know, the sickest part.
[00:40:23] I don't hear a lot of people.
[00:40:26] It seems like in a funny way, you kind of went at it backwards because it, you know, I don't
[00:40:31] hear a lot of people who are like, as a kid, I always dreamed of producing a record.
[00:40:34] Like everybody dreams of being in a band, but that, that wasn't you.
[00:40:39] Yeah.
[00:40:39] For me, like, honestly, it was good news for people love bad news.
[00:40:44] When I heard that record, I was like, wait, what is this dude?
[00:40:48] And I just started looking up, like, what is this?
[00:40:51] Like, how do they make this?
[00:40:53] You know?
[00:40:53] And then I looked up, I was like, oh, this producer, Dennis Herring, and I researched
[00:40:57] him and, oh, he did this other record and this was like before I had internet in Hawaii,
[00:41:04] you know, like, like the area I grew up in, we got internet like way later.
[00:41:08] So it was just like kind of trial and error and just finding different records at stores
[00:41:13] and shit.
[00:41:14] Cause I have this too.
[00:41:15] Like, I'm, I'm like pretty convinced that I'm on the spectrum.
[00:41:19] And one of the many reasons why I think so is because this probably plays into being manic
[00:41:25] too, but like scratching that itch and finding a little piece of something and just wanting
[00:41:31] to learn everything about it instantly.
[00:41:34] Yeah.
[00:41:34] Yeah.
[00:41:35] Yeah.
[00:41:36] I know that feeling.
[00:41:37] Get stoked on something and you're just like, oh, it's like, it hits that like endorphins
[00:41:42] or whatever, you know?
[00:41:43] Like, and what I loved about, especially with that record is just it, like I could listen
[00:41:49] to it and I could like see things basically.
[00:41:51] It's just, it's such a visual way of hearing sounds.
[00:41:56] And it's just like, oh wow.
[00:41:58] Look at this, like these horns.
[00:41:59] And you know, it, it just made me feel like I was in this, it's like reading a comic book
[00:42:04] or something.
[00:42:05] And like, you're in this own little world, you know?
[00:42:08] Whereas like before I was just like listening to like smash by offspring and it's just like
[00:42:14] guitar, vocals, bass, drums, you know?
[00:42:16] Like I didn't really get into production then.
[00:42:19] And it kind of like went hand in hand with me for like, that's when I started learning
[00:42:23] about computers and learning how to record stuff.
[00:42:25] And going back and like listening to you talk about your early days and how you got into
[00:42:30] this, I know that it was that kind of relationship with Rob Schnaff who really like connected you
[00:42:35] to the bands.
[00:42:36] But there's this, there's this kind of like period of the timeline I'm trying to figure
[00:42:40] out where, you know, you've been very upfront about this.
[00:42:42] You were, you were, I guess what they would call troubled youth, right?
[00:42:45] And, and, you know, that led you to Mexico and that led you to California.
[00:42:48] But what is that?
[00:42:49] How do you bridge that into like getting in with this like super professional, well-known
[00:42:56] music producer?
[00:42:58] Knocked on the door.
[00:43:00] Oh yeah.
[00:43:00] Yeah.
[00:43:01] I moved, I moved to LA and just knocked on a bunch of studios and was like, can I intern?
[00:43:06] Really?
[00:43:07] And I interned for six months and I made myself basically very valuable, you know?
[00:43:15] It's like, I made sure everything was clean.
[00:43:17] I, whatever they wanted, I would get, I would just be a fly on the wall, ask questions, you
[00:43:23] know?
[00:43:24] Um, and when they were done, I would just stay in the studio and learn how I would write
[00:43:29] songs and learn how to use the studio.
[00:43:31] And that's kind of how the first record started is just learning how to use the studio.
[00:43:36] Listen, I've never been a big risk taker.
[00:43:38] You clearly like are a lot more prone to that.
[00:43:42] And it sounds like the way you were able to find success was to completely dive into something
[00:43:47] and just not have a safety net and not have a backup plan.
[00:43:51] 100%.
[00:43:52] I mean, like our name is fucking dog.
[00:43:53] Life's a risk.
[00:43:56] It's definitely a bunch of like, you know, I was working for Rob Schnapp.
[00:43:59] I was making pretty good money at that time, like for being how young I was.
[00:44:04] And I quit that to do Fiddler, you know?
[00:44:07] And it was very scary.
[00:44:08] It was like, I went from recording really cool bands to delivering pizza, you know?
[00:44:14] And it was frightening, but you have to drop in on the wave, dude.
[00:44:19] Can't catch a wave if you don't drop in.