Rediscovering Authenticity in the Age of Machine Generated Art

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Goal of this podcast is to share original insights and conversations on the habits,

mindsets, and strategies of elite performers that produce exceptional results. Let's go.

I have some questions about the business of music, but I also want to talk about creativity,

your process, and all that kind of stuff too.

I'm willing to engage anything, and wherever you want to start, wherever you're comfortable, start there. And I can do this for you.
I love it. I love it.
Chico Marx. You know, it's funny.

I know if I practiced at anything, you'd probably be okay,

but it's tough when you like find out you're just not inclined for something. And, uh, I love creativity.
I love creating. I've been a writer and I've done a tremendous amount on YouTube and I just love creating and telling stories and have found over and over and over again that I am sure I could improve if I practiced, but there is not a native musical bone in my entire body.
So I, I love, uh, I love, I just find people who that is something that at least they have a propensity for incredibly, obviously your career is storied and, and all that. I don't mean it to be so cavalier about it, but I do find it so intriguing.
Isn't it fascinating that that's actually, I mean, I find it shocking that there's actually a difference in, you know, that humans can be that different in the way they're wired, you know? I mean, my dad was a musician, my sister was a musician, all my relatives, My mom, we used to say mom played the iron she was like a maestro and she had no musicality in her whatsoever and it always struck me as odd it's like how can this not what is this and so I think it helps maybe helps shine a little light on the idea that we're very different creatures from different creatures from one another, even though we all need the same food, water, sleep, you know, um, stuff, but we're very different. I couldn't agree with you more.
And I think a lot of why I do this podcast, it's, you know, I, I've been doing it for a long time. Uh, what I've settled on and the reason I keep coming back, the reason that I love doing it, the reason I love having these conversations is I am intoxicated by independent thinking.
And, you know, that doesn't necessarily mean contrarian or off the wall or obscure or whatever, just people who have found something that allows them to be uniquely them and dial in on it. You know, it's funny.
I was listening to a show the other day. And the guy's name is Michael Malice.
And he was, he was talking about being at parties. And so there's two types of people at parties.
You sit down next to somebody. The first type of person sits down next to somebody, asks them what they do.
And they say they handle hamsters. And the first type of person hears that and says, this guy's a weirdo gets up and walks away.
Right. Second type of person sits down and goes, tell me everything about hamsters.
And I have found myself to be that second type of person i i could care less what you're interested in i just am interested in people who love something and are passionate about it i'm with you yeah i'm with you on that you know yeah so um being that i'm a terrible interviewer i'm gonna start what in what is probably an odd place. I mean, how would you have this gig if you were any good at it? Yeah, right.
Exactly. I want to start in a place that just something that intrigued me and I was very interested in.
I was researching your new album that's coming out. And in there, you were talking about it.
And you said you wanted the sound to have a 70s sound. So you put rules or you didn't use this word.
This is mine. Guardrails around what instruments you could use.
And I was intrigued by the idea of rules helping you be more creative. because I don't know if people who would not classically call themselves created would necessarily be able to connect those two things.
Wow. I think because I've grown up with this stuff and done it since I was a very little boy and even played with technology from when I was a very little boy, anecdotally, because I would go to music stores with my father while he picked up saxophone reeds and I'd play the piano and some music store owner would have ordered some synthesizer that nobody knew anything about.
and he'd hear me play and he'd say, do you think you could figure this out? And I was nine, 10. And I'd say, I think I could.
He said, okay, take it home and bring it out. Because I don't know how to sell it because I don't know what it does.
So I was playing with technology far beyond anything I could even consider from a very young age. And technology and its evolution has a big, big effect on how you do things.
I'm a practicer. I've practiced the piano.
You know, my sister Mary said when the 10,000 hour thing came, she said, you had your 10,000 hours before you were nine years old. And I probably did, you know, just sitting at that little piano, which is sitting right there, the one I actually grew up with.
And so the technology and the work and all of it, I've been able to qualify in some ways the effects it has on the process. And when you go to modern technology, it affords many things.
But in doing so, it eliminates certain demands that when the demand is put on you, you have to straighten your back a little bit more. And so in that, this record, I didn't use any modern synthesizers and I didn't use any sequencing that didn't exist in the 70s.
And I just drew a line there, you know. So if it didn't exist then, I didn't use it.
And that's what that statement is. So there's no polyphonic synthesizers.
There's electric pianos and things that existed then. And the one place I took a little bit of liberty is that there was modular synthesis.

And so I have sitting behind you, I have a Buchla synthesizer, which was made in the early 70s. And I didn't have one then.
And this is a reissue of it. But I used it because it did exist.
I didn't use it very much, but I did use it. so i think that those things help define um a style but also a process you know if you've got a computer that's doing what computers do now you don't have 70s music because they didn't have computers in the 70s yeah and it's not's not a judgment one way or another.
It's just a, you know. So I have indoctrinated my kids to what I would call good music from a very early age, which I pretty much say that good music ended like in 2005.
Now, granted, there have been good songs and good albums since then but i i what i share with them is the idea that like when you used to hear a clap in many cases it was two boards slapping together next to a microphone right or uh they were finding a way to tap the side of a drum to get a unique sound that the artist could hear in their head but didn't necessarily have a way to make and i said you hear such unique sounds integrations um that the the the forcing function was the the limitation was the forcing function for the creativity and that if you wanted to be more dynamic, you literally had to invent ways to make the sounds more dynamic, which is why I believe we connect at a soulful level so much more to music that was created in that way. Then let me put, I want to, you know, a four beat over a trap sound with a heavy bass hook 34 seconds in like beep boop.
And then it like comes up with 17 different iterations. And now I try to apply it like a voice track to it.
Not that you can't create great, you know, good music in that way. But I feel many ways like the ease in some ways.
And I don't mean to say that anything anyone does is easy. I'm not trying to diminish that.
You don't have to be politically correct or careful. Yeah.
Yeah. No.
And you won't even want to know about it. Yeah.
So, I mean, you know, I, uh, there's no requirement to being politically correct, nor am I trying to be. I just, I know that people that are in music today, they are working on, I don't mean to, but that being said, there is a, I was listening.
I'll give you an example. The other night, um, kids were doing something and, uh, I threw on, um, Pink Floyd's dark side of the moon documentary.
And, uh, I've seen it half a half a dozen times i get if it's on or i catch it or whatever i literally can't turn it off the music captures me the way they talk about it how you know and i forget his name but the saxophonist they brought in who plays in there was a friend of a friend of a friend and the only reason he's on the track is because he was the only guy available who could literally come at the time when they needed to record them. And then that unique sound comes from that unique individual in that moment, simply because he's the only guy that was available.
And you're like, you're like, Holy shit. Like these are, there's so much soul in it.
And am I wrong? I guess, where do you stand on that? Like, have we, has a lot of music of music not all because there's a lot of people who whatever but do we feel in general like there was so much soul in that old music i miss it i guess is the best way to put it well i i think um i'll give you an interesting anecdote and then we'll and then we'll go yeah is this camera It's doing all kind of zooming. Which is perfectly fine.
Okay. Yeah.
I'm glad that it's involved. I'd hate to feel that the zeros and ones are being left out.
We know how offended they get. Just ironically, you mentioned that this record that I did, and I haven't really talked about this at all.
It's the first time I'm going to talk about it. I was working on the Dark Side of the Moon redo with Roger, and I backed out of it for my own reasons.
But I did a record. I did Amused to Death with Roger Waters in the early 90s, and I worked on Momentary Lapse of Reason with Gilmore.
And I feel the same way you do about Pink Floyd. I was a little boy, you know, 12 years old when Dark Side of the Moon came out, or 13 years old.
And it was my whole world, too. And the architecture and the things that just happen because that's the way they happen.
And whatever those things are, whether it's Floyd or anything where you don't necessarily have full control over it. You get a bunch of people in the room.
One of my favorite Led Zeppelin tracks is Since I've Been Loving You from Led Zeppelin III. And the bass drum pedal has a squeak in it.
And if you have a decent stereo, you can hear the squeak. But they were like, well, but that was the performance, squeak or no squeak.
I think that that's vital. And I think that my, I have a funny little thing that I came up with when I used to do some songwriting clinics.
And I have my metal keyboard here so I can show you. I would do this and I'd ask people what it is, and I'd do it again, and some people with good pitch would say it's E.
I'd say, what if I change one note? And everybody goes Beethoven. And you go, okay, so the most recognizable musical motif, doesn't matter what you play it on, is from one note.
It's one note that gives you this thing. And that to me is far more important than what it's done on or how it's done or who does it.
It's the content is form should follow it. And so if you're creating sincere content it doesn't matter how you do it but with technology being what it is it creates content for you and then you kind of apply yourself to it and it's a modern age and i understand things change and I'm good with that but I'm not going to listen to it yeah for any reason I would have no reason to listen to any of it and that's not a bias it's just my choice yeah why would I and and so over the years when people say you have to hear this occasionally occasionally I'll listen and I don't, I realize

I really don't have to hear it, I don't have to hear it. Yeah.
Because for me it's in the, it's in the composition and the performance and the poetry and the, and this thing that's organic and it people are composing and they're performing and they're writing lyrics and they're rhyming things and so hence poetry.

But you have to connect to it. Yeah.
You have to connect to it. And if you don't, I'm curious why you're 2005.
I cut off way earlier than 2005. So I constitute certain artists in the rap and R&B genre as pulling, they pulled some of it through to about that far.
That might be a little far, but, you know, that's about for me when it went from guys who were, you know, so, you know, maybe take that R&B phase in the late eighties to the early, very early two thousands. There were guys who were creating music, whether you appreciate the rap and hip hop genre or not, which I know a lot of people who are listening don't, um, they hate when I talk about it, but, uh, uh, cause no one understands how I can appreciate Wu Tang, um, triumph as much as I appreciate a dark side of the moon.
Like, how is that even possible? Is that how I have people say? And it's like, to me, there's, there are people who are creating it because they have to create it. And there are people who have decided that I'm going to make money creating music.
And those are two different things. And also I don't mean mean to interrupt, but I think it's a note that to me, it's almost a science.
And I believe it really is to some degree that we form the human beings form your musical fingerprint, if you will, or your musical reflection from about the ages of nine to about 15. And that's it.
Yeah. So what you listen to from age nine to 15 will always be your portfolio that you'll bring with you when you listen to music.
And if there's nothing in it that doesn't touch something that existed in that period, you not going to care about it at all yeah you know for me as a as a musician my whole life and and i and i loved studying music and i do still study but i still there's enough in books that were written in the renaissance age that i don't understand yet yeah so i'm good with learning more about music and not necessarily studying pop culture i i never studied pop culture yeah um but i think that that's a big part of it if it if it if you weren't a teenager absorbing this stuff in your climate and your peer group you don't relate to. You know, I mean, it sounds a little lame, but it's true.
No, I think that makes a lot of sense. I will say that my eyes were not opened to classical until I was much older.
And I love classical music and have dive deeper into it, um, I find it to be, you know, I, I love classical. That was something I found later in life, but, but I think it all comes back to, I don't know.
I, I think that people listen to music for different reasons. And I think it depends on why you're listening to it.
Unfortunately today, my take is that the current, the current mainstream music that is shoved down would be if i didn't allow them if i didn't introduce them to what i would call good music much earlier that would be shoved down my kids throats um is music just to numb you from whatever you're doing it's trap beats and hooks and in and just getting you through to the next section of the song. It's nonsensical.
Half of it you can't even understand. You can tell that it's all generated by a computer.
Not a single person's fingers bled to make it happen. I don't know how you can connect to that.
And frankly, I don't think

that people do. Like when I see people who will send me songs that are, that are, you know, current or, or on the pop charts or whatever now, they're not sending me the song going like this song is going to change your life.
Yet when someone sends you, you know, when someone sends you Led Zeppelin or Pink Floyd or, or Nirvana or, you know, early, early hip hop, Notorious, Tupac, if you're in that age group, right? Like when they say those songs, some of those songs would literally change you. Like they would, they would hit you and you would be like, I can never unhear that.
Like that is now in me. You know what I mean? Like I can't unhear that song, the way that person delivered it, how they did it.
Um, and, and, and I'm going to finish this statement with something that just absolutely, it blew me away understanding that these are the times I think it's what's coming and I hate it. Uh, Alicia Keys at the Super Bowl, right? She misses her mark.
She misses her mark on a lyric and she misses it and she catches herself. It's a tiny little hiccup in an amazing performance that if it were live, no one would have even thought about it.
But you cannot find it online. They digitally changed the performance so that she hits it perfectly on mark.
And you can't find it online. They, they, they changed the recording and in the only time, and you're like, what a shame.
Like, cause to me that imperfection to a, to a digital marketer or a big company like the NFL or whatever, they're seeing that as an imperfection. And I'm going, that makes the performance unique.
It didn't ruin the song. It's Alicia Keys.
She's fucking brilliant. Like, what are you talking about? Yeah.
I mean, I, you know, I spent a lot of years with Leonard Cohen a lot, working with Leonard all the time. And there was something that we were working on and there was something that wasn't quite right in it.
And I pointed it out and he said, the beauty's in the flaws. And it's that simple.
There was no going back or looking at it again, because that's the truth of it is the beauty is in the thing. That's not perfect.
Yeah. And if, put everything on the grid, pitch and time,

have fun listening, but you're not listening to anything.

There's nothing there.

Yeah, I agree.

Some sense of rhythm and some sense of, I don't know, you know.

But look, things change.

And depending on what you're interested in doing, you can focus on it and look at it or you don't have to look at it at all. And I guess that's the beauty of it because I'm busy all the time trying to come up with something all the time, every day.
I don't care what other people are doing. And I don't mean that I'm indifferent to it.
I mean, I'm not interested in it. I'm interested in my own stew that I'm making and what ingredients it has in it and how I feel about it and how it tastes to me.
And it sounds a little bit like this couldn't possibly be true,

but once I really like it, I don't care what anybody else thinks.

Yeah.

At all. I don't care at all.

Not even, nothing could affect me. I don't care.

Because I'm after this, I'm after my own painting.

And once I've painted the painting,

and I feel like I've done it the best that I can, I'm satisfied with it I'm done I'm good um and I think that's what it should be if you're trying to please somebody else you're you're kind of screwed before you start so what I find very interesting and and and we deal with this regardless if we are in a purely a pure creative profession, like creating music or writing or dance or whatever. We also see this in business and entrepreneurs, and I see it all the time.
Right. So so my what I do for a living is executive coaching and startup advising.
I've been an entrepreneur for 15 years and I, um, I now try to help people who are stuck

or hitting moments or having conversations with themselves that they can't get past and try to break them free. And the thing that the thing that is often the hardest struggle to get through is when they are over in, they're stuck because they're worried about what the rest of the market is doing, right? This is the way everyone else does this part of this type of business.
Everyone here is going in this direction. And so what I would love is, and being that you've taught people how to write music and worked with up and down, up and down the chain, celebrities, all different genres.
How do you break someone free and, and what would be your advice to them or guidance to start to cultivate that mentality of like, whether you're, this is an entrepreneurial endeavor or you're leading a community program, trying to raise funds or you're art, how do you start to do exactly what you just said? See the art as it's ready when it's ready for you, and not taking in all these opinions, and most of which are completely just made up in our head, and they're not even real. That's right.
So, you know, when you said that, I get an image and I don't know why I get this image, but this is the image that came to mind. And I'm probably going to sound like I'm out of my mind, which maybe I am.
If you're going to take a race across a lake, say a kayak race, for example, when they shout go or they shoot the gun or whatever they're going to do, that's going to tell you it's time to row across the lake. If you do anything other than focus on your stroke and your breathing and the pace so that you complete the thing, if you look left or right? You're going to lose.
You're going to lose. And that's it.
So for me, if you want to stand out, and I never set out to stand out. That was not my goal.
But I did want to maintain my own musical identity.

And the way I did it was by not learning other people's music.

I don't learn other people's music.

I barely listen to other people's music.

I did when I was a kid, but I don't anymore. And I haven't for decades, really, to be honest.

I listen to some things and really almost nothing these days

because I'm busy crossing that lake and making sure I don't get distracted. And I think that you need to know what the race is.
So before the gun goes off, you look up and down and you go, he looks a little scary and well, he looks a lot stronger than me and that's a better boat than I have. But once the gun goes off, if you pay any attention to that, you don't stand a chance.
And I think, does that make sense? I think that's a very, a decent metaphor, right? It makes complete sense. I mean, there's a thing that that a great man who we've spoken to in another way a few minutes ago, I was doing a show with this man in Spain, and he said, let's do the traditional band toast.
And it was champagne all the way around, and he said, fuck them all. And out we went, you know.
And it was like, now everything, his history and all all of it makes perfect sense to me. Because you cannot be concerned with anyone else and do anything unique.
The second you absorb someone else's notion of something, you've diminished your own originality. And I know this is bad news to a lot of people.
And they don't agree with me. I don't care.
You know, it's you hold on to your identity and your beliefs. And if you can make them work for you, you'll have true success.
And if you believe you can't and you start to look at someone else, you might get somewhere, but it ain't going to last. It's not going gonna last because it's not yours you earn these things you earn them you know i probably sound like some sort of life coach i'm not a life coach i'm just you know no i no i think you're completely right i think this is the challenge of our time because social media has made comparison not just something that you have access to, but literally something

that's shoved in your face every single day. It's chronic.
Yeah. And what I find interesting, and I share this a lot with my clients and we talk about it on the podcast too, is all of the examples of people that we hold up as these pinnacles of creativity or innovation or success, all of them have these unique unfollowable journeys.
All of them. They all, when you look back on all, they did this here and this, and this would have never happened.
I mean, a big example that just, he just gave his Hall of Fame commencement speech is Tom Brady. And I listened to the speech.
I, I, I'm a lifetime Buffalo Bills fan. So rooting for Tom Brady was incredibly difficult until he left the Patriots.
Now I love him because he's, he seems like a pretty decent guy, very unique and hardworking. But when you look at his career, right?

I mean, this is a guy who was a ho-hum quarterback in college for most of his career,

didn't have great measurables.

He was never the number one on everything.

He gets drafted in the sixth round of the NFL draft.

He barely, barely makes it onto the traveling squad for the Patriots.

He sits behind a quarterback, Andrew Bledsoee who had been a perennial pro bowler. I mean, there, there were a million reasons.
This guy gives up a million reasons why he doesn't ever get to be this thing yet. He played the game in a way that no one has ever duplicated, right? This short direct the way he goes about his business.
Okay, so if you follow Tom Brady's path, right? One, that's Tom Brady's life, not your life, one. Two, the number of serendipitous moments that took place for him to have the thing that he has, you can never recreate.
So the idea, even at face value, not that you can't learn some best practices or some training tips or whatever. I mean, there's things that you can learn from people, but, but at the end of the day, I, I, I cannot agree with you more in this.
And I did this whole episode in a couple of weeks ago around, I think the fear of failure is bullshit. I think it's absolute it's marketing copy it's meant to sell you stuff i said what you're scared of is status and this is the problem i this is what i believe the problem is the reason i do not follow my art or my my what i want the reason i try to become patrick is because i'm so worried if I go down my path, right? Or, and I decide to play hip hop banjo, right? Because that's what I love doing, you know, and however that would work, right? Like, like, cause, cause if I follow that path and it's on, and it's unsuccessful at what is everyone going to say? Well, geez, you could have been a successful traveling banjo guy if you had just learned these chords and hooked up with these bands and got this agent.
And it's like, you don't want to be that thing. You want to be a hip-hop banjo guy.
So forget about what people think. Forget about the fucking status and be your own person.
But it is such a struggle for people to break free today with that. Yeah.
I mean,

I think, um, I see it only in the tiny bit that I see what the media actually contains. Cause I, I can't look at it.
Um, and I, and, and certainly reflecting back to, you know, my generation which is you a long time ago now, but everyone was completely individual. There was no, why would you want your bands to be similar? Why would you ever? And the other thing is, I think it's not okay these days for someone to be better than somebody else.
I think that's kind of, and bullshit man that's bullshit you know you need that i think i've always said that where i where i set my bar for what i wanted out of my musical life i will never get there and because of that i'm still working yeah i'm still trying i'm still experimenting i'm still searching i'm still intrigued. Yeah.
I'm still trying. I'm still experimenting.
I'm still searching.

I'm still intrigued by it because the bar is way out of my reach. Yeah.
And that's the only way to do it. And this idea that you can't have something that's greater than something else because you can offend somebody with that.
Oh, that's just sad. That's sad.
so applying this to say a lot of the people listening and i'll give people just a little bit of context the way that i do my podcast the fact that i don't just ask the next follow-up question and shut the fuck up the fact that i put a lot of context for my own life in between questions i get hate i get people to if only you did this, you'd be here, whatever, which we do pretty well. But my point in saying that is I have a podcast and people want to tell me all the ways that I should do the show, right? And it's hard sometimes because, you know, you have ups and downs and this interview goes well.
This one doesn't go as well as you want. You're always trying to improve and I'm always trying to improve, but, but you, there's like this little voice that's over here saying, maybe they're right.
Maybe if you did just ask questions this way, or maybe if you did keep your interviews to 20 minutes, or maybe if you did do this, right. And I, yeah, yeah.
Well, so I have learned and I don't know what it is about my disposition maybe it's my irish heritage or whatever the fuck i was born in a tiny little shithole town that i couldn't wait to get out of and have done everything i could who knows what it is in my life my past or my dna that i just have this ability to be like don't care hear you don't care however so many people who want to be unique, who want to be individuals, they fall, they can only hold out for so long. And then eventually they start to fall prey to all these voices.
So as someone who has been able to maintain your voice, work on your craft, know what your art is and keep pushing for it and not allow as much as possible those voices to get in how would you what would you say or what guidance would you give to people to to to stay in their box or i don't mean their box to stay in their way yeah to stay in themselves how can they do that?

I mean, I think this is I'm going to say this and then I'm going to figure out a way to unsay it. OK, you're either born that way or you're not.
Now I'm going to find a way to unsay it. I think that you need your own set of goals.
I don't like the word goals. Your own marks that you're going to hit.
Right? So here, I'll give you an example. These are scales.
So you get a metronome and it goes tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick.

It's what it does.

Just ticks, right?

Yep.

And mine's sitting over there and it's still one of these.

I don't use my phone.

I have a metronome.

It goes tick, tick, made of wood.

When I was a kid, I wanted to be able to do these things at the bottom setting of the metronome.

So the metronome is going to tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, which is this.

And you don't just do that. You start slow and you work and you work and you work.
And it takes frigging years to be able to do it. So to put those things out in front of yourself that you believe you need to paint your painting and to have your palette to put them out in front of you and to achieve them even something like as as that seems as menial as that it's not menial because it's exercising your your command of your own efforts is this am i Is this cryptic and bizarre?

Do you understand?

No, I understand.

So there's that kind of dexterity,

and then there's,

and I'll use musical stuff.

There's harmony, there's melody,

there's rhythm,

there's all these things

that if you don't know them,

if you don't have the vocabulary, what can you expect? What can you expect to accomplish if you don't know the vocabulary? Yeah. So you can choose to learn the vocabulary, even if no one else around you is learning the vocabulary.
because if you want to play that chord

you got even if no one else around you is learning the vocabulary. Because if you want to play that chord,

you got to know something to play that chord.

You might stumble on it in a million years,

but you're probably not going to.

So to see those things out there and to go, what was that?

And I need to know what that is.

Not I need to learn that thing. I need to know what it's made of.
So it becomes part of my colors. And I think in a sideways way, back to what I said, you're either born with this quest built into you or you're not.
But if you're not built with it, what I'm saying is the truth. And there's no fucking shortcut.
Yeah. Okay.
If you want this thing where your body and your mind feels like you're achieving something beyond yourself and so you can emulate somehow this notion of greatness if you don't bleed you're not there i don't give a shit i don't care you're just not and so bad news maybe but that's it There's no other way. There's no other way.
And that's what I would say. I'd tell people, look, if you want this, first you have to look out there.
Where is it? Look out there somewhere and see what it is that you hear or that you see that you feel is worth the journey upwards. Because the bar has to be way up above your head.
Or what's the point in running in a straight line? Everybody can run in a straight line. You hardly need legs to run in a fucking straight line.
So set it way up there and spend the rest of your life going for it. And you'll always be satisfied.
And you may be good at it and you may not be good at it. But the second you follow, you're fucking dead.
You're dead. What are you doing? Who gives a shit if it's been done a million times and you can do it too? I'm sorry.
I mean, that's as harsh as I'll get. But I really believe that there's truth in that.
And when I look out and see what's going on, it breaks my heart. Because I know there's people out there that have this in them.
And because they're doing this all day and whatever else they're doing, they're not even looking there. Yeah.
And it's not here. It's not here.
It's not here. It's not out there.
It's this and this and these and ours. Yeah.
I so I my kids, I told you, I got I got two kids, 10 and eight, two boys, and they play video games, which, you know. I don't have a problem with done regulated in certain amounts of time right that being said sometimes they'll tell me about their video games and i have this hiccup that they hate when i say this but i think it's sinking in i tell them video games are fine optimize your real life not your fake life right like like optimize your real life your real life is out here.
Your real life is out here. I think it's fine that you enjoy this video game.

You want to tell me about it. It's all good.
It's fun. Your kids, no problem.
That being said,

do not over, over optimizing that life is meaningless. This life out here is what's important.

But I wanna just surmise what you said,

and then I have one more topic

that I wanna dive into here with our time together.

What I heard you say there,

and tell me if you think this is wrong,

or I'm misstating what you said,

is that we are guiding star, guiding destination should be where our curiosity takes us. Because if we're curious about something, we will, we'll, we'll walk through the swamp.
We'll chop down the tree. We'll climb the mountain because we have to know, we have to know how to play this chord, play this chord on this rhythm, play this chord on this rhythm with this type of beat or whatever.
Right? Like we have to know because we're curious about it. We can't get enough of it where, and what happens is instead what we, what we're taught is go do this thing, make this money.
This is what your life should be. Someone who's from this town or this background or this class of person goes and does this thing and then we end up 40 years old looking looking at our life going oh my god maybe i'm making enough money maybe i'm not but either way i got a case of the fucking mondays and i and i i if i tell my i told my team all the time uh when i when to have my company.
If you put in, I have a case of the Mondays. It I, I, if I tell my, I told my team all the time, uh, when I, when I have my company, if you put in, I have a case of the Mondays it's hump day or thank God it's Friday into any of our communication channels, you and I are going to have a one-on-one talk after this, because this might not be the career for you.
Because if you are showing up and the first thing you say to everyone is happy hump day, this is not the place for you. Like, and I don't mean that in a negative way.
It means that you don't enjoy being here. Like there's something about this is not grabbing you and pulling you in and capturing your attention and making you interested.
And I feel so I've made this mistake. I've had parts of my career where I was places that I didn't enjoy going, but I feel like now I wake up every day and I love what I do, but it's because I'm curious about people like you and I get to wake up every day and have conversations like this and hear you and listen to the cadence of your voice and the topics that bring you passion.
And I just wish more people had the balls to follow their curiosity and not let what their community or their family or their spouse or society tells them it's supposed to be. And obviously we all have obligations we have to take care of.
I'm not saying that, but like, even if it's a hobby, be curious about something. Right.
Yeah. Well, you know, I think something, something you just said made me think something too is that if I was born right now,

who knows? Yeah. It's when I was born and where I was born and who I was around.
And I think it's just such a different generation. So to look at it and go, you know, accolades or accomplishments or whatever you want to call them.
If I was now I might I might have gone right to a video game and you know the porn channel and stayed there for the rest of my life yeah who knows I mean I was obsessive about what there was so maybe it's a little bit of a a little bit of an indictment of the times more than the people. Yeah, I think that's true.
I do think that's true. I don't think that humans have changed.
I don't, I don't think that I think they've changed at all. I think that technology and society has changed and I don't know if it's a net positive.
not in my opinion for most aspects of creativity and general joy day to day but uh but I do I want to I want to ask you so you have the new album coming out yes um I wrote down you know just preparing for this And I tend not to prepare too much because I like to

be very in the moment with you, but, uh, having no, as we talked about at the very jump, uh,

very little, if not any, uh, zero musicality. Um, when do you know you have a song in you?

Like, what is that like to, to it, to someone who has never woken up in the morning and gone,

you know what? I have a song in me, right. Or whatever.
What does that, how do you know you have that in you or is it always in you and it's the discipline and it's just always coming out? Like as an artist, how do you know you have a song or an album in you that should be packaged up, that there's a narrative, that there's a story to tell how do you know when it's that time well that's a good question that's a that's a that's a lot of question yeah me me specifically i have my own template my own paradigm for this somebody else how do they know?

I wrote two songs this morning before 8 o'clock for a musical I'm working on with someone.

Two, finished, recorded them, sent them off.

I've been practicing for playing live and looking at stuff I wrote with other people a couple Madonna songs a couple Leonard Cohen songs if right now I would just do this just for the fuck good I'm just gonna improvise yeah I'm just going to improvise love it And if I kept going, I might get into something. So I might find a rhythm.
And I can do this all day. I've done it all day, my whole life.
And so I'm never at a loss for what to do. If you right now put some words up on the screen, I could write a song to it because that's what I'm an expert at.
So I think what it comes down to is you acquire the tools so that you're an expert in your field. And if you're going to be a songwriter and a a piano player if you can't sit down and just play whatever there is and just make make music without any any notion of what it's going to be and let yourself and your fingers and your ears and your heart and your experiences guide you through this then i wouldn't do it yeah you I mean? Yeah.
You know what's wild is you were playing that riffing and what was going on in my head was a young man walking through the woods. And then when you hit that beat change, it was like he stepped onto a city block.
And that visual was going on in my head when i was listening to you and i was like man this sounds like i'm walking

through the woods and i was wondering like when you're playing because your fingers at this point

have become just uh uh you're obviously not thinking about your fingers you're thinking

about the sounds that you want to make i'm assuming i'm not thinking about anything yeah yeah

like are you picturing a scene in your head and this is the song that goes along with the scene or

Thank you. about the sounds that you want to make i'm assuming i'm not thinking about anything yeah yeah like are you picturing a scene in your head and this is the song that goes along with the scene or i'm not doing anything i mean i can talk and do this it doesn't matter i'm not doing anything i'm just yeah i mean i can do it all day long but it's it's it's only music when you make music out of it yeah so as an example of something of something, because there's a couple of things that I've done that are fairly recognizable.
I would sit down in the morning and I would do this all the time. And then one morning you sit down and you go.
And you go, oh, that's nice. And that's to tell them the madonna song or you know and these are things are you and they're just these things that occur and then you grab them as they go by but they only occur if you have Yeah.
They only occur if you have enough skill to be free in what you're doing. Right? Yeah.
It's, you know, there's, this is a meme. And I don't, it sounds trite, but I don't mean it to be because I honestly think it's some of this most sage wisdom that's

come out of our modern society. It's kind of like walk around and find out.
Like get out there and mess around and see what happens when you push this button, pull this lever, make this decision, take this action. Like, and we just, I feel like so many of us, so many people, we wake up every day and it's just like, tell me the answer.
I don't want to do the work. I just want to get the answer.
Just give me the answer. I don't really want to do the work.
And it's like, yeah, but you don't really own the answer or how to apply the answer. If you don't, if you haven't actually done the work to acquire the skill and the knowledge.
And like you said, if you haven't, if you're not bleeding, what are you doing? You know? Well, also you need a skillset and you need a vocabulary. Like in this case, the thing of noodling around on the piano, you need a musical vocabulary and you're not born with one.
You don't come with a vocabulary. You have to put it in.
So however you do that, if this is going to be your expression, then you should do that. If you're going to be a lyricist, you need to be able to read.
And you need to be able to process what you're reading. Otherwise, how good are you going to be at this? And the idea that your tech, the technology can give you the rhymes you need, and the computer can play chord changes for you.
And that you can be the artist on top of that. You can call it art if you want to, but I wouldn't.
I wouldn't be able to not with a clear conscience. And I know that that pisses a lot of people off.
And there's probably a lot of people who actually have very artistic hearts. And this is exactly their process.
And I'm not going to say they're not artists. It's just that they're not going to create something that's theirs.
Theirs. All they're really doing is manipulating other people's notions.
And a very unpopular thing I'm saying right now, and people don't like, I really go there because I just as soon leave everybody alone to do whatever they want to do. And I'm fine with it.
And the truth of it is, I am fine with it. You know why? I don't have to listen to it.
Yeah. And I won't listen to it because why would I? And not that what I'm doing is any better and maybe it's worse as far as they're concerned, but I'm okay with it.
And just like they're okay with what they're doing you know i think i'm i think i'm copying out of everything right now but you know you're good you're good patrick um the new album is a walk in the woods no this has been one right the new album is called it all comes down to mood oh the single the single is a walk in the single is a walk in the woods i had it backwards i'm sorry i had it backwards i'm sorry yeah yeah um i dude this has been one of my favorite conversations i've had in a long time i'm so glad to have met you i uh i can't wait um to uh to dig in and i've been it's funny in research i started listening to your to your stuff stuff. And I'm like, Oh shit, he was involved in that.
And he was a boy, you know, I just didn't, I didn't know. And I just, I, I, I dig what you're doing.
I dig your mindset. I think, I hope what the audience has taken from this is obviously the application to, to, to pure arts, but that these concepts, these ideas, this, this idea of owning exactly who you are and making your art could be your coffee shop or it could be how you just execute your task inside an organization.
But I think I love this idea that you shared of understanding the vocabulary, of understanding the core pieces, the ones and zeros of what you do so that you can make it uniquely your own. I appreciate you.
I appreciate your time. Where can people go to get the album? Where can people go to learn more about you, connect with you, follow along with what you have going on? There's a little social media starting now that i i won't be managing because yeah i tried instagram about seven years ago and i did it for a little while and went this is distracting me so i stopped yep but now there's somebody who will do it the album is coming out on vinyl um in july at the at the latter part of july i think the 27th or 28th um the a in the Woods is coming out digitally, I think on the 28th of June.
And the album will be available digitally after it's released on the vinyl, or I think it may even all be the same day. You know, it's an old school thing.
It's an old school record. And i really designed it to be a vinyl um but i think it's a good listen either way and you know i like it i'll leave you i'll leave you the audience with this so um my dad uh gave me about 100 of his original prints from the 70s and 60s vinyl records.
And I have Queen, A Night at the Opera. So I have Bohemian Rhapsody on original print.
And I played the Spotify version of the song. And my kids love it.
Who doesn't love Bohemian Rhapsody? And. And then I said, okay, so you've heard that version now listen to this on, cause I have some old school speakers.
They're not, you know, old, old school, but they're less digitized and less compressed than a lot of the new shit. And, um, I said, now listen to this, which has to be, it had to be pushed through a, you know, a receiver, which most don't anymore, you know? And anymore you know and i go and they're like it was like blowing their little minds like that you could tell even at that age you know and we're just we're not a musical family but like you could just see them reacting more to how the vinyl captures the full scope of the music and we don't have to get into the technicalities of it i just think you know the technicalities of it i mean i don't want to keep you but do you know bits no explain it no i would love to hear it we can finish with this no i love it so simple and it's yeah please beautiful when you when you have a vinyl you have grooves that were cut into this material this plastic vinyl right and when you put the needle in it the needle is moved back and forth it's vibrated by those grooves and then that goes into an amplifier that vibrates the speakers in an extreme way in an amplified version of what the needle is doing yeah so this is 100 physical.
When you're listening to music that's on your phone or digitally, you're listening to zeros and ones that are telling your brain, this is music. It's the same zeros and ones that are telling you your movie's a movie.
It's the same zeros and ones that are telling you your pictures are pictures. There's only zeros and ones, and it's how how fast they go and it's how they scramble and your brain registers them like that vinyl is an organic reality and your body feels that right away so one is out here and the other one goes in and i don't i mean i just listen to vinyl these days i once once i set up the vinyl and decided to make a vinyl and went back and listened to a lot of my old vinyls and re-bought a lot of them because they go back to the 70s and they don't really play anymore.
I wore them out. And I sat and listened.
It's like, oh, yeah, that's right. That's right.
This is a whole other thing. And, you know, it's certainly not a contemporary notion, but it's a great way to consume it.
And, you know, so why not? If I, you know, if I can do it, I'm going to do it. I love it.
I'm worried we're there with you, Patrick. I wish you nothing but the best.
I appreciate you sharing your time with us and we'll see you down the road. Thank you.

Be good, man. Thank you.

Let's go.

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