Interview by: Laura DeSantis-Olsson
“I’m originally from a small town in Wisconsin, similar to Mayberry I guess. It’s where I kind of grew up and went to high school. I’m kind of bicoastal. I live in Virginia Beach and in Los Angeles, so I’m bicoastal these days.”
1. “Beauty and darkness can exist side by side.” How do you feel about that statement in regard to your music?
“That is hitting the nail right on the head. It’s kind of the best of both worlds. Beauty can be dark as well as a carnival ride, and I think that’s underestimated. Sometimes the feelings we get, that are a little more deeper than those on the surface, are the ones that seem to matter more, in my opinion.”
2. How is it that our deeper feelings matter the most, yet our “surface” feeling are kind of what everybody allows themselves to drive them forward?
“Well, the surface stuff is, as the question states, on the surface. You know, your day to day face is when you run into people at the market, at the gas station, and seeing the friends you kind of casually talk to and see. When the lights are down low, and your sitting by yourself and there’s no exterior stimulation as far as environment or anything like that, is when these feelings start to kind of come out. A lot of people don’t like thinking about that kind of stuff. I think that kind of stuff should be thought about constantly. That’s where true, growth, and where your emotional state of mind kind of has a way out when there’s no exterior stimulation like that. You know, you think about these things that really matter, which you normally don’t think about them. It might come up, but you don’t really spend any time thinking or feeling this and wondering, “why am I really feeling this?” Being in an isolated environment allows you to kind of dig into it a little deeper.”
3. Initially, as a young child, who got you interested in music? Who or what was your influence?
“I remember an old record player, or was it a radio that my parents had. I can remember when I was really young hearing music coming out of that thing. My parents never listened to music really, and I can remember just sitting there listening to this thing. You know, I don’t know what was coming out of it. However, I’ve always known that this is what I was supposed to do, you know, through grade school, high school, and college. You know, a lot of people fight with it, they say, “What am I going to do, I have all this education, I need to get a job, or I want to do this, or do I want to do that?” But I always, I never ever had that question on my mind. I knew I was going to do this come hell or high water. You know, the music business is tough despite any stretch of the imagination, I knew it was something that I had to do. I mean, I seem to just have this need to do it, and I seem to be in a hurry for some reason. I’m not really sure what all that means, but as long as my music keeps getting better that’s good. If my songs start getting worse, or if my albums start getting worse, or I’m not feeling it, that’s going to be time where I can finally go, “Well, you ran out ideas and creativity, it’s time for you to fold up your brief case and go home.”
“I’m in the studio today working on the next one and so far I’m loving what’s happening. So, you know, here we go again.”
4. How did you choose music as your method of artistic expression?
“Because I don’t know how to paint.”
“Seriously, I kind of look at it as painting through your ears. What you can kind of get with music that you can’t get with artwork, or something hanging on the wall, is the whole oral response through your ears. So, if you can listen to the music and the atmosphere, weather it’s aggressive, or airy, or dark, or light, or whatever it is, and then you tie the lyrics in, and how the lyrics work with the melodies and the space that’s being creating, it creates a whole set of emotional events that you cannot get from a painting. I’m very fortunate that I’m able to express myself that way. I do it for the art. I mean I do it for the music, you know. I don’t do it to be #1 on the top 40. As you listen to the album, that’s painfully obvious, but I really do it for the music.”
4. How did you choose to write music on your own and go forward your project solo?
“Well, you know, I started playing drums at a really early age… as early as I can remember. My mother has a picture of me with a drum around my neck. When I look at the time stamp on the picture, I go, “wow I was three years old!” I was at this Christmas thing, with this stupid tin drum, with a paper drum hat on that I broke at the first swing of the stick, so it didn’t last very long.”
‘I started taking drum lessons at age five. As a drummer, I started playing in bars at fourteen. I started playing guitar at sixteen. I started touring and playing. I went to college as a music theory major, is where I learned musical structure and all that stuff. So it’s really kind of been a long work in progress. And, you know, I found myself relying on so many other people that if I had an idea for a song, in regard to a band, keep in mind I was a drummer, everyone always wanted to get their own songs out and play their own songs instead. When they worked on my songs they weren’t really into it. I was always reliant on, “I gotta get a bass player in to do this, I gotta get a guitar player in.” I was reliant on all these guys, and all that stuff, so I just developed the skills to do it all myself and it’s really just me.”
“Though I do have a couple of friends that play guitar on some of the stuff. They are long time friends I’ve had for a long time. Ralph, the voodoo man, he plays a lot of the crazy leads. But his leads are so unique and so they’re really perfect for my kind of music. So, I try to get him involved whenever I can.”
‘You know, it just kind of developed out of a sense of need that I’m able to do the stuff myself and be able to sit in a studio and not wait for the singer that’s not going to show up.”
‘You may not like my style of music, but it comes from the heart. There’s no B.S. in any of my music and I’m not afraid to say anything or touch on certain subjects, which a lot of people are. Everyone’s kind of got their own agenda. But when you can sit there and do it on your own, and it’s yours, there is no agenda but your own.”
5. What is your writing process for your music? Where do you start in your creative process?
“Well it usually starts with a glass of wine… it usually starts with that.”
“Usually I just sit in the back yard with my guitar and just sit and just kind of play, and I don’t really kind of pay attention to what I’m doing. I just kind of play. I just let my fingers kind of drop on the neck and kind of pluck things here and I’m not really playing any chords, I don’t even really know what I’m paying. And I go, “Wow, that’s kind of neat, what if I move this finer there and we got a finger there.” Then it comes to be that there’s like two chords, because I can write a song with two chords. Then it starts to take on a kind of life of it’s own and usually I start kind of humming a melody and a couple of words, usually vowels. Lyrically it usually starts with vowels. So Ill find a vowel that I like on that particular chord and I kind of work my way out. Then I’ll find a work that kind of sounds like that vowel and then I kind of work it from the inside out. It could be a long answer, but that’s kind of the quick answer for how I particularly write. “
“Overstay”:
6. Do you produce and mix your own music as well, or do you collaborate on that process?
“I do all of the production. I produce everything that’s played. I’m responsible for every note, every space in between the notes. I think about the spaces, you know, the empty space, just as much as I think about the notes being played and the words begin said and the vowels their making and all of it. I’m responsible for every aspect of it.”
“I do not mix it though. I find I want some fresh ears on it. It takes me about two years to make an album because I do everything myself, and go through everything and everything and everything. It takes a long time. By the time the album’s done I practically hate very note on the album, haha. But I always send it out to a guy, who all he does is mix, and that’s his job. I try to give him everything that he needs. I give him the opportunity to experiment and try and let his creativity kind of take it. So, I don’t do any of the mixing but I do all of the production.”
7. How do you want people to be affected by your music? What do you want them to take away, feeling wise, after listening to it?
“I just want them to feel something. I want them to feel something on an emotional level.”
“You know it’s really frustrating. It’s kind of a bad time for music in general because young people today are so caught up in social media, social networking, and all that stuff, that music has just turned into background noise to them. You know, they’re listening to music on the speakers of her computer, which is bad enough as it is, but they’re not even listening to it. They’re either skyping, twittering, going on Facebook, instagraming, doing all this stuff and not even listening to it.”
“It’s really gotten to a point where music is soulless, you know, and It’s really sad. I remember, back in the day, we would sit and listen, you know friends who would come over, and we would sit there and listen to the music. There was no talking, “There is no talking when the music is playing.” And when it stopped, we discussed the music and then we’d go on tho the next thing. You just don’t have that now, which is really sad.”
“So, the kind of long winded answer to your question is: I want somebody to put the head phones on and feel something almost like how sometimes you can’t breath because your so caught up in the moment. The emotions are individual, so what may be affecting someone one way could be affecting you or me a completely different way. That’s the whole energy of experiencing the whole album as a whole.”
8. Which of you’re songs is most personal to you?
“I mean I don’t know… I love them all. I mean all my songs are like children to me. It starts with a simple two chords on a guitar and I kinda start working with a melody. I sit there and work, and try this and that, and let the song kind of go where it will. I guide it a little bit, you know, I try not to let it get into trouble. My songs are really like children. I nurture, and love, and help them along. When they actually go to mixing and mastering, it’s like sending them off to college, you know, they’re never going to come home again.”
“I feel connected to every song in a different way. But, I think the title cut, “Sleep”, is probably it. It started out as a lullaby I used to sing my girls when they were young, “Go to sleep, go to sleep, you’re wonderful, go to sleep, you’re beautiful, close your eyes, you’re day is almost done, tomorrow starts a whole new day.” Half way through the song it has this kind of twinkling, moving off, and I envision she’s going to sleep, and now she’s asleep, and then it goes into this waltz. An old kind of classical, 18th century waltz that I wrote to kind of simulate she’s having this dream of wearing the most beautiful gown, with the most handsome young man, at this fantastic event, and it’s the perfect night, with the perfect crowd. You know, it’s like the perfect dream of every young girl about prince charming and all that kind of thing. I favor that song I think.”
9. How do you feel your music stands out among other music in your genre?
“Yeah, you know, it’s hard to judge how my music stands out against everybody else in my genre. That’s kind of a tough question because I can give, lets say, five guitar players, “Alright, play this four bar thing and play these chords,” and every one of these guys is going to sound different. There’s only twelve notes in the scale so we all are using the same notes. So, the only thing I can say is, “It is mine, I own that and it doesn’t sound like anybody else.” I don’t know if I stand out, all I know is that I don’t think anyone really sounds like me because it’s me. I just do what is coming natural for me.”
10. Who was the artist that created your album cover? How did you meet and choose to work with this artist?
“That’s a whole story in itself. The guy that painted it, I commissioned him to paint this, is Michael Kagen, and he won best album cover of the year last year with an album, ‘White Lies’. He’s the one that painted it, but that picture is my daughter, Samantha. She had these migraine head aches, and she lives in Los Angeles, and she had gone to the doctor and they injected her skull with these syringe things and she took this selfie of herself being picked up and taken back home. The picture was kind of dark, but it was just pure emotion. This was kind of the real thing, I kind of saved this. She just instant messaged it to me and so I sent it to this guy and had him paint it. So that’s actually what the cover is.”
“He’s a great guy, he did a fantastic job, I’m really happy with what he did.”
11. How do you come up with the concepts of your music videos? Do you envision the concepts on your own or do you collaborate on this process?
“The guy that does my music videos, he’s a movie director. His name’s Derrick Borte and he did the movie The Jones’ with David Duchovny and Demi More. He did that movie, and he’s got a couple of movies coming out this year. He did my last three videos. The one with Mariell Hemingway was the last album and the one before that was “Over Stay” off of the ’Sara Lee’ album.
I really kind of give him trust, because he’s my kind of guy. I mean he’s all about, you know, the kind of the dark crevasses in things, he’s right up my alley. I give him complete license to kind of do what he wants.
We were going to do “Sleep”, and I had a whole image for sleep and it was going to be absolutely fantastic. But, he said, “Well I’m kind of reluctant to do that one,” like a week before we were going to shoot. He said, “The instrumental is halfway through, there’s no lyrics, your not playing guitar on this, I don’t know what we are going to do storyboard wise to keep everybody interested.” And he was right.
So I played him “On And On”, which winds up being, I guess, one of the singles, so it was a really good choice. However, I didn’t really know how it was going to turn out in the end. You know, I didn’t know he was going to make me into a bad guy and all this kind of stuff. I go, “Man, you made me into a bad guy, I look like some kind of perv, I got these chicks locked up in this mansion, and all this kind of thing.” He said, “No, you’re not getting it, they were using you, they were working together.” He’s so good at doing these things because it leaves so much to the imagination, to try and figure out what these videos mean. It’s not a bunch of kids just hopping up and down on a stage, lip-synching live footage, I mean that’s just not my style.
So these kind of darker events, I think, are way more cool and relates more to my music than just mindless lyrics and hopping up and down on a stage, and all that kind of thing. It’s a great combination and he can’t wait to do the next one. He loves doing them. A lot of people ask him to do music videos but he loves doing mine because I give him free reign and he can do whatever he wants. They absolutely are like short films. It’s hard to tell a story in three minutes.
“On&On”:
12. Aside from the music you write and feel connected to, what’s your favorite musician or band?
“You know I don’t really have a favorite band, but I listen to new music all the time. Something that’s kind of popular, I think, that I really like that’s new is the new Beck album. I love that album, I think it’s brilliant. I was shocked when I heard it.”
13. Is there anything you’ve never been asked about your music, that you would have liked to have been asked so you can share what you want to about it?
“I can’t think of anything off hand. You know your the only one whose ever asked me about the album covers. You know the album covers are all important, and you were the only one whose asked me what it’s about and all that kind of thing. No one usually asks about that. In regard to the album cover, what you asked about, “Why?” A lot of people don’t.”
“I’m an old man practically and when asked why I’m still doing this, you know I don’t need the fame, I don’t want it. “Why you do it?” I wish I could answer that. Maybe with some psycho therapy I might be able to…. haha.”
“I just want to be happy,” is the wish for every human being on this planet. There is enough pain and suffering on this planet. There is enough pain and suffering that we all deal with on a day to day basis. Whatever it is, if you want to be a forester or whatever, if you can just find a way to be happy I think that would be the goal of life. If you can go through and be happy and somehow figure that out, I think that’s really the kind of the true definition of how we’re supposed to get though this life I would think.”
