Episode 457 - Father John Misty
Marc:all right let's do this how are you what the fuckers what the fuck buddies what the fucking ears what the fuck nicks what the fucks the bulls what the fuckadelics whoo man mark maron here this is wtf thank you thank you for listening i appreciate you being here i need you to be here
Marc:Jesus Christ, do I need you to be here.
Marc:Am I right?
Marc:Today on the show, Father John Misty, who I didn't know about, former member of the Fleet Foxes, a solo artist of esteemed ranking in the world amongst people who know him.
Marc:a fine songwriter and singer quite a charismatic fellow i saw him at the sub pop anniversary celebration up in seattle i'd never really talked to him before i had a couple people pestering me to talk to him a high-minded fellow who does a lot of thinking so uh we were able to sort of jam here so that'll happen we jammed on the talk and he jammed on a couple of tunes believe he used my guitar if i recall correctly hope you had a pleasant christmas
Marc:As you know, I decided to forego a trip to my home state of Albuquerque and instead chose to go to Phoenix and spend some time with my brother and his wife and their seven children.
Marc:So I flew out to Phoenix and I'm like, fuck it.
Marc:I'm going to stay at a resort hotel.
Marc:I'm going to dump some money.
Marc:I'm a single man with a reasonable mortgage with a little bit of money in the bank.
Marc:Why not live a little?
Marc:Rented a Mustang with the five liter or whatever the fuck.
Marc:The fast one.
Marc:The race car.
Marc:I'm like, you know, I'm going to.
Marc:Why not?
Marc:Let's have a good time.
Marc:Spend a little money on a fast car.
Marc:And, of course, the problem with that is there's that moment where you're driving fast and you realize, like, this feels better than it should.
Marc:Could I be this guy?
Marc:No.
Marc:I'm a Camry fella.
Marc:That's what I am.
Marc:I'm a man of reasonable means.
Marc:I am not ostentatious.
Marc:I do not need to drive fast and risk my life in an automobile because I'm frustrated or I feel like things might be coming to a close and I need to speed them up a bit.
Marc:pow look out i just shit my pants just coffee.coop it's available at wtfpod.com so i get out there i go to phoenix get in my fast car with the rumble those things just want to go fast man all i had on my ipod was uh you know i'm very limited on my ipod right now i've got uh i've got fuzz i've got swatterhouse by ty siegel a few ty siegel records
Marc:Uh, I've got, uh, I'm not, I'm not proud of this, but I do have, uh, Everclear's song Santa Monica.
Marc:Cause there's something about that, uh, song that, uh, moves me and I've got all the four first black Sabbath records.
Marc:So I got to investigate.
Marc:Why am I driving through the desert in a Mustang at 120 miles an hour listening to, uh, to Sabbath four?
Marc:Why, why am I doing that?
Marc:It's okay.
Marc:I'm not complaining, but why?
Marc:And then I'm like, fuck it.
Marc:Don't question it, man.
Marc:Just step on the gas.
Marc:So I'm flying around in this Mustang, forgetting entirely that Phoenix is somewhat of a totalitarian state when it comes to speeding tickets and whatnot.
Marc:And I don't want to end up in Sheriff Joe's camp.
Marc:And I start seeing these cars around, these parked police cars that are just doing, you know, just writing out tickets on their own.
Marc:Don't know how many of those I flew by.
Marc:Guess I'll find out.
Marc:I don't like that, man.
Marc:I think that if you're going to get a ticket, you should have the option to run from the cops.
Marc:And when that option is taken away, our freedoms are being taken away.
Marc:That's the thought I had.
Marc:It's like, look, pull me over.
Marc:Where's the game in this?
Marc:I turn a corner and there's a parked fucking police Jeep that might have just issued me a ticket for feeling joy.
Marc:Where's the justice?
Marc:Where's the game?
Marc:Where's the spirit of fair play?
Marc:I'm in a fast car.
Marc:I want an option to run.
Marc:I know there's no getting away.
Marc:I know the copters will come, but I want to have that in my heart when I'm speeding down the fucking highway, listening to Sabbath over and over again.
Marc:I want to have that option.
Marc:So I don't know how many tickets I got, but then I went and checked into my resort hotel for three nights, and I went over to my brother's house.
Marc:So he gave me the heads up.
Marc:The oldest kid, the 16-year-old, Matana, wanted an electric guitar, and I'm like, that's fucking awesome.
Marc:The opportunity to buy an electric guitar for a teenager is like, that is one of the greatest opportunities you could have as a parent, as an uncle, as anybody.
Marc:Here you go.
Marc:I'm going to give you something that, if you allow it, will change your life and blow your fucking mind.
Marc:And give you a power you never thought you had.
Marc:This is Excalibur, man.
Marc:I want to lay this on you.
Marc:I'm going to give you a guitar.
Marc:So we went out.
Marc:Smart girl.
Marc:You know, it was interesting.
Marc:How often do I speak to 16-year-old girls?
Marc:Never.
Marc:Thank you for asking.
Marc:And I was very quick to answer that because, you know, I live in the real world.
Marc:So there I am with my niece at Guitar Center trying to figure out which guitar to buy her.
Marc:And she had no idea there was an amp involved and the different sounds.
Marc:So I got to explain to her the difference between single coil pickups and humbucker pickups because the two sort of cheaper guitars, you're going to buy either an Epiphone or a Squire, either a Gibson or a Fender.
Marc:That's the direction you're going to go in.
Marc:Which direction are you going to go in?
Marc:Are you going to be a humbucker chick?
Marc:Are you going to be a single coil biter of spirit with the strings?
Marc:And then after playing both of them and realizing that there were more sound options with three single coils and a Fender Squire, a white one, Jimi Hendrix Isle of White, thank you, and a small acoustic amp.
Marc:You can get the whole setup for under 300 bucks.
Marc:It's an amazing world we live in.
Marc:I want to thank the children who built those things for building them.
Marc:That was a joke.
Marc:It's a sad reality.
Marc:So I bought her a white Fender Squire Strat and a small acoustic amp, and I showed her the different noises she can make, and we went home to her house, and her parents came in the room just to make the discomfort amplified for her.
Marc:She amplified her first chord.
Marc:And to see the look on that kid's face when that noise came out of that guitar, just this moment of sort of like this elation of the power of noise.
Marc:I told her how to make it dirty and just filth it up.
Marc:And she, oddly, whoever was teaching her guitar, it's the same thing, man.
Marc:It's the same thing when I was a kid.
Marc:She knew sunshine of your love.
Marc:She knew smoke on the water.
Marc:And she was trying to work out the riff to sweet child of mine.
Marc:And I'm like, I think you're on the right road.
Marc:You're on the right path.
Marc:I would focus a little on your chords and get a sense of your rhythm, but spend all day long playing those three riffs, if you want, for the next year, loudly and as perfectly as possible.
Marc:How is that still the thing?
Marc:Beautiful.
Marc:Thrilled to be that guy to get that girl that machinery.
Marc:So, Eden...
Marc:The middle one, 14.
Marc:What does she need?
Marc:What can Uncle Mark get eaten?
Marc:Some real Doc Martens.
Marc:How fucking great is that?
Marc:You mean you get to tell me I get to buy my niece an electric guitar and get to buy the other one some Docs?
Marc:I'm fucking in.
Marc:So we went to the mall.
Marc:And given the options of Doc Martens, I was very impressed with this kid's desire to buy the straight up black Doc Martens with no shine to him.
Marc:You know, just the real deal.
Marc:Then there was the last kid, 12-year-old Shy, who's consumed with Pokemon.
Marc:and we went to try to get him the cloud that he needed to trade freely, globally, Pokemon.
Marc:That was not a possibility.
Marc:We walked into a game shop, and I would say they had to be 20-year-old, fairly overweight gentleman, freely volunteered the information that, yeah, you've got to go to the Nintendo site and get the card to get the upgrade.
Marc:Their servers are overloaded, so it's not going to be available today.
Marc:Do you work here?
Marc:No.
Marc:I just know.
Marc:Okay.
Marc:So me and Shai and Ike, my brother's wife's son, got in the car and I said, Shai, if there's anything I can tell you right now, try not to become that guy.
Marc:He was good with the information, but I don't know that his quality of life was tremendous and he seems to eat a lot and not move a whole lot.
Marc:So what else can we do?
Marc:Laser tag.
Marc:So I go with Ike, who's 12, and Shai, who's 12.
Marc:We drive out to the outskirts of town to the closest laser tag venue available.
Marc:I've never played laser tag.
Marc:We get there, and we were fortunate.
Marc:It was the middle of Friday afternoon, and I don't know.
Marc:I assume that if there's nobody to play laser tag, you're sort of fucked.
Marc:But there just happened to be a birthday party of what seemed to be seven or eight-year-olds and their parents.
Marc:So we entered the laser tag arena on a every man for himself game.
Marc:So it was me, Shy, Ike, about seven seven-year-olds and three or four adults.
Marc:We just went for it, just shot everybody, ran around the maze.
Marc:Not much strategizing, just me panicking and shooting at children.
Marc:I did all right, came in sixth.
Marc:I think Shai and I came in seventh and eighth.
Marc:Then about five of that party left and there were still remaining three or four seven-year-olds and two of their older sisters, I believe, with the situation.
Marc:Five.
Marc:Shai wanted to play another game.
Marc:Ike said, well, we should do teams.
Marc:And I'm like, well, there's five of them, man.
Marc:He said, well, let's try it.
Marc:And we asked a guy to ask them and they were up for it.
Marc:So Mishai and Ike went in as a team against the three seven-year-olds and the two older sisters.
Marc:Three against five folks in the darkness of the laser tag arena.
Marc:And by the way, they would not let me call myself the Jew as a nickname, which I found upsetting.
Marc:I said, but I'm a Jew.
Marc:And she goes, I can't do it.
Marc:And I'm like, what do you think is going to happen?
Marc:I didn't say that, but I felt like saying that.
Marc:So I went with a different name.
Marc:I just went with rock and slam.
Marc:Those are the two nicknames.
Marc:I'm not good with nicknames.
Marc:So me and I can shy went in against five.
Marc:Five very organized and very sort of precise seven-year-olds and their sisters.
Marc:They were taking positions above us, all around us.
Marc:We had to hold off corners, the three of us, run around, shoot.
Marc:There's nothing more frightening than being face-to-face with the enemy who's a seven-year-old boy going, come on, come on, yelling at his gun to fire laser beams into me and me fire laser beams into him.
Marc:It was rough.
Marc:It was rough being on the field that day.
Marc:But I'm proud to say that we won.
Marc:We won.
Marc:The three of us, we beat those five, those three kids and their two older sisters.
Marc:And we got certificates that said that.
Marc:And there was a pride in that.
Marc:Definitely ups the ante of the laser tag game when you're on a team.
Marc:Team spirit.
Marc:I was sweating and running around a maze, firing beams of light at seven-year-olds and their sisters.
Marc:I should be ashamed of that.
Marc:I'm not.
Marc:And so Shy had a great day and we had a good time.
Marc:And later that night I brought some screeners with me and we watched a sole survivor about those four dudes who were on a covert operation, Mark Wahlberg and Emile Hirsch and Ben, what's his name?
Marc:Who I like Foster and the other guy, I don't know the other guy's name.
Marc:And you know, not to trivialize anything, but you know, watching their plight on that mountainside in Afghanistan and
Marc:holding up against an army of Taliban soldiers that, you know, for a moment there, just for a fleeting moment before I realized what my brain was doing, I felt that because of my laser tag experience, I could relate to what was happening on screen.
Marc:And then, you know, very quickly, my brain put things into perspective and made me realize that, no, no, it's not relatable at all.
Marc:You were in a maze.
Marc:that was lit with black lights, shooting lasers at blinking lights that were attached to vests that seven-year-olds were wearing as they ran through, you know, around corners and upstairs.
Marc:It's really, there was nothing even remotely close to actually fighting for your life on the side of a mountain in Afghanistan.
Marc:The firearms were different.
Marc:The enemy was different.
Marc:And the agenda was different.
Marc:But I got a certificate.
Marc:I got closure.
Marc:I won my war that day.
Marc:We're going to talk to Father John Misty here in just a second.
Marc:So strap in.
Marc:And, you know, I just I'm a little grateful today.
Marc:I'm glad I had a good time with my family and it was a thrill to be an uncle.
Marc:And I'm going to do it more often.
Marc:Happy New Year.
Marc:Here's my talk with Father John Misty.
Guest:I want to do like a giant orchestral piece using like all kind of incidental sounds like that.
Guest:Like it starts with a marimba iPhone alarm.
Guest:Why don't you do that?
Guest:I mean, if you got like an and just and I mean, the whole thing would end with that Microsoft boot sound.
Marc:yeah where'd you grow up maryland maryland that's not uh not the south really is it i mean it's like technically below the mason dixon line but culturally it's it's kind of its own its own brand of mediocrity yeah what part of maryland what town
Marc:Rockville what's that night it's like a it's like a remote it's it's like a nebulously a suburb of DC one of those yeah I think actually Patton Oswalt is like from around he's from like Bethesda Maryland right so there's a couple guys that came out of there the same yeah there was a few comics that came out of there same area so all right so let's go let's get into it then how old are you man I mean I usually ask people that but I'm curious so I can resent your success
Guest:32.
Marc:So, okay.
Marc:So you're a young guy.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:This is your first wave of the big time?
Guest:Well, yeah.
Guest:I mean, I would take some issue with the term success and big time.
Guest:Yeah?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:It's definitely my first time I've got, I don't know.
Marc:the attention i don't know the metric to you i'm doing this aren't i i mean look no no but yeah yeah this is you've arrived there you've arrived there you go that's my only metric for having arrived i guess i like i don't know like i know some of the fleet foxes stuff i don't know your earlier solo work i'm not going to pretend like i do i like the father john misty album a lot you know once i listened to it like four or five times you know i i got the groove
Marc:I know where you're coming from.
Guest:If you don't mind my asking, what was it around the fourth or fifth time?
Marc:Well, the first time you put a record on, like I'm listening to it on vinyl.
Marc:Well, it's just sort of like, all right, your brain goes like, oh, it's this thing.
Guest:Yes, totally.
Guest:Whatever that thing is in your head.
Guest:You hear an acoustic guitar.
Marc:Well, you hear, like, all right, there's a singer-songwriter element to it, and there seems to be this kind of lo-fi groove going on that kind of has a country thing going.
Marc:But I didn't listen to it, like, intentively.
Marc:And then I listened to it again, and I'm like, all right, well, this guy can really write songs.
Marc:You know, there's clever turns of phrase.
Marc:He's got some wisdom.
Marc:He can sing his ass off.
Marc:All right, I get it.
Marc:And then the third time, it was like, oh, fuck, Flying Burrito Brothers.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:You know, there's a 70s groove here that I think is being honored well.
Guest:Yeah, I mean, I don't necessarily consider that the purpose of recorded music to me is to make it so that there is no past.
Guest:Or like there is no concept of the past.
Guest:Like it's a thing that can be listened to at any given time.
Guest:The arbitrary breakdown of decades...
Guest:is uh just that to me like arbitrary um and i don't considering that we're only like 40 years or so out from that that's not a long time you know like the ottoman empire was like a long time ago sure we're only we're not even what are we 55 years out from the beginning of rock and roll in general
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And as far as there being, at least what I consider to be sort of like a high watermark of recording of like the criteria of what a good song is at a different point in time, like namely that period of time, the criteria was more like, can you play?
Guest:Do you have something to say?
Guest:Is there a hook?
Guest:Is there something here?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Can I dance to it?
Guest:Yeah, well, I mean, the criteria has become, like, a little more nebulous or something.
Marc:Well, I think that the sounds that you are creating are timeless in that.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:In that, like, you know, I wasn't calling upon the references to trivialize or actually put a time frame on it, but I think that that music, not unlike, you know, Neil Young's music and some of the other music that was from that era, kind of is above and beyond being dated.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:The production value of it as well.
Guest:I'm not sure I would even know how to make music from this era.
Guest:I don't know what it is.
Guest:I don't know either.
Marc:I think we're ill-defined now that everything happens all at once.
Guest:I think it's okay to say that we live in a 20th century fetishism
Marc:uh at least in like the indie uh you know whatever that means world there there is like uh there's very little context it seems like everything can happen all the time that there's no there's no sense of linear history anymore you know because everything all the information just is you just google it yeah it doesn't need to i don't know what that means who is that guy what year is that doesn't matter
Guest:Yeah, I try to stay out of the nostalgia versus not kind of debate because it never really seems to go anywhere.
Marc:But you're drawing from some folky more... Yeah, I mean, they're... A guy with a guitar...
Guest:okay yeah this is this is where i want to go yeah so the thing about like listening to it for the first time right and you like i'm well accustomed with the way that people's eyes glaze over when they see a white guy with an acoustic guitar yeah like it's um there's a vernacular yeah you know and and you're you know nine times out of ten like
Guest:Pretty much know what you're in for.
Guest:You're going to get something that's like sentimental, confessional.
Guest:It's like the assumption is that it's innately personal just by virtue of the fact that it's one guy with a song.
Guest:But it might be authentic.
Marc:Well, that's a sticky one.
Guest:I mean, God knows what that means.
Guest:I mean, aesthetic authenticity is, you know, it's like hunting for shadows with a flashlight because the closer you get to making something sound exactly like it did in the 60s or 70s, then the authenticity kind of decreases because, you know, it's like, well, you're just aping something else.
Marc:But even no matter what the form is, no matter what the delivery system is, I think the authentic, the emotions of a voice.
Marc:I'm a guy that I'm afraid of singing.
Marc:To me, it's the most vulnerable thing that anyone can do.
Marc:And the first time I saw you perform was when we were just away for the weekend, and that made me sort of seal the deal.
Marc:I'm like, well, I want to talk to you because I kind of got what you were doing on stage and how you were presenting yourself.
Marc:But there's something about, like some people can fake it,
Marc:But there's also, if there's a real authenticity to the voice, I think singing provides a real vulnerability to it.
Marc:And also, you can hide behind a good song, but I think you're pretty present in what you're doing.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Where people look for authenticity, I mean, I think it's a little bit misguided.
Guest:Like, I think authenticity...
Guest:is really intangible.
Guest:And it's very difficult.
Guest:It's easier to see than it is to describe or whatever.
Guest:And a lot of this... I mean, this conversation about authenticity played a big role in this shift from... This shift into this writing style, which I arbitrarily deemed Father John Misty.
Guest:And I...
Guest:I had a conversation with a friend of mine at this thing.
Guest:We were talking about lyric writing and he was saying, he's kind of at this same sort of turning point that I was at where he was saying, you know, like when I sit down to write lyrics, there's some words that just kind of involuntarily come out of my mouth.
Guest:And one of them is like mountains.
Guest:And my friend was saying, I was thinking to myself,
Guest:How many important things in my life have happened atop a mountain?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Like almost none.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know, or none.
Guest:And I think for me, like I used to, I was writing in a very kind of impressionistic way.
Guest:This like how dark the rose, how, you know, the viper to my breast was.
Guest:Sure.
Marc:And mountains is a biblical meme.
Marc:It's a poetic meme.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:It's just kind of a mountaintop.
Guest:It's squarely in the lexicon of significance.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I came to some realization that in order to be satisfied, because I mean, like if you really want to break down what I'm looking for out of writing music is some level of satisfaction.
Marc:Like when you hit that lyric, when you see it on the paper, you're like, oh, fuck yeah.
Guest:It's like representing myself, you know?
Guest:And in order to represent myself, you know, I think that's why there's some of this, you know, you're talking about like turns of phrase.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:humor and and whatever and and also some like um some decidedly kind of unsexy word like adderall or something like having that that word in a song it's not a particularly like romantic word it's pretty good but to but in order to represent myself and what i look like when i think like whatever i i have to i be on i wanted to well no i mean yes um but uh
Guest:I think I realized, man, I spent my whole life developing this vernacular and this sense of humor and this way of speaking and this way of thinking and this worldview.
Guest:And I've never really implemented it into my music.
Guest:Did you know what it was before, though, necessarily?
Marc:I mean, sometimes you have to arrive at yourself.
Guest:oh yeah absolutely i mean it's so much easier the whole be yourself thing is i mean that that's like that's like a life's work oh yeah i mean there there's points in my life where like i never felt quite right in my body and then one day you're like you can own who you are yeah and confidently right and that was i did i had this real i was sitting naked in a tree um actually like on a mountain and um and i how recently how long ago
Guest:This was like two years ago or something?
Guest:You were by yourself, naked in a tree?
Guest:Yeah, I had gone on this trip, this kind of like dropout trip.
Guest:But I had this realization that I was like scratching my head and I was sitting there naked and I was thinking about... You were high?
Guest:yeah i was like well i mean i was like i was implementing mushrooms yeah and and i had this this i was kind of laughing at myself and this like this like albino ape sitting in this tree like trying to have heavy thoughts right and um i had this realization that there's this thing that i can do yeah and that i should that i've never done it and that i should just do it
Guest:and um which sounds really vague but um more or less everything was kind of birthed out of out of this one instance and i like the music that i wrote before and i understand why i did it but like what you're saying about it can be a life's work to to get around to this part where you can be yourself i mean um you know for i think for a lot of songwriters for a long time the
Guest:The goal is to as accurately as they can embody the songwriter archetype, you know, or like the best that I can be is as close to Neil Young as I can get.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And that's kind of the criteria for how successful I can be as a songwriter or something.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And that's sort of why I have that, you know, there's that lyric in the album about, you know, strangling Neil Young down on the beach and, you know, him saying... Kill your idols.
Guest:Him saying, like, you're going to have to kill me.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Just this thing.
Guest:It was like this realization where it's like, yeah, my sensibilities are not... I don't know if they... I don't know how aligned they are with the canon of singer-songwriters, but...
Marc:but fuck singer song really like i don't even want you know yeah i understand it's at some point it's you know it's like it's either going to work this way or i'm going to spend my life trying to be an approximation you know yeah which a lot of people do and sometimes you go in and out of approximation sometimes like even when i talk to you i think in seattle there was that feeling that you know we talked briefly about about repetition in and of itself that you know when you
Marc:you want to be in the present or you want to be as pure as you can be for yourself, that once you start being, you're expected to like, well, play the songs on the record.
Marc:Sure.
Guest:Ten times in, you're like, here's this song again.
Guest:I'm more than willing to admit that after a year and a half of touring, I'm at that place again.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:But that's a creative place, right?
Guest:Exactly.
Guest:And the thing is when you...
Guest:But when you aren't afraid of when when your mandate is is not to adhere to what's working, then that is like a much easier thing to face.
Marc:And you've got that freedom now with your with the label or your own choice.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Oh, just kind of my, I think my own choice.
Marc:When I think like adhere to what's working that, you know, I mean, you're with Sub Pop, which gives you a little more flexibility, I imagine, than being with whatever's left of a major label.
Marc:Sure, I mean, yeah.
Marc:But so no one's doing the thing sort of like, this is a great record, could you do it again, please?
Guest:Yeah, I think, yeah, I mean, I think I was, by all, you know...
Guest:by all means like kind of in a place where things were were working like yeah like in a um in this you know like comfortable sort of comfortable in this like successful band that uh that afforded me like a certain level of fleet foxes yeah yeah i mean that was um and you were the drummer yeah yeah had you been doing like because you're you know you seem to have your shit together as a front man and
Guest:i mean were you just back there on the drums going like yeah fuck i gotta get out there yeah not not really i mean it wasn't um the the stage is just not i don't i don't think of um what i do creatively like in terms of the stage like the stage is this uh promotional inevitability that exists kind of out there on the fringes like it really is like the writing uh and the record like the
Guest:the um it's the album or the or the body well the band sounds great i mean how much yeah i mean these were guys that you put together or how did that come together this um i man i don't know it was real it was real pretty fucking sweet real scattershot yeah definitely i mean i didn't have any capital to put together right a band but they were laid back man i mean you know they they're real you know they picked their they picked their
Guest:places yeah it's nice I'm comfortable on say I've never had a problem be I've never had a problem being on a stage like I'm one of those like terrible people who you just love it love me it's not that I love it but there's something that I'm looking for there's always been something that I've been looking for up there like I you know I was like the I was like the kid who ate lunch alone in the music room but then you know and I went to these like bizarro kind of Christian schools and
Marc:Well, let's talk about that.
Marc:I know you talk about it a bit, but I don't know what brought you to music, but what was the household like?
Marc:I know it was religious, and that's something I can't relate to, but I like hearing about.
Marc:I mean, what were the expectations?
Marc:How crazy was it?
Guest:Um, the, the expectations were, um, like evangelical Christianity as it exists, like kind of within the last hundred, 150 years or something in our lifetime.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Is, is this, um, in the, in the evangelical sense, is this really intense, um, emphasis on what you're thinking and, and the, and, uh,
Guest:With liturgical Christianity, it was way more about what you were doing and keeping up with these, you know, sacraments or like... Doing your rituals.
Guest:Behavioral things or whatever.
Guest:Evangelical Christianity had, I think, what kind of started as an admirable...
Guest:Something admirable in that was like, look, it's not about doing this or doing that or whatever.
Guest:It's about the way that you think or the way that you, you know, like the content of your heart.
Marc:And being good day to day.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:I mean, something like that.
Guest:But then it's all so convoluted because it's like, well, it's in how you act day to day, but it's not entirely in how you act.
Guest:It's all like you can boil it all down to this saved by faith or saved by works kind of thing.
Guest:Catholicism is saved by works.
Guest:Protestantism is saved by faith.
Guest:And my but as far as my household is concerned, it was we were all just wrapped up in this.
Marc:Were they in the church, your folks?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I mean, in what capacity?
Guest:well in that you know it was like a three days a week kind of thing and like christian did your dad have another job well no my dad wasn't in the like he wasn't in the clergy or so he was like a sales engineer for hewlett-packard and so you would you call them born agains or oh yeah okay so they were new christians in a way it was very well where it becomes vague between christianity and just sort of self-help community
Guest:Yeah, I mean, it's so long ago now, and it's, I mean, really, like, my, all I want to say, like, I want to scream, like, I'm trying to be diplomatic right now, which is just, like, terrible, but it was not an experience that was great.
Guest:I mean, it just wasn't a good experience, you know what I mean?
Guest:And I'm like... Too much Jesus.
Guest:You know, and I'm currently, like, kind of, I mean, I've sort of been estranged from my family for, like, 10 years.
Marc:In a big way or in a kind of way?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:In a, like, talking kind of once a year sort of.
Guest:Oh, really?
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:Like a world.
Guest:My 20s was just like... Fuck you.
Guest:Sort of a world of anger.
Guest:And I think with, you know, I'm interested in what's going on.
Guest:My folks are kind of, like, less cartoonish to me now than they were in my 20s.
Guest:And they've had...
Marc:certain realizations of their own were you able to source the anger though I mean was it that they couldn't see beyond their own beliefs to acknowledge who you were
Guest:I think it was ultimately that they valued, you know, in Christianity, there's just these ideas that like you're supposed to, that God, this invisible sky man, is supposed to be more important to you than all these things, or more real to you than all these things that are like, obviously like empirically more true.
Marc:And was there a struggle for you early?
Marc:Was there a point where, you know, your belief was shaken to the point where you realize that?
Marc:Did something happen as a kid where you were like, you know, buying the party line and then you realize like this is sort of you had a conflict of faith or what they call it, a crisis of faith?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I mean, I don't think if you're raised... When you're raised with something from the earliest memories that you have, it's kind of...
Guest:The prospect of having like a crisis of faith, I would see that more as something like an adult person, like making a conscious decision, like after the age of accountability or something, like making a decision for themselves and then having some.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:My experience with it is still... I mean, I wish that I had been more of kind of like a badass or something, but I was... There was like a lot of anger and a lot of kind of intimidation and manipulation and... That you felt.
Guest:In my house.
Guest:And that was...
Guest:Really complicated.
Guest:I mean, it was just an angry kind of scene.
Guest:And a lot of that was kind of fueled by religion or by, you know, religion was sort of the...
Guest:that was the excuse the juice or whatever and um so the anger was sort of like why can't you be more christian yeah well there's certainly some of the kind of some of that you know you asshole yeah yeah i mean it was but but the way that i look at it now is that you had these like five you know these how many people are six you know people in a boat you had four siblings three siblings yeah i got four three younger siblings
Guest:Brothers, sisters?
Guest:One younger brother, two younger sisters.
Marc:Are they all still in?
Guest:No.
Guest:I mean, the whole, everybody's kind of, I mean, it's crazy.
Guest:My parents are, you know, I've started talking to them within, just even within the last few months.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And some of the things that they are saying to me are just kind of blow my mind, you know.
Guest:In a good way?
Guest:Yeah, in a good way.
Guest:Like, just...
Guest:I mean, my parents have sort of like dropped out and like moved to the beach.
Guest:And these people, I don't even know.
Guest:It's like body snatchers shit where my mom is saying things to me like, I'm just, I really regret valuing the conventions of other people over like, you know, just she's like, I wish I had homeschooled you.
Guest:And like, I wish, you know, and let you just be a creative, you know.
Guest:Oh, that's sweet though.
Guest:I mean, yeah.
Guest:Are you able to take that in?
Guest:Yeah, definitely.
Guest:I don't want to like...
Guest:I'm kind of bored with the narrative.
Guest:Like, five years ago, we would have gone way into it.
Guest:But at this stage in the game, I'm too fascinated with, like, the turn of events that... That's happening now.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I think it's beautiful.
Guest:Yeah, me too.
Guest:And, you know, it's...
Guest:It was a really, really intense scene.
Guest:And the music that I was making in my 20s was a mommy doesn't love me, God doesn't love me, like catharsis, you know, like this major catharsis.
Guest:Yeah, it was very sad.
Guest:And it was because that's the only function that music serves for me.
Guest:Like, I'm not really a musician's musician.
Guest:Like, I consider myself, like, more of a writer or something.
Guest:But there's no...
Guest:I think music doesn't serve much of a function for me unless it's cathartic.
Marc:I get that.
Marc:That's a good thing.
Marc:Art should be cathartic.
Marc:It should get you some sort of movement of emotions.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Have you ever read Narcissus and Goldman?
Guest:No, no.
Guest:The Herman Hesse book?
Guest:Is it good?
Guest:Yeah, it's amazing.
Guest:But just in terms of the function of art, you can be an artist who carves tiny angels into door frames.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:Or the alternative, which is to be a purient vagrant who has to kill someone before you can make anything decent.
Marc:Well, that'd be the convention thing.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Sort of like you can honor the convention.
Guest:I think I need to kill someone before I can make anything decent.
Guest:I'm on that side of the face.
Marc:Well, you know, you strangled Neil Young at the beach.
Guest:Yeah, exactly.
Guest:Exactly.
Marc:I need blood.
Marc:You're doing it.
Marc:Like, what's interesting to me is when you speak or when you sing or whatever you put out into the world, that you obviously had people that loved it.
Marc:Right.
Marc:There was a few, maybe not as many as there are now, whatever the case.
Guest:Very few.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:But they were there.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Now, when you were like, what was your feeling just as somebody who thinks like this and who's present?
Marc:And, you know, because I reflect on it as well in terms of audience.
Marc:When you were around the people that respected what you were doing at the time of your darkest sort of expression, how did that make you feel?
Yeah.
Guest:i was very suspicious of it you know yeah it was i mean i used to bring i mean those shows were this is before the flea foxes yeah yeah yeah definitely uh i was um i mean i've always had like a pretty adversarial relationship to to audiences and i
Guest:The fact is, most of the time I was opening for other people, which is kind of like... Oh, so you thought they were just there placating you.
Guest:That's like a hurdle on top of a hurdle.
Guest:And this was in Seattle?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I mean, I was mostly playing... That stuff really... I moved to Seattle when I was 21.
Guest:And I was doing... When I wasn't...
Guest:like donating plasma and whatever.
Guest:I was playing shows.
Marc:But you didn't get strung out.
Guest:No.
Marc:That wasn't your bag?
Guest:No.
Guest:That's good.
Guest:I mean, I wouldn't have known where to find heroin if I had wanted to.
Guest:You should thank God for that one.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:The Dodge Epo it.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Was that ever your bag?
Guest:No.
Guest:I mean, I like numbness.
Guest:I'm glad that I haven't had... No one turns you on to that.
Marc:You're lucky, dude.
Guest:I'm sure it's great.
Guest:But you're lucky.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, definitely.
Marc:I mean, you're 21 years old in Seattle and none of those old fucking rockers said, hey, kid.
Guest:I think... You want to feel good?
Guest:Yeah, man.
Guest:I mean... Lucky.
Guest:I think... Just imagining some guy, like, popping out of a trash can.
Guest:Sure.
Marc:A guy in a tree.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:I mean, I like numb... I like...
Guest:i like numbness i definitely you know i i i enjoy like um but i mean amphetamines or or or whatever you know is like more something that i've kind of an appetite for but yeah heroin i stay up and think man i think i've missed that i think i missed that boat good and i actually don't know anyone that was not you know you know what i mean like
Guest:It wasn't your group.
Guest:I don't know any, I didn't, I don't think anyone was, I think there was, I think I caught on the, on the oscillating wave, I caught the, like the cautionary.
Marc:Oh, it was after everybody had already kicked in or died or.
Guest:That was a Seattle thing that was like.
Marc:You just missed it.
Guest:yeah i mean this was like 10 years after good after that thing by the time that i got to seattle you're lucky it was like by the time i got to seattle it was like death cab for cutie right oxys and coke the thing yeah yeah just like yeah teddy bears and you know like hard cider
Marc:So how did you when you found yourself up there now?
Marc:I mean, I mean, I understand what you're saying now as a guy who is sort of in the middle of becoming this manifestation of you.
Marc:But I mean, you must have gone out at some time with with heroes.
Marc:I mean, you must have had heroes in music that that sort of led you to believe that you could do it or that you respect it a lot.
Guest:Yeah, I was so naive when I was growing up because there was almost no cultural influence.
Marc:They wouldn't let it in?
Guest:No, no.
Guest:There was no what was referred to as secular music.
Marc:Really?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So I think it was like, I mean, it's so embarrassing, but they weren't my rules.
Guest:But around like 17 or something, there was this new stipulation that entered the...
Guest:um you know the the rule and um and it was that i was allowed to listen to secular music that had a like a spiritual theme message yeah i know exactly it's
Marc:Were you the deciding factor?
Guest:Yes.
Guest:And that's where they, so they, that's where they fucked up because they gave, because I can draw, I can draw some pretty, uh, you know, vague correlations.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:So that's how I discovered Bob Dylan because he had this album because he had blood on, uh, uh, slow train coming.
Guest:Um, and, uh, so once, so, so then, then I bought that album.
Marc:I like, um, that was your first album purchase?
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah, I established that Bob Dylan was like a Christian artist.
Guest:And that was kind of like... But they didn't know.
Marc:I mean, would they grow up in a bubble?
Guest:Your parents didn't have any sort of place to put Bob Dylan in their personal history?
Guest:I don't know what they... I think as long as it wasn't... I think the aesthetics of the music made it sort of like it wasn't on the radar or something.
Marc:Well, they were fanatics.
Yeah.
Guest:Yeah, well, I mean, they were oppressive.
Guest:At least, like, culturally, like, kind of oppressive.
Marc:Probably frightened themselves.
Guest:Yeah, I mean, I don't think they could have appreciated...
Guest:how what a death sentence like telling a kid who loves music in the way that I loved music.
Guest:I don't think they could appreciate like what a death sentence that was that I was not allowed to listen to music or whatever.
Guest:And that, you know, at that age, like that's, you know, grounds for patricide or something in my view.
Guest:So but I mean, I was, you know, I had to I used to have to
Guest:I would listen to the modern rock radio under my blanket with the stereo pressed up against my ear.
Guest:And then in the morning, I would have to make sure to change the dial back to the pro-life talk radio station.
Guest:But I mean, of course, occasionally I would forget to do that.
Guest:And it would be this whole thing.
Guest:They would check.
Guest:Really?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:yeah but i'm sorry i mean i think that like around the time of bob dylan there were like bigger problems around the house i think the problems had become larger in nature than the curation of music so it kind of went under the your siblings were younger yeah yeah they were younger yeah and they provided definitely provided it like a little bit of a smoke screen um you know pornography kind of entered the scene and that you know became kind of the new um on whose part who had the pornography um
Guest:But it was just like, I think it was just like with the advent of the internet.
Guest:Oh, so there was, right.
Guest:Combined with like adolescent signs, you know.
Guest:So all this to say, Bob Dylan, Bob Dylan snuck into bed with me.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:And I would let him out of the first floor window before my parents got up for work.
Guest:And so all that to say, my influence came or the kind of contemporary influence was I heard Damien Gerardo, who's like a Seattle singer songwriter around the same time.
Guest:And I was I didn't actually realize or I hadn't really put it together in my mind that.
Guest:this music that bob dylan was making was something that could still be done today like this this kind of i mean i was just obsessed with um that you could take a guitar and and a vocal and do this thing with it did you like his language did you like the way yeah i mean it was it was the whole it's pretty amazing the whole thing yeah like like sometimes you listen to dylan you're like holy fuck
Marc:I don't know what it is.
Guest:I mean, I know it's so, it's like everybody, everybody's got that point of reference or, or I mean, any, anybody who kind of does vaguely what I do has that point of reference.
Marc:A lot of people who don't do it either are stunned.
Marc:I mean, it's one of those things that really can't be hackneyed because, you know, every time you go back to it, you're still like, how was this delivered to this guy?
Guest:And that's an interesting point in that I think when you first hear Bob Dylan, you associate why he's great or you attribute why he's great to the sound that's coming out.
Guest:But what's really communicating is this, like, I mean, Allen Ginsberg described it as this, like...
Guest:his body became a solid pillar of air.
Guest:And it's this kind of this intangible thing that's happening.
Guest:And you just think like, well, this guy is like a real... I mean, language is going to fail me, but it's like, it's this intangible thing.
Guest:I'm not sure.
Guest:It's not like... He's a vessel.
Guest:The chords are great.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:The melodies are great.
Guest:It's a poetry vessel.
Guest:But there are a lot of great chords and a lot of great voices or whatever.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:So I think it was his original, the originality is such a hurdle because to, I mean, it's a real feat to be borrowing so heavily from, you know, I mean, his idols and still coming across as this like...
Guest:a supernaturally original, singular, individual person.
Guest:And I think that's what was really interesting to me about the idiom of guitar and voice.
Guest:What song kills you?
Guest:I mean, around that time, it was like boots of Spanish leather with God on our side just blew my...
Guest:fucking my you know of course like given where i was and just this brazenness you know and and that's a lot of brazenness with a with not a whole lot of kind of sonic you know it's not visceral it's not like yeah i was so used to um to visceral things or visceral ideas or messages or whatever being backed up by a equally visceral aesthetic or something like screen you know like like hard rock
Marc:What happened was that you realized that with just a guitar and just a voice, that transcendence was possible in a way.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It was like breaking this thing down.
Guest:I was amazed at this magic trick that you could break down musically down to this really primal, the fewest number of moving parts.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And the effect was so much more...
Guest:poignant than anything I had heard with drums and you know and that's when I like kind of stopped playing drums and started playing acoustic guitar and whatever because it was just this I mean this it was incredible it seemed pure and I think that coming back around to what you were calling assumptions about the singer-songwriter those are it's sort of a hackneyed stereotype but when you bring it back down to just sort of like I'm a guy with a guitar
Marc:then that is a pure expression of what you can do as a songwriter in a way.
Guest:Yeah, and I think, I mean, what I've enjoyed about this whole, and the first few tours I did with the Father John Misty material was just me and an acoustic guitar, and I loved getting up there, and everyone kind of sits down cross-legged, and their eyes glaze over, and you start playing the G chord, but then by the time
Guest:the second line came out of my mouth, you could see people like, what the fuck is going on here, you know?
Guest:And that, like, just as far as the lyrics were way outside the songwriter idiom, like there was nothing about, you know, train tracks or, you know, like listing off state names or, I mean, if you, you know, if you look at like,
Guest:i mean if you listen to you is there more of that list oh yeah okay there's there's a lot i mean especially now in the neo what's what's called you know neo folk or like lumineers or mom and sons and all that shit it's just there's a lot of shit about like um your brother's wisdom you like you hear that a lot
Guest:um i don't know and that i mean i don't want to go too off topic but that shit it's not like topic what you're talking about is a is a hackneyed yeah just structurally those songs compositionally those songs by those bands bear more of a resemblance to like journey than they do to like you know a folk song or something i refuse to accept that that music
Marc:is um is the like the natural evolutionary step uh in you know folk music or or whatever well i think that when you talk about like because i i think pure artifice right but because i think what happened was like dylan turned folk on its head and then you know infused it with a personal lyricism and a poetic intent that no one could ever fucking imagine was the
Guest:Norman Mailer.
Marc:But then you get someone who strips it down, like Leonard Cohen or Nick Drake, and then you see that there's a personal poetry available that can have universal meaning.
Guest:Yeah, and those people are the best case scenario.
Guest:And this happens with every art form.
Guest:I've been really interested in... I've been reading a lot of Norman Mailer lately, and I've been reading this.
Marc:That's interesting, because he's a monster cock writer.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:The cock thing.
Guest:And I actually just read Beautiful Losers.
Guest:And I realized that the only books that I like have the word cock in them.
Guest:They all have to pass the cock test.
Marc:Blood of Brodigan.
Guest:Brodigan passes the cock test.
Guest:Philip Roth passes the cock test.
Marc:He's got a huge neurotic Jewish cock.
Guest:Big fan.
Guest:Human Stain.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Did you ever read Sabbath Theater?
Guest:No.
Marc:About the bitter, radical puppeteer?
Guest:No.
Marc:It's fucking crazy.
Marc:Amazing.
Marc:It's crazy, man.
Marc:Those guys in the 70s, the literary cock of those dudes was huge.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:The Norman Mailer thing, or the...
Marc:What do you like about him, though?
Marc:Because he's a persona as well.
Guest:Yeah, well, I mean, I can talk about him specifically.
Guest:Like, what I mean about just in terms of how he relates to Mumford & Sons is that, like, there's a moment in any mode of expression or, like, particular aesthetic.
Guest:And, like, Dylan...
Guest:took folk music, which was about the collective and which was about like a better world for mankind.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:That was like the express function.
Guest:Voice of the underdog too.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Was this collective thing and turned it into this me thing, you know, which is like, this is how I feel.
Guest:And this is my worldview.
Guest:And this is, you know, what I think about things, which was, you know, heresy.
Yeah.
Guest:At the time.
Guest:And Norman Mailer did that for intellectualism.
Guest:Prior to, you know, like Barbary Shore and Deer Park and like the post-Naked and the Dead thing, the intellectual culture in America was based around these groups, you know, which I think...
Guest:in some way is like very, very valuable, like because people are held accountable, the best ideas rise to the top.
Guest:And going Maverick or something, it was really just evidence of the fact that like, your ideas weren't very good, and you couldn't get anybody on board.
Guest:And
Guest:Norman Mailer did the you know like he condemned like the the communist intellectual movement in America and and he took everything into this like me me me territory which I which you have to applaud in the short term like in the same thing with Dylan like you have to applaud that's like his their your personal creative mandate right but from that you get the fucking hippie shit and
Guest:You get like Mumford and Sons.
Guest:You get this whole culture that is then born after that.
Guest:Like the repercussions you can't control.
Guest:And it's this catch-22 where like you cannot deny that person, like a genius who is going to have an impact on the culture, his...
Guest:right just because the to do what he wants to do just because the morons uh took it and ran with it yeah but then these concentric circles start spinning out and then before you know it the only integrity only looks like uh doing like whatever you want to do and and anyone i mean you can go out onto the street and like uh i mean that's that's that that's the like in the hegemony as it exists today yeah doing what you think
Guest:is right like doing things for you because you want to do them because because it's your experience um etc is um is like the highest good yeah yeah but i mean but that you know that separates that becomes a cultural pipe pop psychology movement and we're talking about the creativity of these artists who took the who had the courage to do that initially i mean what do you think of like the grateful dead um i mean i love the great of course you got it right yeah
Marc:I mean, and also the hippie thing was also the wave crashing of the beatnik thing.
Marc:And also, you know, I think Dylan took a lot of the beatnik thing and ran with that.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:When geniuses do their own thing, it's fucking great.
Guest:But not everybody can do that to that effect.
Guest:Of course not.
Guest:And, you know, like the geniuses are doing things because they want to do them and the non-geniuses are doing them because that genius did it.
Marc:That's right.
Marc:And geniuses do them because usually they don't have a choice.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:That they're compelled.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Because they're bored.
Guest:They're there because they're under, they're underwhelmed by, by things going on around them.
Guest:And, and that the ability to kind of be on the cusp of that, you, you have to be like pretty prescient.
Marc:It sounds like though, to me that like, you know, even in talking to you briefly at the sub pop thing that at some point you had, you know, a fairly tangible personal fucking like,
Marc:mind blow up in terms of like, you know, where you were at in your life, you know, what you were doing creatively.
Marc:I mean, to change your name and also to be, and I know you're very self-aware and a little, you know, sort of volatile.
Marc:And I only know that because like I tried to get your Twitter name and you're like, oh no, I'm done with that.
Marc:That to me revealed somebody is like, I'm going to erase that part of the identity is not functioning anymore.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Right.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:But you do that.
Marc:You check yourself.
Marc:You're like, well, this seems like a good idea.
Marc:And then what the fuck was I thinking?
Marc:And why do I need to put that?
Marc:There's a constant questioning going on.
Marc:So you're in a band, the Fleet Foxes, which became sort of a mainstay among a certain crew of people early on.
Marc:There was a sound happening.
Guest:Robin was pretty out on his own thing.
Guest:And I also don't include... I think Robin...
Guest:Robin had like a great thing going that other people rightfully wanted to emulate but just couldn't do it because they're not Robin.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And he's like... That thing really... I mean, that thing really kind of came out of nowhere, I think.
Marc:How did you get aligned with that, though?
Marc:You were doing your sad music and fighting your parents and God.
Guest:Well, I joined Fleet Foxes when I was nine.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I mean, that was...
Guest:I got involved because it didn't work out with their original drummer.
Guest:And I can sing and can play drums and had a beard.
Guest:And was more or less genetically engineered to be in that band.
Guest:And I was working construction at the time.
Guest:And I think it was kind of the first...
Guest:Yeah, I don't know.
Guest:I was pretty beat down around that time.
Guest:And I'm afforded the luxury of parsing, you know, like the type of things we're talking about as far as creativity and integrity just by working construction.
Marc:What other jobs did you have?
Guest:Dishwasher.
Guest:I mean, dishwasher.
Guest:Musician jobs.
Guest:Plasma.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Working in a bakery.
Guest:That must have been nice.
Guest:The bakery's nice.
Guest:I loved the bakery.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I used to like record in there.
Guest:I mean.
Marc:You play music in the bakery?
Marc:After hours kind of deal?
Guest:Well, I'd have to be there at like 4.30.
Guest:So I would go, I would, you know, like drink until two and then like take the bus over and like record for a couple hours and then start working.
Marc:Working the dough?
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Were you working the dough?
Guest:Figuratively and literally.
Guest:No, but that's a bit... I like food work, don't you?
Guest:Yeah, sure.
Guest:Put your hands in the dough.
Guest:Yeah, no, I love anything where you can see the...
Guest:where where there's like uh an obvious kind of cause and effect love it to your job i can look at my muffins those are the kind of jobs i can do which is why dishwashing is my favorite job yeah and um they're clean yeah look it was dirty now it's clean i'm the best and i get that feeling even when i'm just putting stuff in a washing machine yeah like when i take stuff out of a washer i'm like look what i did yeah i but i can't work towards some greater like um as the immediate goal or something yeah yeah
Guest:But yeah, so anyway, all to say that like my concerns were like far less ephemeral around that time.
Guest:And I was just like, yes, please.
Guest:Anything other than this, dear God.
Marc:Where's the drum set?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I also really liked the band and the dudes were friends of mine.
Guest:And so it was like a no brainer.
Guest:But I do think that I overestimated my interest in being a drummer in a band.
Marc:Because you were actually a singer.
Marc:You were a guy who wrote his own stuff and sat there with a guitar and sang.
Guest:Yeah, and I thought, well, this is great.
Guest:I can do this, and then I can make my own music that no one likes in my spare time.
Guest:But...
Guest:You know, there's, I think after a year or so of that, I started to realize that I was a total narcissist and that I'm really only interested in, I mean, not necessarily technically a narcissist, but... Self-centered.
Guest:But the only thing, I was having this conversation with someone the other night about like the
Guest:you know, how taboo the word selfish is, but...
Marc:And narcissist is also overused.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Narcissism is when there's narcissism and then there's solipism.
Guest:Well, narcissism really.
Guest:I think it's solipsist.
Marc:Pathological narcissism is frightening.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Being narcissistic is usually just being self-centered.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But I just realized that I have to be working for my own purpose.
Guest:Vision.
Guest:I'm a shitty band member.
Guest:I'm just not a good band member.
Guest:I'm better at being... I was less shitty at being my own thing.
Marc:Well, how did that manifest itself?
Guest:oh just all it's just like grumpiness throwing drumsticks yeah i mean no i i was i i wasn't a total tyrant but i was just like really unhappy you know and and i and did you bring everyone else down i mean i think we were all bringing one another down yeah i don't think i think it would have been difficult to parse where the um jacob's ladder of bringing down like the band and ended yeah are you guys friends now
Guest:Yeah, yeah, definitely.
Guest:Oh, yeah?
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:So whatever happened, it worked out?
Guest:Yeah, I mean, I think... Yeah, I mean, it's fine, you know?
Guest:Like, it's music.
Marc:Did the time in that band influence you in a positive way, though?
Marc:I mean, in the big picture?
Guest:I think it helped clarify certain things for me.
Guest:The whole Meltdown thing was very much based in...
Guest:the fact that I had pretty much spent the last 12 years, like, obsessing over Josh Tillman, the songwriter, the singer-songwriter, and failing to recognize that I was anything outside of, like, that my value or that my self-worth was entirely...
Guest:tethered to my success or lack thereof um as a as a songwriter or or as a you know musician or something it was this um i was really afraid to i think very really afraid to face myself um and and what i actually was for a long time i just wanted to be this other thing and i was like if i can just be this other thing
Guest:and um but this when you were a drummer so no this is like you know at starting starting at age 20 you know okay something like yeah i mean i spent my 22nd birthday under under a blanket like crying because brian wilson had made pet sounds when he was 22 and um so you had you were hard on this like obsession right why haven't i done my masterpiece
Guest:Yeah, it was just, you know, in rock... I mean, even by the time I joined Fleet Foxes, I was like 150 in rock years, you know?
Guest:Like, I was like 27 or 28 or something.
Guest:So you thought your whole... It was like game over, yeah.
Marc:You thought it was all getting away from you.
Guest:Yeah, I mean, I just thought it was... I mean, it wasn't that I was a...
Guest:It wasn't so much that I had failed, it was that my failure meant that I was worthless, you know, or something.
Marc:Well, there becomes, like, as an artist... Because there is a distinction.
Marc:Yeah, but as an artist, you know, there are certain people you use as a barometer for your success.
Marc:And, you know, if you respect geniuses and you respect, you know, masterpieces, there's that part of you...
Marc:But the sad part, it's one thing because you were doing the work, but there's also the other part of not just achieving what you want to as a person, but that realization that when you live in Seattle or you're in a band long enough, you see the dudes who are 45 and did not make the cut and are still out there trying to do it.
Marc:And then that part of you that thinks like, I can't be that guy.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Some of me wanted to be like my what I wanted was so I mean, I wanted to be like a like for a long time.
Guest:I I wanted to there was there's a whole kind of like echelon of songwriters like Mark Lanigan or Richard Buckner.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:In some respect, like, you know, Damien or, and you go back further, like Townes Van Sand or Nick Drake or whatever, like these guys who just, who operated on the fringes and they can't say, you know, you can't really say that they had, I think most of those people feel somewhat thwarted or something, but to... Some of them feel dead.
Guest:But the prize for those guys is that there are little...
Guest:shit kickers like me out there who think that they are like gods among us yeah you know right and that's like the that is the the payoff and i think that that was i mean when i was really young i mean it's so embarrassing to admit all this shit but you know like when i was um in my like early 20s like that was the height that was like the height of what you um what what i could be and i think that that was the you know the beginning of
Marc:To be an on the fringes genius, you know, respected by the few, but appreciated by history.
Guest:But that's not me, man.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And I think that that was sort of... Yeah, exactly.
Guest:And I think that that was sort of part of the strangling Neil Young shit or whatever is just this like...
Guest:i i don't i don't know if i'm that guy and i don't and i don't uh a part of it is just outgrowing your uh the appetites of your youth but also but also it has to do with what we were talking about before you can't manufacture that guy no like you're gonna see i think what you're saying and i wasn't trying to manufacture it but i but i but i do see this but i did see this thing in me where it's like at best
Guest:Because I didn't have to try very hard to manifest.
Guest:My sensibilities and everything were aligned and it was just... And I was drawn to those people in the first place because I saw, you know, whatever, like myself and what I do in them.
Guest:But I think I was just short-selling, you know, it's like short-selling myself or something.
Guest:I have this different... I really feel like what I'm doing now musically...
Guest:when I played this record for people for the first time, people who have heard all 25 of my Jay Tillman albums, the thing that everybody kept saying was like, this sounds like you.
Guest:And that was...
Guest:I really wanted people to hear my doom and gloom music or this music that I was making and say, it sounds like you, you tortured, brilliant...
Guest:You know, like a drunken wizard.
Guest:The affectation.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But it's this self-curation that had to go.
Guest:And that's a lot of what this was about.
Guest:So, I mean, I had this realization where it was like, Josh Tillman did not come out of the womb like a singer-songwriter.
Guest:There is a man here.
Guest:And that person has to be reckoned with.
Guest:And that was part of the...
Guest:Leaving Seattle and writing the this novel that's in the album and kind of doing this like Jungian style self myth.
Guest:I wrote this like kind of huge self mythology of Father John.
Guest:No, I mean, Father John Misty, there was no, and it shall be named moment.
Guest:That was like me sitting in a bathrobe and my roommate at the time being like, what are you going to call this thing?
Guest:And me being like, well, I don't think it's going to be Jay Tillman.
Guest:He's like, what do you want to call it?
Guest:And I was like...
Guest:father john misty and he was like no and i was like yes because it's i mean it's just the the whole the whole like function of or purpose of that name is that it's just some dumb shit that i would call myself like it's but my sense of humor and it looks hilarious on a marquee like it looks like a yeah no christian science puppet show when people started bothering me to have you on i was like is this a novelty act
Marc:And then I look you up and I saw a picture.
Marc:I didn't even listen to the music.
Marc:I'm like, what is this dude doing?
Guest:Right, right.
Guest:Because I get off on that baffling people.
Guest:I'm into that shit.
Marc:Sure, but the music doesn't play that way.
Marc:And Dima, who did your cover art, he's done a lot of art for me.
Guest:He's a genius.
Marc:Absolutely.
Marc:but let's talk about this self mythologizing because like you felt that after all your aspirations and all your hero worship and all your desire to be in the pantheon of these, you know, these drunken wizards and these poets and these lost artists somehow broke away.
Marc:But yet you still took something from the Dylan playbook or something from an artistic playbook where you're like, if I'm going to start as, as wide open, if I'm going to, if I'm going to be born again, then, then I must make a story.
Yeah.
Guest:Well, the book that's in the... This was not related to... When I wrote that, I had no plans.
Guest:None of these songs were written.
Guest:I had no plans of doing this thing.
Guest:The thought of picking up an acoustic guitar made me nauseous at the time.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:The idea, and when I say self-mythology, anytime you truncate your life story and curate it, and if you read it, it's funny, it's deeply absurd, it's like highly fictionalized, it's just pure liberty.
Right.
Guest:It, uh, that was, that was what, that was what I keep.
Guest:That's what I've been saying with this thing.
Guest:Part of the narrative is really that like, as I was writing this book, um, I, uh,
Guest:I kind of saw my... I saw myself... Like, I had all this birth to be funny, to be tragic.
Guest:I had way more words to work with.
Guest:Like, it's a completely different... You had a little distance, too.
Guest:Yeah, it's a completely different medium.
Guest:And I didn't give a shit if it was good or not.
Guest:Like, it did not matter.
Guest:I did not want to be, like, a great novelist.
Guest:I did not... There was no lust for success.
Guest:What compelled you to write it?
Guest:Just that I...
Guest:Man, I don't know.
Guest:I mean, I think a lot of it was just...
Guest:You know, sometimes you're looking for something before you're really conscious of the fact that you're looking for it or not.
Marc:Isn't that amazing about writing that, like, if you fight it, even if you fight it, but once you get into the groove of it and you start writing, you do discover things.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:It's fucking amazing.
Guest:Yeah, I started, well, I had this, the book started, I had this idea because I had gone on this, I had gone on this, like, I actually started writing it like a couple hours after the naked in a tree thing.
Guest:I was in Big Sur.
Marc:That was the beginning.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I came back down and I started writing a sales pitch for an existential video game called Bed Bug Mountain.
Guest:And I was sort of making fun of what I had just been doing, which was like looking for meaning or whatever on a mountain.
Guest:Because you're on shrooms.
Guest:Yeah, I just thought it was funny.
Guest:And so I started kind of writing about the nature of just how selfish or basically the way the human beings commodify nature.
Guest:And we look at a mountain and we think that it's...
Guest:little else than a symbol for like distinctly male character traits of like perseverance and um you know whatever and i you know it's just like just really having fun doing it yeah and when i got about 30 pages in i was like was it a maybe it's a short story and then by the time i got 60 pages in i was like uh maybe it's a book and then it just kept it kept going and going um and uh
Guest:I just, I recognized myself in it.
Guest:Like my background was in it.
Guest:My sense of humor was in it.
Guest:My personal history was in it.
Guest:My philosophy, you know, was in it.
Marc:So you actually found yourself.
Guest:yeah yeah and it was in this like you know like artifact this tangible thing like oh here it's on paper i made i made this and it it actually sounds like me and and that um after that you know it's like well here's my here's my narrative voice yeah like this is my this is what i sound like um is there it's like a bible of you yeah pretty much yeah and wait how much how much was it how much mushrooms were you doing
Guest:I mean, around that time it was like pretty heroic, dosey, like every few days or something and then kind of just nibbling on stuff in between.
Marc:How much do you attribute to that?
Marc:What do you get out of that?
Marc:Get jangly, get like, you know, sort of shifts the perspective?
Guest:yeah i mean mushroom you know this the conversation about mushrooms like america generally people lump all you know mushrooms in with like well they're drugs and drugs are like cocaine weed heroin mushrooms speed whatever and um
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:There's some... I mean, I can't explain it.
Guest:I've read some... You know, I've read, like, Terrence McKenna stuff.
Guest:I mean... But, I mean... You know, Aljus Huxley, John Lennon, like... Things oscillated at a different speed, I think.
Guest:Yeah, they do.
Guest:And I can only speak for what effect they had on me.
Guest:And the effect... The effect that they had on me was...
Guest:to laugh, pretty much.
Guest:And I think a lot of people...
Guest:I think that a lot of people assume that when you have, for lack of a better word, a spiritual experience or a moment of insight or something, the appropriate response is this kind of sober moment of solemnity or something.
Guest:And I think, for me, Mushrooms was this reinforcement
Guest:realization of the fact that I have always, like, laughed in the face of, like, you know, that my... I grew up around these, like, big, heavy, important ideas that were supposed to inspire awe and devotion and obedience and whatever.
Guest:And my instinct around those things was always, like, satire and laughter and, you know, mischief and to undermine it and whatever.
Guest:and mushrooms um you know it's like i would was laughing at myself you know it's just like laughing and you needed the absurdity yeah i very much needed that at that time i i think that they're like i find them very instructful did you find that like because you seem like a guy that like if you let your head get away with you you know you might get you know self-important
Guest:Yeah, I mean, I've been accused of that.
Marc:And I imagine that mushrooms, at the right time, probably took a big burden off your back and enabled you to not take yourself so fucking seriously.
Guest:Yeah, I think that that was... I think that it was like a little nudge in the direction of...
Guest:You've been looking over here for purpose and inspiration for a really long time.
Guest:Maybe that's really funny.
Guest:Maybe that's a huge joke that you've been looking over in this little corner for so long while all these really obvious things about you have all been over here completely unexplored for so long.
Guest:And it's also important to note that
Guest:my musical my uh you know like inspiration or talent at a songwriter has moved at a different clip than my personal growth or or whatever and like uh even when i was doing these jay tillman shows yeah you know i'd do a song do a couple songs and then i would like kind of like tell a joke or or like whatever it like or just talk and and um
Guest:Those in-between song moments, people would kind of light up and laugh and be engaged.
Guest:They're probably relieved.
Guest:And then I would go back to a song and then they would glaze back over.
Guest:And I had this awful fucking realization at some point that I was better at the in-between song stuff than I was at the song song.
Guest:Stuff itself.
Guest:And it was I mean, that was brutal.
Guest:It's like, what do I do with this information?
Guest:Like, I'm not like a comic by or whatever.
Guest:Like what?
Guest:I still want to sing.
Guest:I still want to.
Guest:But I'm a journeyman.
Marc:Right.
Marc:But it seems to me that like ultimately what you're talking about is you'd gotten into this groove where you're taking yourself pretty fucking seriously.
Marc:And there was an effect that you were trying to get with your art and with your expression.
Marc:And that became heavy.
Marc:And, you know, honoring that thing was draining you.
Marc:So, like, whatever you made the break from the foxes and, you know, started to sort of explore your mind and take the mushrooms, it lightened the load a little bit and gave you some space.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Mushrooms, like, you know, it was a nice little... It was nice that that came along at the time that it did.
Guest:Anytime you even mention that that was involved, it ends up kind of taking up a lot of space in the discussion.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Well, that's because people read into it, not unlike Dylan, not unlike a guy with a guitar.
Marc:They, you know.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:This has been some, you know, I don't do any more drugs than most of my contemporaries, you know, and they're all pretty.
Guest:It's all pretty soft.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Social, whatever shit.
Guest:But.
Guest:With the music, the fact that I am interested in including all of my humanity or putting everything into the songs...
Guest:That means that I want those like drugs to be in there.
Guest:I want sex to be in like whatever sex there is in there.
Guest:I want religion to be in there.
Guest:I want everything to be in there.
Guest:Unfortunately, drugs take up a lot of real estate in people's minds.
Guest:Just when they hear that.
Guest:When they see a reference to it, whatever, they assume that by virtue of being there, it's so important to you that it has to be.
Guest:But, I mean, I'm just interested in including, like, real details.
Guest:It's just one of the things.
Guest:It's just one of the things.
Guest:It's one of many things.
Marc:Yeah, you move through it.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:It seems like people want to define people by that.
Guest:Yeah, or that...
Guest:Yeah, I mean, there's always... I mean, there's an undercurrent of contempt.
Guest:Judgment.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:He's a drug guy.
Guest:Yeah, exactly.
Guest:Like, how do you... Like, what's the... You know, and people also have this, like, pretty cartoonish idea of its involvement and that it's like, you know, I, like, eat a bunch of shrooms and then sit down with a guitar and write these weird songs.
Guest:I mean, I don't know.
Guest:I mean, I...
Marc:Everything becomes a tool, and I think people don't understand it because they also want to mythologize somebody they like or that they don't like.
Marc:They want to box people in.
Marc:I mean, at any given point in time, like these great examples of even somebody like Robert Crumb, who was not a drug guy, and then he takes acid, and then it just breaks open this fucking space in his brain, and he didn't get the feeling that he spent his life doing acid or anything else.
Marc:It just gave him some more real estate.
Guest:Yeah, and that's not, you know, mushrooms, the great thing about mushrooms is that they do not have a uniform effect.
Guest:Like cocaine, anybody, when you are on cocaine, cocaine takes, like, you know.
Marc:Yeah, cocaine has a uniform effect.
Guest:You become cocaine.
Marc:It will destroy your life.
Guest:Yeah, like you... I have this thing where it's like, give me five days and cocaine, I will ruin my life.
Guest:I could ruin my life in five days, like five days from now.
Guest:But yeah, I mean, acid or mushrooms, it's a very different story.
Guest:Like, you know, it's... I don't want to sound like...
Guest:want to dig myself even deeper but it is a dialogue you know between you and this you know whatever it is like martian spore yeah and uh i mean what i really fucking hate is when you hear squares do this whole
Guest:I'm so dark already.
Guest:I have so many problems already.
Guest:Like, I just, I don't think that'd be a good idea or whatever.
Guest:It's like, that means you probably should face some things.
Guest:Like, and this is like a tool.
Marc:But then you have to ask yourself, well, do I want to hang out with that person while they face these things?
Marc:No, certainly not.
Marc:I have seen plenty of people that were tightly wrapped, you know, get on a hallucinogen and then just fucking come unraveled completely.
Marc:And there's no benefit to it whatsoever.
Guest:No, right, right, right.
Guest:I'm just being glib.
Guest:No, I know what you mean.
Guest:It's a fear thing.
Guest:But I think that, yeah, it's work.
Guest:It really is work.
Guest:And the work thing is typically more associated with ayahuasca or something like that.
Guest:That's real.
Marc:Yeah, if you're going to go the ritual route where there are more ancient rituals to deliverance.
Guest:Yeah, but mushrooms are secular to me.
Marc:yeah no i i think you're right i think that you know you can sort of you know gauge how much you want once he gets the hang of the you know you know how much it will take to get here maybe you don't want to go all the way there but you just want to get a little jangly so you just go here and you kind of percolate along i was not into the ayahuasca thing particularly it's kind of a violent trip right i mean it's there's some puking involved and
Guest:Yeah, the trip itself is, you know, was good.
Guest:And it is like the sort of thing where it's like as much as you put into it, you get out or whatever.
Guest:But just like kind of the culture around it.
Guest:I was just like, are you joking?
Guest:Like I'm sitting with like 12 people and like fairy t-shirts and a yurt, you know.
Marc:Can I just do this in my car?
Guest:Which I ended up doing.
Guest:I ended up like, I got to get out of here, man.
Guest:Like running into the woods.
Guest:And I ran and I went and found my van.
Guest:And I was like, I got to change my shirt.
Guest:And I looked in my van and there was like this Dallas Cowboys t-shirt in there that I'd never seen before.
Guest:And I put it on and then I wore it for the next two years.
Marc:That's what you brought back.
Marc:Pretty much.
Marc:This is what saved me.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:This is what brought me back.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Well, you want to play some songs?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Do you feel like it?
Guest:I'm pretty... Do you have a... Guitar?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I got a guitar.
Marc:Yeah, let me see what we can do.
Guest:I think this has that...
Guest:perfect all right I ran down the road pants down to my knees screaming please come help me that Canadian shaman gave a little too much to me I'm writing a novel why oh because it's never been done before
Guest:Well, the first house that I saw I rolled a house up on the door I told the people who lived there they had to get out Cause my reality is realer than yours There's no time in the present Duh And there's a black dog on the bed
Guest:So I went to the backyard naturally to burn my only clothes.
Guest:And the dog ran out and said, you can't turn nothing into nothingness with me no more.
Guest:Well, I'm no doctor.
Guest:But that my monkey might be right.
Guest:I'll be walking in my whole life.
Guest:Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh.
Guest:I rode to Malibu on a dune buggy with Neil.
Guest:He said, you're going to have to drown me down on the beach if you ever want to write the reel.
Guest:I said, I'd love to.
Guest:But young man, what was your name again?
Guest:Now everywhere I go In West Hollywood Is filled with people pretending They don't see the actress And the actress wishing that they could We could do ayahuasca Oh baby, if I wasn't holding all these drinks
Guest:now something about the way violet whips her hair or still makes me empty my pockets holding core from the corner burning 20s as if i was the mayor i don't need any new friends mama oh but i could really use something to do
Guest:Yeah, so if you're up for some time I swear you wouldn't have to be my muse
Guest:Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh,
Guest:Yeah, but people writing novels And living on amusement rides Yeah, but people writing novels And living lives that look like mine
Marc:Thanks, man.
Marc:Thanks for doing the show.
Marc:Hell yeah.
Marc:That's our show, folks.
Marc:I hope you enjoyed that.
Marc:I thought he was an interesting guy.
Marc:We went at it.
Marc:He's a thinker.
Marc:Processing things.
Marc:Talented fellow.
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Marc:A lot of stuff there.
Marc:There's going to be more stuff in the near future.
Marc:New Year's is coming up this Thursday.
Marc:I have an amazing conversation with the inimitable.
Marc:Is that the word?
Marc:Is that a word?
Marc:The amazing raconteur and force of nature that is Artie Lang will be our first episode of the new year.
Marc:Please be careful on New Year's.
Marc:It's overrated.
Marc:Don't put yourself at the whims of others who don't have control of themselves if you can.
Marc:I'm advising perhaps stay at home with somebody you care about and chime in the New Year and ease into it that way and lower your expectations.
Marc:Acknowledge the transition, but lower your expectations.
Marc:Ultimately, it's just another day and hopefully just another year for all of us.
Marc:So be careful.
Marc:Deaf Black Cat is fine.
Marc:Scaredy Cat is fine.
Marc:Monkey and Boomer are fine.
Marc:I'm okay.
Marc:I'm going to listen to Black Sabbath.
Marc:Boomer lives!