Surprise Cast #98 Oli Steadman- Part 2

Episode Transcript
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(00:00):
Music.

(00:16):
Hello everyone this is w also
known as william host of the high art on the edge
page host of the surprise cast today
i'm gonna have another round of scintillating stimulating inspirational conversation
with ollie stedman a member of a band called storm away as you know as we talked about in part one,

(00:44):
but in case you don't, you're going to learn more about what he does as a musician,
but we're going to go deeper into the roots and foundation of this gentleman
who has a lot to offer in terms of his musicianship, love for nature,
being a new dad, so on and so forth.
Let's bring in Oli. Hello, Oli.

(01:08):
Hey w great to be back thanks for having me back in
the podcast for uh round two i really
enjoyed the first time my goodness
thanks for coming back for desserts i appreciate it a second helping here before
we launch into the discussion can you just give me an update on how the hell

(01:29):
was your summer what did you do yeah it was a pretty packed summer and i did
stay in the northern hemisphere the
whole time so it it was a range of conditions
and countries I I traveled because
it's maternity leave for my wife and we're trying to get as many countries ticked
off the list as possible before she goes back to work and has to you know enter

(01:51):
the rat race again so this time we went to Canada and the US and I had the best
time seeing family in Canada hiking in the Rockies meeting a
bunch of elk and then going down
to California and learning to surf I couldn't have
asked for a more enjoyable trip and then
earlier in the summer I had done a bit of trail running as part of Stornoway's

(02:15):
festival summer we played this trail running festival where I led a 10k trail
dance which is a concept that I've come up with that fuses music and mental
health and nature exploring exploring, and also sport.
So these are some of the things that I've really enjoyed doing in the past couple of months.
All right, let's kind of thread some of this together, if you don't mind.

(02:38):
You mentioned that your wife is on maternity leave.
First question is, where did you meet your wife?
Second question, if you wouldn't mind, in terms of your traveling with family
to Canada, to Los Angeles,

(02:59):
Did you have any really big epiphanies, enlightened moments?
So two-pronged question. Yeah.
We met when I was 18, she was 17.
And there's a really good music scene in the city of Oxford where Stornoway formed.
And it was around the time that I was forming that band with Brian and John.

(03:20):
I was going out to a lot of gigs and parties and happened across the most beautiful,
for coolest person at the party and decided that
i should stay away from her because she would undoubtedly be too
cool for me but then she kind of decided
the opposite and hunted me down and we've been together since that summer 2000
and i think yeah so she's been there as a a real close observer of the whole

(03:46):
career into music and we moved to london for her career and now we're We're starting the family,
and yeah, it's great.
The things that we together most enjoyed about the travels this summer were
epiphanies in the form of getting out onto the Sulphur Mountain outside Banff in the Rockies,

(04:10):
and also onto the Tunnel Bluffs Trail in Lions Bay.
These were our two favorite hikes, And the reason was that those hikes got very
dramatic elevation very quickly, very early on in the route.
And when you're ascending to a hike where you can see almost a 360 degree view

(04:33):
of wherever you happen to be.
I think this is something that happens
to everyone and that we sing about particularly in Stornoway's music.
It's that you find you as you're
raised above everything and separated from it you're
instantly connected back to it it's like you have to
get further away to get closer and the

(04:54):
epiphany was somewhat expected this is why we go on these adventures to reconnect
but it was also more dramatic more heightened than expected because the views
there and the the air quality and the abundance of wildlife meant that it was
just even a more visceral experience than I'd anticipated.

(05:14):
So those are two really brilliant hikes I would recommend to anybody.
My girlfriend Katrina and I have talked about going to Banff.
I've never been there before.
What are some other unique characteristics about this place that makes it so inviting?
They have a very careful management of the relationship between tourism and

(05:37):
local inhabitants and local industry.
So that nobody can own property there unless they do genuinely spend a set number
of months there through the year i think you have to you have to live there
through the winter season and you have to also be there for maybe it's maybe
180 days out of the 360 days so.

(06:01):
They they have their own authentic local community who are all resident there
and have to to kind of suffer through the winter together and get to know each other.
It's not just empty holiday lets, which I did see in other towns as we made
our way slowly back from Banff westward toward Vancouver.
You do come across the occasional town where it feels very empty because nobody's

(06:25):
there because it's not ski season or whatever it might be.
In Banff, there's a lot of locals, and the local businesses are catering towards
them more than to the tourists.
So it's a great, authentic place to visit.
And the other aspect was that unlike anywhere else I've visited,

(06:45):
you really are all around you.
You can get into wilderness within a five-minute drive if that's how you're traveling.
Or there's plenty of horseback riding.
There's lots of cyclists there. I'm really into my cycling.
So it was exactly the right kind of place for me and the family to visit. it.
I think my favorite thing about it was the wildlife management.

(07:09):
So there's a very responsible park warden, park management kind of industry there.
And just outside the town in all directions on the busy roads,
you'd think you'd find a lot of roadkill.
Because there are just, there are so many of us humans and we have so many cars
and we travel fast and things go wrong.
But I heard from one of the park wardens, the answer to the mystery of what

(07:34):
I saw on these roads instead of roadkill were these giant bridges,
bridges that didn't have a highway across them, a road bridge.
They were just green bridges.
So they were connecting one zone of park to the other zone on the other side of the highway.
Way and they might be 10 meters in
diameter enough that a couple

(07:56):
of bears could maybe cross and not even be aware of each other
as they're crossing in opposite directions bears and mooses and
elk and all these wildlife who might otherwise find.
Their demise on the roads trying to cross can now
cross in safety and it costs about a million dollars per bridge
to build these things and then there's a small maintenance cost
but once they're up the the positive impact

(08:18):
on wildlife that conservation is immense though i
really enjoyed learning about those things last thing
i'll say about banff is i think a lot of people are now going to
be increasingly aware of it because of the
tragedy of the jasper fires that happened back in i
think it must have been middle of july so we had
been booked to go to jasper and see what

(08:39):
what people refer to as the crown of the rockies or the
jewel of the rockies i think but there were these unprecedentedly huge
wildfires with 100 meters in height the actual
flames and 25 000 people
had to evacuate and they mostly evacuated
past banff to as they
were headed south so that by the time we got to banff when we were we were due

(09:03):
to be in jasper but we kind of had to re-retrain re-jig our plans banff was
full and we we kept hearing from people that they'd never had this many visitors
before and i think for a lot of people.
Banff kind of rose to the challenge of accommodating so many people and catering
to them and giving them things to do so that now...

(09:25):
It'll take years to repair Jasper and all the industry that was there.
And in the meantime, Banff might be the up-and-coming place to be.
This sounds, based on everything that you described, like a place I have to
visit. And I will get there one day.
It's interesting to me that you went from this majestic place to Los Angeles,

(09:52):
which is radically different. but beautiful in its own way.
I love Los Angeles because of the architecture, the hustle and bustle energy.
Was that hard for you to make that transition?
I think I'm someone who's always had both going on in my life.

(10:13):
So I grew up in Johannesburg and I would often find myself downtown in the CBD
where my dad worked at the university and And it was hustle and bustle with art galleries,
theatres, businesses running their high-obtain activities and people selling their wares.

(10:35):
And yet on the way back home or to school or wherever I had to get to,
you'd have to go through pretty much, not quite wilderness, but a bit of nature to get there.
And then throughout my whole life, have been very
much in touch with nature conservation and appreciating different species
of birds and animals and i think because i've

(10:57):
had both from a very early age i've been able to just switch
between them readily so this trip was we we kind of booked it deliberately to
be a lot of both visiting lions bay in particular it's just a half hour drive
north of vancouver So you can be downtown with the high-rise buildings and the four-lane streets,

(11:19):
and then half an hour later, hiking in the mountains, encountering a bear if you're not very lucky.
And Los Angeles was the same. I mean, you can see the...
The nevada the sierra nevada right there on the
horizon you can be thinking maybe i should just go on a hike
this afternoon or you can go the opposite direction and

(11:39):
head to the sea which is what i did i got my first surfing done
in aventura county yeah and that
was so great whilst having you
know gigantic highways and so many cars and industry going
on all over i think getting back to
the uk the thing that i experienced was that
we we have something similar

(12:00):
there's there's the the
very very close proximity of countryside wilderness
and then the steel structures
of say london or oxford any of
these towns in the uk it's it's
on an even smaller scale so we're very
used to transitioning very quickly between these different environments

(12:22):
and yeah i i think that's gonna continue
to be the way the world goes we're going to continue to
mix these different environments together because there
are more and more people trying to get more and
more done and it feels like the world's getting smaller and we're just going
to have to make it work for each other so coming up with sensible planning of

(12:46):
spaces and wildlife management like those roads that cross the highways i think
this is something we're going to continue to have to innovate that.
And one thing i'm really interested in learning more about from people i'm meeting
all over the place and playing festivals and things is they're getting into
not just conservation careers we've always had a lot of fans of the band who

(13:07):
are into conservation and wildlife management.
Or kind of on the other extreme, policy writing people who are getting into
how to write policies so that AI is developed ethically or policy on carbon
emissions by a different country.
But sort of in the middle of those two, I'm starting to meet a lot of people

(13:28):
who are into the fairly straightforward concept, I think, but very,
very complicated to work out because each Each case is different.
They're into town planning and urban space planning.
So we seem to have a lot of these fans, and they come up to us and tell us that
our music is inspiring them, and that's very cool to think.

(13:50):
And, yeah, I think that's going to be a really valuable career to anyone who's
kind of a bit aimless at the moment and looking where to go.
Hey, consider town planning. Right. Absolutely.
Are you familiar with Venn diagrams? diagrams
oh yeah that's a very good kind of
data visualization meme that i encounter on

(14:12):
almost a daily basis because they're so useful you take two
or three concepts and yeah okay so let's do a venn diagram are you ready on
one side we're going to have canada banff if you will on the other side we're
going to have los angeles and in the middle we're going to,

(14:33):
draw characteristics that they share that are similar.
Okay. I used to do this with my students with novels and.
Concepts of nature science related stuff and the thing in the middle that unites
the two sometimes was very difficult because they couldn't find any commonalities,

(14:56):
okay so in the venn diagram with canada and los angeles what do they have in
common from the From the outsiders'
perspective, the UK perspective, visiting both places within a week of each
other, I'd say the first thing I'd notice would be gigantic cars.

(15:18):
Yeah. Both places have them. And many, many of those cars.
And not much public transport. I think that's worth mentioning.
I said my trumpet player, Tom, lives in LA and teaches at UCLA.
And he catches public transport.
He catches the bus i think not to campus because he just walks to campus because

(15:41):
he deliberately picked a place that he wouldn't have to drive from to get to
work but if he's going to the beach or wherever else he catches a bus and he
says that that's just not a very commonly,
encountered means of transport he doesn't know anyone else in in the faculty
or socially who catches a bus and whereas from the uk you know catch a bus every

(16:02):
day to get to wherever i need
to go and if it's not the bus we've got
the the rail networks and yeah i
didn't catch any public transport whilst i was in north
america so that was interesting for me because it shows that people are a lot
more independent they've got different things different needs and journeys to
each other yeah and yeah maybe one of the other commonalities i put in there

(16:27):
and would be The appreciation for nature was fairly obvious,
fairly visible with everyone I met.
They had recently been out into nature, whether that's to the beach to look
at rare bird life or up on the mountains to have a hike or out into the wilderness.
I think people are very in touch with nature and conservation. Sure.

(16:48):
Now, the Olympics are coming to Los Angeles. Yeah. 2028. Right.
The thing that they're going to try to do is to have only public transportation
available. Oh, fantastic.
Yeah. That's one of their major, major, major goals.

(17:09):
So it'll be interesting to see how that unfolds if that comes to fruition. I hope so.
All righty. let's transition
from summer to a
book that i actually caught wind of
because of you you had posted on instagram and

(17:31):
i have been reading some really lovely books this summer so why not add another
one and it's a book all about the appreciation for nature particularly trees
And the unique qualities,
traits that 12 trees carry and our connection to these trees and what they're

(17:58):
able to provide and how can we learn more about nature and, of course,
our responsibility towards nature.
This book is called 12 Trees, written by Daniel Lewis.
And when I saw Daniel Lewis, I thought, oh, is this the actor?

(18:20):
No, it's Daniel Lewis, Day Lewis.
So 12 Trees, the deep roots of our future.
Ollie, tell the listeners how you came across this book and what did you appreciate about it?
I have a subscription to a really...

(18:46):
Rich fantastically written journal called the london
review of books and it covers many
different genres and styles
of writing it has a politics column and then it's got kind of just pure literary
critique something that they mentioned and that they sell in their store is

(19:06):
12 trees by daniel lewis and i thought this is going to be exactly my bag because it's all.
About trees and the band as well as me personally we're
kind of obsessed with trees i like the idea that
if you just take a short list of the
best of something 12 trees and that's that
can be a real gateway into a much

(19:28):
wider richer world of old
trees so i wanted to see
which 12 trees he'd picked you know did these tally with the
trees of the year that the uk votes on every year we have
this annual competition or was it going to be 12
dead trees from history that no one's able to see anymore
that that he's discovered something about so i
haven't actually started it yet but i'm very excited to experience

(19:51):
it and like we were discussing earlier the audiobook
is actually narrated by the author themselves this is
always something that i'm happy to put some
money into because if the author is reading it themselves you
get the impression expression that they meant to
convey with every syllable as they read
it so yeah i'm very excited about

(20:13):
about this book i've never heard of daniel lewis before but we'll
see how it goes all right i'm halfway through
it and there are wonderful wonderful
very simple bits about these specific trees and what they can offer in terms
of their ability to weather and handle the stresses of outside forces.

(20:40):
So I'm going to ask you a few questions about love for nature,
your appreciation, so on and so forth. So here's my first question, Ali.
How do you have a tree-ness about you?
Ah, I'm pretty rooted. I don't like disruptions to my routine very much.

(21:05):
I like to stay in one place and just grow and get to know myself better each day.
Having said all that I've said already so far about travel and how much I kind
of get stimulated by travel, I think returning to home and my routine is always
kind of the bigger treat at the end of the disruption.

(21:29):
I think I have a real love for other trees and I have a kind of.
Hidden maybe sixth sense about other trees
like they have to each other you know this idea that trees yeah
information through their roots and through the the kind
of networks i guess these are like fungal networks

(21:51):
in the soil trees can kind
of communicate through through different species
and apparently like all the beech trees in the uk all
give off their pollen the day after to midsummer and
no one knows how they all know to do that but i
think i i'd like to say i'm a bit
like a tree because i really feel some a

(22:13):
very strong relationship with most of the trees in my
neighborhood i go and visit them on my my daily rounds and
i don't quite have a name for each of them but i do certainly know
all the species of all the trees that i come across where i
live that's maybe one of the reasons why i feel most rooted
and most settled were is when i encounter to new
trees it's not like you know

(22:34):
i'm uncomfortable with them but it's like hanging out with a
stranger and you have to take time to know them sure i
love that as the answer is fantastic okay suppose ollie is leading a backpack
tour with some young whippersnappers who want to learn more about nature and

(22:54):
you get to a section of a forest that's been completely decimated by a fire.
And some of the young kids are very frustrated and concerned,
and they look at you and say, oh my goodness, Ollie, this is so horrible,
these burnt trees, blah, blah, blah.
And you say, yes, however, there are benefits to fires to the forest,

(23:19):
to these trees, to the seed cycle.
And the young kids look at you and go, what's a good thing about a fire?
What would you tell them oh there's
so much information there that i would need to
convey i might need to find a
story i don't know if there's some traditional story about a

(23:41):
seed that was released and travels as a result of the fumes of the fire and
it gets sent further away and plants and it results in a tree that then leads
to a whole forest but that's that's something that That can happen and I'm sure
someone's written a great story or a song about it.
And a different one might be a story of how in a place where they didn't have

(24:04):
a fire, year after year for maybe a decade, the underbrush just collected and
the place became more and more of a tinderbox.
And then the resulting fire, when it did eventually happen, was much more dramatic
and destructive than it would have been if there had been small fires and often.

(24:25):
I might look at, this is harder to put into a story that anyone would enjoy
hearing, especially young people, but something to do with the ecosystem and
the balance of different species.
So there is a need in the ecosystem at some point to,
cow would be the kind of crude word, but there might be too many of a certain

(24:49):
creature and it's feeding too effectively and it's taking away the habitat of the other creatures.
And maybe a fire is the way that nature gets rid of the excess population of
whatever species is being destructive.
It does something that's more destructive.
Yeah, fire is just part of the natural cycle of many ecosystems.

(25:12):
Although these days, maybe there would be a story here too.
It's a little too much due to humanity's activities that were having fires in
different places where they've not kind of been a necessity before.
They're now arriving because we've dried out the land or we've over-farmed a

(25:32):
certain crop or we've developed these monoculture forests.
Like one thing I saw a lot of in Canada was just these pine rows and rows of
pine trees and all planted at the same time.
So they're exactly the same age. So there's no diversity in the forest and the
monoculture succumbs to a fire more readily.
Of me so yeah three or four different stories there that i'd have to go away

(25:55):
and do my research a bit and then i'd come back and tell them and hopefully
they'd still be attentive as an audience by the time i returned.
I think you would make a great leader, tour guide, if you will,
out there in the vast wilderness. Next question.
So in the Twelve Trees book written by Daniel Lewis, he talks about specific trees.

(26:18):
Could you tell the listener, is there a particular tree that you absolutely love and why?
Yes. You mean a species of tree or one physically? A species.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think my favorite might be the whitebeam tree.

(26:39):
It's very common in the UK.
And it's the one where at the start of COVID-19 lockdowns, I found myself walking
around the area on my daily allowed activity because in the UK we were allowed
out once a day for something like 20 minutes.
And in that time I could get to the park and back. And I fairly quickly established a regular route.

(27:03):
And it took me through a grove of
these white beam trees and because nothing
else was happening in the world at that time i mean you couldn't
apart from reading about covid and how different countries were managing it
there wasn't really much other news and i my attention was a very kind of spare
and i had a lot of attention to give and i suddenly noticed these trees much

(27:26):
more than i would have otherwise and the white beams in the park just at that time of year as
well. It was late spring and they would just.
Getting towards their full bloom, and it was very beautiful.
It reminded me of something from Tolkien, maybe, Forests of Lothlorien.
I imagine that maybe Tolkien had based the descriptions of those trees on these

(27:47):
white beams, and they really twist in this strange way, like their limbs are grasping up to the sky.
Then one of them fell down in a storm, and I felt suddenly I was very attached
to and moved by this tree and the passing of this tree.
So now i notice whitebeam trees wherever i
go and i don't know too much about them except that

(28:09):
they're really pleasing on the to the
eye and they're the ones that first got me into this
idea that i needed to get around to learning the the different species and how
to spot the species of the trees so i've written several songs about this now
about how getting to know your environment and how to spot different trees or
creatures or things they leave behind them is a way of,

(28:33):
reconnecting with nature and we definitely lost that in
modern society where most of us spend all the
time looking at screens and not going out into
nature i think music is a way to
remind people that that's what we kind of grew up
doing as a species and we need to not not
forget how to do that and we touched on that in part one of our conversation

(28:57):
the connection to the natural world And with your outlook on nature and everything
that you've learned thus far,
how do you hope your appreciation for nature changes the way others perceive it?

(29:21):
Well as recently as on this
family holiday in canada i was able to give
everyone a voiceover as we explored the woods and went on our hikes and say
well that's that tree and here's one that would have the same fruit but it's
it's a slightly different subspecies or it's a different time of year or it's

(29:42):
in it's in the shade over here behind this rock and there there are typical
species, bird species, you might feed on this.
So actually, the reason might be that the birds have all eaten this one dry
of its fruit and not spotted the other one.
So you can have all these in-depth studies.
Kind of relationships and stories and understandings with the trees and creatures

(30:07):
you encounter if you've done a bit of the learning.
And I say this as someone who's never really formally learned any biology, zoology, botany.
It's just picking it up with enthusiasm. But I think that's something that then
affects everyone around you because you don't end up discussing the weather
or what food you're going to have for dinner.

(30:29):
Know you end up discussing life and thinking
a lot about the the life and the souls and
the stories that are making the world go around from day
to day and yeah this is just another thing
that the band thinks and writes about constantly we
want people to know what.
It is to be alive and reconnect with other beings

(30:52):
out there we had a tour manager once who had
the most insightful but really like
straightforward but but informative thing he
would say you know we're not we're not
human beings i'm not going to use that word anymore we're human
doings and it was the
insight that each of these

(31:14):
creatures a human animal maybe tree
we we don't just
exist statically and on our own and disconnected from
everything else we are we do
exist and we do activities and we
do evolve from day to day and hour to hour and the more we know about how each
other is evolving and the more stories we can tell each other about what we're

(31:38):
observing that the richer life is and the more meaningful it is yeah but it
requires this it requires one to be informed up to a.
Certain level where you know what you're looking at, you know what you're looking out for,
and then when you encounter what you're looking out for.
You can tell the story. Did you ever read the book or watch the movie called Into the Wild?

(32:05):
Yes. It's a very, very difficult one for me to watch.
It was the favorite film of my brother, who was the drummer in Stornoway.
And I think it was one of the things that maybe informed his adventures.
He chose to leave a lot of things behind and move on and have a new life,

(32:27):
not in Alaska, which is what they do in the film, but in another country with
another band and doing different things.
So it reminds me of that and the kind of parting ways that I've experienced there.
But in other respects, it's a very beautiful, inspirational film.
I think it's a cautionary tale more than anything else because it shows what

(32:50):
happens when one person happens across an idea.
Deer i can't remember how he gets the idea what was his name but he he he decides to go to alaska,
and he decides he's going to do it very carefully and travel in the late winter

(33:11):
so that he gets there in time for the summer and then spend the summer and comes and wants to come home,
i think that's the right way around but anyway it's not
like he's consulting insulting family or maybe
any experts around him or a moral code like it's not from religion that he's
received this idea it's a sort of thunderbolt moment and it just occurs to him

(33:34):
and then he follows it and in i think in psychology there there are.
Arguments and and areas of research around this right
what happens when we just follow an impulse essentially and
that film is the story of maybe some of
the the most beautiful things that can happen because he
goes and meets the most amazing characters and he he gets

(33:56):
a job as a farm laborer that he would never have done
otherwise and he meets these great people that falls in love has
a great time but then hey he eats
poisonous crops and dies a really
horrifically painful death and is mourned by his
family and that's that's kind
of an allegory for what what what can happen

(34:17):
if you just follow random impulses and don't kind
of consider the impact on other people into the wild his name is chris mccandless
his journey into the heart of darkness if you will is beautifully painful because
we understand it to a degree.

(34:39):
So with these films and that book, have you ever caught yourself going down
a deep rabbit hole and someone has had to say to you, hey, Ollie,
you've got to pull back a little bit?
Or have you said to yourself, oh my goodness, I'm taking this a little too far?

(35:00):
Yes. I think when people call each other out and say, I see you're spending
your life dedicated to this new project, is that really the best thing?
I think that's one of the clearest demonstrations of courage on the person who's
sort of making that intervention.
They're doing something really difficult and they're showing someone a problem

(35:24):
that that person might not, well definitely doesn't want to know about because
they're having such fun exploring the meaningful activity of this rabbit hole,
whatever it may be so I generally try to remind myself if someone's telling
me I'm being a bit obsessive about something it does happen fairly often because
I do have what is it called, I'm a diver rather than a scanner.

(35:47):
So people who scan and not everyone is either
a diver or a scanner a lot of people just just get on without
being one of these things but a scanner tries and does everything
and and will pick up a book five minutes and move
on to a different thing and a movie for 10 minutes
and then go on a jog and they're trying to cover everything in a day because
they find it all meaningful and whereas a diver needs to spend hours on a particular

(36:13):
thing and if they they don't get the opportunity to because they guilt trip
themselves or they get distracted or something divers can often get very.
Frustrated and they start scanning when they should have been diving and
i tend to be a diver because yeah i'll
go really into learning the names of
different trees or learning how to code that really

(36:35):
was a rabbit hole for me although that really led to some exciting
projects and new people that i would never have met otherwise it all
started because i wanted to code for music but it ended
up taking me on a different adventure another one was Wikipedia
I love editing Wikipedia and I
could do it for hours but I've had to kind of rein myself
in there and try to keep it restricted to just one or two articles a day I'll

(36:59):
go in and edit it or update them and maintain them but I'm kind of an established
moderator at Wikipedia and this is just an organization of volunteers who are
all divers and love to get deep into topics topics.
So maybe I can tell you about the one deepest and kind of most sustained rabbit hole.
And yeah, it's one that I had to stop eventually because it was just,

(37:23):
it was the opportunity cost.
Well, it was taking time away from other really important things,
but it did lead to many opportunities before I shut it down.
It was the idea that I would take Wikipedia in English and.
Furnish the articles into other languages. So particularly the Zulu Wikipedia,
which is one of the languages I learned in South Africa growing up.

(37:46):
There's Zulu Wikipedia, and I was translating articles over into Zulu so that
they could be read by people in Zulu who might not speak English or might not
know about the English Wikipedia.
And I was writing three, four articles a day, like from scratch,
very structured, cited, referenced articles.
But this was just taking so much time and it doesn't earn you any money it's

(38:08):
not something you get recognition for,
it did lead to me honing my Zulu skills to the point that I formed a band and
we were called Count Drachma,
we made Zulu music we were London based but we got to play with some of the
most incredible South African Zulu acts who came over to tour in London we kept

(38:28):
going for a number of years played Wormad, had a great time but then I had to
shut that down because I just
It wasn't viable enough as a business.
And these bands have to actually sort of be sustainable financially.
That was the end of that rabbit hole. But yeah, it lasted several years.
And I learned new instruments.
I learned this language that I'd kind of become a bit rusty on.

(38:53):
There were a lot of benefits to this rabbit hole. And I think as a diver, I would say this,
so maybe I'm biased, but I would
encourage anyone to follow their instincts and pursue
rabbit holes up to a point and then if they become you know distracting from
what you're meant to be doing or someone does make that courageous move and

(39:14):
try and call you out and say maybe maybe turn down the rabbit hole do listen
to them and take that on board and consider whether you might be diving too deep.
Wow. All righty. Let's close the curtain on this discussion regarding nature and trees.
So there is a book that was given to me to read by my girlfriend, Katrina.

(39:40):
It's called Wish Tree, written by Catherine Applegate.
And it's about this beautiful oak tree. And
in this kind of neighborhood people take
their wishes and they write them on these
cloths and they tie them to the branches of the tree it is a must read again

(40:04):
called wish tree tell the listeners some other books about nature that you would
recommend if it's not books maybe some websites.
Yeah, okay. There's a few things there.
I think I'll start with the thing you mentioned at the end.

(40:24):
So online resources, these are like interactive, although books are interactive
to an extent, but these are tools that are constantly evolving and they're being maintained.
And the databases are being expanded every day by volunteers.
So the first one is monumentaltrees.com. and I can't.

(40:47):
I can't recall the huge number of times where I've woken up on a Saturday and
fortunately it's an empty weekend.
I maybe have to do one or two things, but I've managed to ring fence the time
so that I can be a bit spontaneous with my weekend.
I'll go to monumentaltrees.com and I'll look up where's the biggest,

(41:07):
girthiest tree or the oldest tree proximal
to where I happened to be that day and it's shown
me the way so i've traveled 40 minutes in
one direction and i found a 300
year old yew tree which turns out to be
seven years growing in a bunch together and they
form a single trunk or 500 year

(41:30):
old oak there's one of those in oxford that i've
since come to visit regularly monumentaltrees.com also
showed me i think the oldest of
the beach trees in a particular part of
yorkshire where i happened to camping that weekend for a
festival with the band so that is a really fantastic

(41:50):
website it's not affiliated with any organization or
conservation trust or anything so it's totally independent and volunteer run
and as a result it's um it's not clear to me that it's going to be around very
long so if anyone's interested in discovering where are the biggest thickest
oldest coolest trees and it's it's international so So I didn't use it when I was over in Canada,

(42:13):
but I know that some of the best data of it is from the North American region.
Another one is eBird.org.
I think that's the same as the Merlin Bird ID app. So these are tools developed
by Cornell Lab of Ornithology.
These are tools that let people do some bird recognition with the help of their phone.

(42:36):
And and then the app tags that bird and says
right so you've spotted a cormorant at this
latitude and longitude on this date in these weather
conditions that's as expected
or sometimes that's highly unusual and in
either case they report that data point to the lab
and so cornell has some of the best data on bird

(42:57):
populations as a result of people out there
downloading these free apps and using them in
their bird watching one other is map fight
dot xyz map fight
i think the reason i love that one is because it really
tests my understanding of scale geographical scale so it basically superimposes

(43:17):
two maps and they might be maps that you think you're very familiar with and
you think i know how big london is or i know how big mount everest is it'll
take these objects and place them together,
and you'll see, whoa, one is so much bigger than the other, or you can fit England
into Texas eight times over, or whatever it might be.
So those are the online ones.

(43:40):
I think the nature books wise, I would just want to focus on one because it's
the one that got me really excited about nature writing in general.
And it's Robert McFarlane.
So he's a prolific author from the UK.
He actually teaches at Cambridge University and taught several of my friends.

(44:01):
He's also a prolific musical collaborator. So he writes music with Johnny Flynn,
who's a very successful actor and musician from the new folk scene that's torn away.
We're sort of somewhat vaguely tied to in that late noughties,
but Robert Mufalin writes the most beautiful poetry and prose and his nature

(44:24):
books have won many awards.
Mountains of the mind is a favorite and underlands.
I think it's called, but that's the one about the hollow ways,
which these tunnels you can find in the UK, but I'll return to his one called the wild places.
That's the one that got me started. And it's just the most thrilling adventure.

(44:44):
It's a little bit like 12 Trees because he takes something in the order of 10
or 12 places in the UK which are still wild.
And he's got some definition as to what wild means. It's something like you
can't hear any humanity.
And even if you wanted to, you'd have to travel at least an hour to get to them.
You can't see any light pollution on the horizon if it's night in these wild places.

(45:07):
And he goes and visits them physically, which is a lot more than a lot of nature writers do.
Many of them are armchair writers who never get to visit these places.
Robert McFarlane is a mountaineer and a hiker and writes about his first-hand
visceral experiences on the mountaintop.
The other cool thing is just tying it back to that online resource I mentioned, mapflights.xyz.

(45:30):
He has a map in the inside cover of the paperback version, which is an upside-down
version of the British Isles.
And when you first look at it, you think, oh, this is some new made-up fantasyland map.
I've never seen this before. and then it might be weeks before you realize all
you've got to do is turn it over because he misses out the place names.

(45:53):
There's no London on there. There's no Edinburgh, but he only lists the names of the wild places.
It's a real new lens on a place that's familiar to me but felt brand new as a result of his writing.
He also, we got in touch with him after many years of following his work and
we offered him guest list to come and see us at one of the festivals.

(46:17):
It was the Cambridge Folk, which was his local one. So we thought maybe we'll
get to meet him. This would be really cool.
And then it turned out that on the day, our record label needed us to film a
launch video for our song.
It was It's Not Up To You. That was the name of the song.
And because he was there anyway, we asked whether he might consider coming on
camera and helping us announce this song, as he'd partly inspired it with his writing.

(46:42):
And he said yes. So there's a video out there of us, Stornoway and Robert Mufalo,
sitting backstage at Cambridge Folk Festival discussing the video and the song in detail.
And he was the most inspiring person to meet and talk with about literature.
He's a very kind of energized and authentic person. And yeah,
I hope maybe one day we'll get to collaborate with him more.

(47:03):
But yeah, the first, the main thing I'm saying is everyone should read The Wild.
Places by Robert MacFarlane.
All right, you've given us a lot of homework to do.
Much appreciated. At this point, I'm here with Ollie Stedman,
and we have just wrapped up.
Wonderful conversation about how he connects to nature and what he's willing

(47:27):
to share in terms of his knowledge and all these great resources.
Thank you so much for that. We'll move the needle into a conversation,
a topic that really deals with going into yourself and discovering Discovering Vulnerabilities.
There is a wonderful writer, PhD, best-selling author.

(47:55):
She goes by the name of Brene Brown. She also has a podcast.
And there is a book called Braving the Wilderness, The Quest for True Belonging
and the Courage to Stand Alone.
So, Ollie, in this next bit of conversation, I want to start moving into the

(48:16):
terrain of vulnerability and
what that means to you in terms of being a musician, a man, and a father.
So let's start with being a musician. I'm going to read something to you,
and I would like for you to just respond whatever comes to the top of your head here.
And again, this comes from the book, The Braving the Wilderness by Brene Brown.

(48:41):
Here we go. The quest for true belonging.
True belonging. I don't know exactly what is about the combination of these
two words, but I do know that when I say it aloud, it feels right.
It feels like something we all crave and we need in our lives.

(49:01):
We want to be part of something, but we need it to be real, not conditional
or fake or constantly up for negotiation.
We need true belonging, but what exactly is it?
So that's my question. What is true belonging to you and how does that manifest

(49:26):
itself in the work you do as a member of the band Stornoway or any other musical project?
Okay, I think true belonging is something that musicians build when they're
playing with the knowledge of an audience out there.
They're not just playing for themselves. That's just practice or improvement.

(49:50):
It's very hard work, but it happens in solitude.
Through belonging is when you belong to the listeners and whether you're doing
something that they're going to love you for or learn from you or.
Something else that maybe they'll be offended by but you

(50:11):
still belong to their reaction and you're the thing and
your decision is the thing that's caused their reaction i think
maybe one way explaining it
could be to look at what would false belonging be
like that might be in genres where it's manufactured
and it doesn't really matter who's playing
the music or who's in the the band and the music hasn't

(50:33):
even been written by the artist i mean that that's
sometimes okay carol king was a great
writer who wasn't always the artist who was singing the records
but when there's false belonging
it's like some someone is making the music not for the audience and not for
any wholesome reason just to become famous or to say they've made the music

(50:56):
or to to to make the money and then the other opposite might be through not true belonging but true.
Dislocating or true exclusion where
you're consciously going out
and making something yeah maybe just for yourself true
departure from the belonging again that

(51:18):
would be making music in the absence of an audience or not
for anybody else so yeah true
belonging comes back to whether you're you're in
the moment or making it on the record and it's going to be heard later after
the fact but you're making music for an audience or
for your band mates as well that would be a really good
uh obvious way to explain belonging you belong to your fellows in the moment

(51:42):
on the stage and you're able to maybe even have a boogie together because you're
having such a good time making that music and yeah but it takes it takes vulnerability
because you you have to be willing,
to be wrong in order to learn anything or in order to to gamble to throw the
dice and risk being wrong that's how you occasionally make the right move and

(52:05):
are proved right instead of wrong and that takes vulnerability.
Okay, so I'm not asking you to speak for others in the band,
Stornoway, but based on your experiences with the band,
how has the band expressed themselves in a manner that shows vulnerability,

(52:28):
that shows they're willing to make mistakes and grow and learn from it and be accepting of it?
Is there a particular album? Is there a particular reaching out of maybe a new
producer or maybe trying on a new song during a concert?
Yes. So those are things we do all the time.

(52:50):
And we try out new material in front of audiences when it's not ready. Yeah.
Deliberately to get some kind of feedback from them.
So there's a vulnerability there. But I think we've always embraced vulnerability
from day one in the way we record.
So we've always made music...

(53:10):
On our own terms, in our own houses and bedrooms and sheds.
And we record on cheap four-track tape recorders, if necessary, or basic microphones.
I mean, the production aesthetic is very lo-fi. That's how I would describe it.
And we've suffered for that, because if you put on Beachcomber's Windowsill,
the album, the first one we made, we were just kind of learning as we went.

(53:33):
You put that on next to any modern produced record, or
even just hi-fi music from High Fidelity
aesthetic music from as far back as the 70s it
sounds really quiet and thin and there's not
much bass and there's lots of things i regret about how we recorded it but we
had to go through that vulnerable the vulnerability of that experience we learn

(53:54):
as we experimented and try and find out who we were as artists and then in terms
of an album that demonstrates it i think production Production aesthetic aside,
although this album suffers from the same problem,
I think the album that in artistic terms most expresses this is Tales from Terra Firma.

(54:14):
But we were still somewhat finding our feet and we made most of it at home without a producer.
So it could be a better engineered album, I'd say.
But the main thing that expresses vulnerability there was the songs are explicitly about.
Trying to understand where we're

(54:37):
from and terra firma being the earth these
are tales that we might tell an extraterrestrial who
was visiting earth and had to learn very quickly
how to think about earth we were
going to tell them these tales from terra firma especially things like the
bigger picture it's you don't know if you
don't know where you're coming from you don't know the person you you've become

(54:58):
that's the line from the bigger picture or just
all these songs that are about exploring for the first time something
terrifying that might be happening in a human life
like the miracle of childbirth or the going
out and exploring the appalachian trail
that's that's what we think about in farewell appalachia so

(55:19):
a new place that you might feel kind of
threatened or lost in the writing on that album is much more kind of tentative
exploring one's world to reconnect with nature then we sing on it in other albums
which are a bit more boldly here's how we want to tell everyone how to reconnect album two was yeah i.

(55:43):
Trying to piece it all together as we went along and being vulnerable in order to do that.
Let's step out of the musicianship role and let's look at this next set of questions
in relation to you as a man.
So I'm going to read something to you. Feel free to respond.

(56:05):
In the book, she actually quotes a great philosopher, if you will,
a mythologist, religious someone that people know quite well his name is joseph
campbell he wrote the power of myth.
He writes if you can see your
path laid out in front of you step by step

(56:27):
you know it's not your
path your own path you make with every step you take that is why it's your path
okay so So with that quote from Joseph Campbell in the book,
Braving the Wilderness,

(56:48):
in terms of your path that you've created as Ollie Stedman,
do you ever look at your path in terms of what that means as a man?
Man and all of the foibles, all of the wonderful aspects that we carry.

(57:12):
Tell us a little bit about that path and maybe some success stories or some
heartbreaking moments or anything you like, but keep in mind being a man. Yeah.
One of the great adventures I've had was running my own company this was a music

(57:33):
tech startup company in london we were called tigmas and we were very.
I'd say confused would be my summary i had
so much fun doing it and my business partner and i are still
great friends and we met a lot of people and had a
lot of kind of experiments that we saw the results from and we realized oh we're

(57:56):
not that type of business we're this type of business and we successfully raised
a lot of money and in order to hire people and and we went on this adventure
but the aspects of being a man that i would i think it highlighted to me were.
In the leadership of the company, I only had like four years,
I think, that we were running it.

(58:17):
So I didn't have very much time to realize these mistakes and correct them.
It was only after the four years that I realized this. But the leadership of
the company had never had a single non-male person in there.
The board, the founders, all the executive people ended up, we were all men.
And I think we ran the company in a way that I've since realized was quite kind

(58:44):
of, well, simply just the result of that.
We didn't have a diverse leadership or planning, strategizing.
We worked with a vastly diverse range of artists,
but the business was never going to succeed because it was just a bunch of men
putting on music that they wanted to book and sort of thinking about things

(59:06):
through in a particularly blinkered way.
So we learned the hard way. The business wrapped up after a few years.
And since then, I've entered technology companies as an engineer and an engineer
leader, where I've met so many interesting, diverse minds and people and learned so much from them.
I think if someday I was to start my own company again, I'd ensure that we had

(59:29):
all different opinions represented there somehow.
You can never hire the whole world into your company, but you can hire something
like a representative sample of the specific industry and demographic that you are hoping to cater to.
Mary, some nights I see you between the redwood and the lark.
Music.

(59:53):
Half immersed like the lady Ophelia,
the summer flowers in your outstretched hand.
Mary, some nights I see you,
With being kind of a male-dominated business, how did that impact the way you look at being a man?

(01:00:23):
I think the fact it took me four years to realize that I'd structured the company like this.
Is a cause for regret i wish i'd been a bit more observant
and quicker and i think the
what it's made me realize is that sometimes because there
is a patriarchal element to society men

(01:00:46):
are typically at an advantage in many areas
not all areas um you know there are
more men in mental health crises and in prison than there
are other genders so it's not like men have
the upper hand everywhere but on the whole
men are at more of an advantage than others
so what that puts you in in

(01:01:07):
terms of a thinking position is i'm probably
right probably right about this i'm probably right about that and
starting a business it's very easy to fall into that trap
of going yeah me and the rest of the men around
here are probably probably the
first thing that comes into our head is the correct thing and you
know we we just made a lot of pretty much

(01:01:29):
arrogant would be the word i choose arrogant assumptions or
arrogant yeah strategies and just followed
them without question and then it's.
It's also possible to we
have a word in the uk blag you can blag your way blagging
is a way to sort of maybe exaggerate or

(01:01:50):
you know sort of shrug off asking the hard
questions and ultimately if if
everyone's blagging no one's held to account and you you're just you're not
going to actually be productive as an enterprise but maybe those are two things
i realized about male the lack
of male vulnerability that occurs naturally and the need for males to be.

(01:02:14):
Unconsciously, effortfully vulnerable. Was manliness something that was instilled
in you in terms of your physical features, sexuality,
emotional response, emotional being, intellectualism?
Was that something that was kind of passed down to you in your upbringing at all?

(01:02:39):
It's very hard to say in summary because there's so many people or institutions
or even because I grew up in a different hemisphere,
different sort of cultural influences that would pass things down to someone.
I think maybe what I've realized is coming from South Africa and there is a

(01:03:03):
fairly patriarchal tradition there,
whether it's the, so let's pretend for a moment, and I don't know which society
in South Africa I come from because actually my childhood was very diverse.
I had contact with a lot of different cultures and I wasn't just sort of a British
European influenced bubble in Johannesburg.

(01:03:27):
I grew up with lots of different people influencing me.
So the culture there of Zulu and Xhosa indigenous people tends to be patriarchal
because of the nature of the agriculture there and the warfare,
things that go back into those societies' histories.
The men had most of the power. They were always kings and then the queens.

(01:03:49):
The male children would always be treasured and fed up and trained and nurtured.
There would sometimes be horrific stories of daughter being sort of neglected
and maybe even just sent away because you just didn't want female male children.
On the Afrikaans side of South Africa, that's quite a significant part of the culture.

(01:04:13):
The patriarchal element there is Calvinist religion that came in with the Dutch
in the 17th and 18th centuries.
The whole thing in Europe up to that point, through medieval times,
perhaps through to the early Renaissance, was religion and the idea of the male
pastor, the male priest, knowing everything, and the society listening to them.

(01:04:37):
So even in South Africa to this day, there's an expression of the duomani.
The duomani is the guy who runs the parish and everyone goes to him with their
problems and he'll always have the answer.
And it's a very prescriptive, patronizing culture.
But it's not like everyone's complaining about this culture.

(01:04:58):
People to this day have that as their culture and they love it.
And that's what they identify with. And then the British-European culture there
that I probably mainly came from,
we're still finding our way as society now,
finding out all the ways in which in Britain the sort of male-dominated themes

(01:05:23):
of Victorian society and Edwardian society and the second half of the 20th century,
so many of the politicians being male.
The idea that men are in charge is pretty much
embedded so yeah i
think i was in many ways brought up to be fairly
entitled and privileged as

(01:05:44):
a as a male and i try and do something every day or you know in every interaction
to just be really aware of that and try and counterbalance it with getting informed
about how other people might think or how i might be overextending my assumptions about.
Am I necessarily right about something, or should I try and have a bit more

(01:06:07):
empathy? Should I try and think things through a bit more?
That's a very long-winded answer, but in summary, yes.
No, it's a fantastic answer because, one, you're expressing vulnerability and truth,
and you're really diving, if you will, into a subject matter that I think some
men are willing to not discuss for whatever reason.

(01:06:33):
And so I appreciate that you're willing to offer this up.
I'm definitely going to check out that author you mentioned.
Campbell you mentioned, right? Joseph Campbell. Yeah, yeah. Okay.
Yeah, I think there's something there. Did you say myth?
Power of myth. Yeah, okay. I just

(01:06:53):
want to say that I think one of the ways in which anyone can really discover
who they can be be and who they can evolve into is myth and that they find a
story or a path like you mentioned that isn't the obvious one but involves a
bit of a challenge and going out and finding.

(01:07:13):
Finding some meaning finding some some way of
becoming fulfilled challenged and then fulfilled yes yeah
that's the key did you ever um
read the book or see the movie fight club oh yeah
that's a good example of yeah challenge
a very challenging confusing story but i

(01:07:34):
think the guy comes out at the other end having really
found a bit more meaning in life than he had at
his nihilistic beginning yes absolutely
and in terms of what these men do to each.
Other they're nihilistically in a way
to express their male dominance their

(01:07:54):
male superiority one thing i've always appreciated
about that story is that as i often tell
people it's easy to see victimization going
on but it's actually there are no victims because
they're all they all subscribe to this idea they're
all willing to go through this and they
volunteer themselves right even though they're

(01:08:16):
gonna get their asses pummeled and knocked around and kicked
and bloodied and all that but there's
an aspect to that that story that really
taps into the male psyche that i
think is quite amazing yeah yeah yeah well have you found that it's popular
with certain like demographics because maybe it doesn't connect so well with

(01:08:40):
some categories of male or non-males?
I don't know who are the people in society who most love watching that film
and are happy to watch it again and again.
Yeah, that's a great question.
Wow, that, okay, now you've given me a project. This is why I'm excited by services like Netflix.

(01:09:03):
Everyone talks about having Netflix or Prime Video or other things.
And mostly they talk about, have you seen this or have you seen that?
But what I'm really thrilled about is with these services existing.
We have a way to gather the data on what kinds of people are watching what kinds of content.
And i don't want to like advocate for a

(01:09:25):
surveillance state or something but i think if
we anonymize that data and treated it very sensitively we
could get gain incredible insights into what
types of people different types of
people are and not just keep
churning out content that we assume all the
men are going to like or or something like that it's

(01:09:47):
the more kind of visibility we can get into what makes
people's worlds tick and what what gets
them excited then the more tailored content we
can make to just yeah give people something
that they can learn from third part of this conversation regarding vulnerability
if you will is i understand you're a new father yeah as of 11 months ago congratulations

(01:10:16):
how's that going so far It's brilliant.
I've fallen in love again and got a whole lease on life thanks to our new arrival.
And we're just so thrilled.
What it does for vulnerability is I think there are times when you have to be invulnerable.

(01:10:37):
You have to say to yourself, there's no giving up.
There's no going to sleep at this point. i have to just push on
through and be the one who puts up
with everything now because if you don't then the
baby's yeah just going to keep crying or something but also
the the pro vulnerability that it teaches you is you've got to be willing to

(01:11:00):
be bored for a couple of hours you might be required to read the same book over
and over and over and over to the baby or Or, yeah,
just go through experiences that you might not otherwise pick to have.
I've learned a lot about mental models and mental resilience during this time.

(01:11:21):
I think it's an experience I'd recommend to everybody.
And, yeah, the miracle of childbirth and raising kids, it's a real adventure
of its own. In this book...
Has the word braving, and each letter represents something. And I'm going to read this to you.

(01:11:43):
B, the letter B.
Did I respect my own boundaries?
Was I clear about what's okay and not okay? R, was I reliable?
Did I do what I said I was going to do?
A, did I hold myself accountable? V, did I respect the vault and share appropriately?

(01:12:07):
I, did I act from integrity?
N, did I ask for what I needed? What I needed?
And G, was I generous toward myself?
Self now all these can be applied to raising
a child being you know not so

(01:12:27):
critical of yourself were you kind to yourself did you
respect your own boundaries did you
were you accountable as a father how did these play out or how have they played
out since the birth of your child can i just clarify one of them to the yeah
the vault is that my the vault of knowledge so yes yeah where Where you don't, so in the vault,

(01:12:52):
according to her, you don't share information or experiences that are not yours to share.
I need to know that my confidences are kept and that you're not sharing with
me any information about other people that should be confidential.
That's the vault to her.
That's a very useful, applicable acronym and kind of model for assessing what

(01:13:15):
it's like to become a dad.
I mean, everyone's been saying to me, this time is the best time before they
can kind of run around and life gets so clear.
You need to treasure this time. But it's not just about enjoying it. It's about...
The being present in each moment and experiencing what am I learning right now?

(01:13:42):
What do I need right now? Sometimes I dwell on the fact that I'm amongst the
first cohort of parents who be trying to raise kids in the presence of smartphones.
Phone and i though that i mean like one
of the the simple effects of

(01:14:04):
it is the kids themselves reaching for the phone and
getting very excited oh this is the this is the device that my parents are looking
at all the time maybe there's something magical in it for me so the babies are
always reaching for the phones but actually for the parent the phone is the
most tempting thing because you uh you might be uh in a in a kind of bored uh
moment where nothing much is happening like

(01:14:26):
the baby's just drinking from a bottle and you're just sitting around sort of
enabling that to happen.
So, you know, do you read a book or do you just kind of gaze lovingly into their
eyes? That would be ideal.
Or do you do a bit of Duolingo language practice on the phone or go on social media?
And I think the latter too, very tempting, very unhealthy beyond even the smallest

(01:14:51):
extent because what you really want to do is be in the moment and treasuring
the moment as much as possible.
Because they're only 19 days old once, and they're only 73 days old once.
And once those times are gone, yeah, you lose them forever.
Even if you're using your phone to capture beautiful, memorable images and videos
of what it was like, that'll never replace missing out on the act of child rearing.

(01:15:18):
So I try to be as mindful as I can at all times during this adventure.
So if you don't mind sharing
ollie as we said with the
r for reliability yeah what have you learned about yourself in being a father
and reliability have you had does that just come naturally it seems like that

(01:15:41):
would come naturally for you like you're dependable you're reliable you're going
to be there or is that something you've had to work at a little bit more.
I think I'm good at giving that impression of reliability, but it's actually
something I have to work on a lot very consciously.
And the thing that helps me do it is meticulous, well, not meticulous,

(01:16:03):
but prolific list-making.
Multiple times a day I'm having to list out what was it I had to do by this
time or that time or what meals am I cooking?
What are the commitments that I've made that I can't let anyone down on?
And I've become reliable by repeatedly reminding myself what it is that I'm meant to be doing.

(01:16:23):
I think I have a very, very good long-term memory, often in the band,
everyone's saying, have we played with those guys or have we played at this
festival or what did we do on this date 10 years ago?
The guys will always turn to me to get that info because I have the long-term memory.
But my short-term memory is horrific and I'll often commit to something and
then forget I've committed to it. So these lists are the way that I overcome that.

(01:16:46):
And that sort of reminds me of a quote that I think is appropriate here.
So whether it's in the context of raising a child or just being a human or maybe
being a musician, it's valid as well. We are what we repeatedly do.
And if you are repeatedly listing out what it is you're meant to remember,

(01:17:10):
then you'll eventually remember those things.
Or if you repeatedly go out and have interesting conversations manifestations
and undertake challenges and overcome them, then you become someone for whom
that's a standard thing.
You become courageous and you conquer the world.
But if we're repeatedly someone who just kind of gets the phone out and gets
distracted when they're meant to be enjoying a mindful moment,

(01:17:34):
then that's who we become.
We just become endlessly distractible, impulsive people.
And that's never a good thing.
What about accountability so when your daughter gets older and they're going
to be moments where dad probably has to apologize for whatever reason do you
think that's going to be pretty natural for you easy in delivering that apology

(01:17:59):
or is again is that something you're going to have to work on,
i think in some ways i very willing to apologize and accommodate others that tends to be more of a.
Simultaneously a strength of mine because i have a certain degree of the humility
that that needs but also it can be a weakness because i can too easily sort

(01:18:22):
of not look after my needs going back to the end in that braving acronym so
actually what the what i think i'm going to have to work on,
as this adventure continues is having to stand up for yeah what i what i've determined is the
right partner and stand up for it in the

(01:18:42):
face of you know the kid wants sweets or to go
and do something or whatever do something unsafe maybe
and i'm just gonna have to lay down the law that's not something that
naturally comes to me um so yeah very interesting yeah and in the role of being
a parent a father the contradictions that can come with this right and i remember

(01:19:03):
this This clearly showed up in my role as a teacher or at school,
you know, I could hear teachers say, don't do this.
And then the teacher five minutes later would be doing exactly that.
Right. After they told the students, no, you can't do that.
We had to, for example, is needed. needed

(01:19:26):
yeah and i would say one
of the big things at our school was cell phones
had to be put away before school started and they could be taken out after school
ended and during recess i could see teachers on their cell phones texting and
looking up stuff and i think to myself what the hell are

(01:19:49):
you doing you just we're trying to role model here yeah but right it's there's
there's something within that authoritative role that could our boundaries we
can easily cross over right yeah so okay.
Let's talk about something I heard last week, and I'm going to read it to you.

(01:20:12):
And it goes something like this.
Words like violence break the silence, come crashing into my little world.
Painful to me, pierce right through me. Can't you understand?
Oh, my little girl. Of course, I'm talking about Depeche Mode's iconic,

(01:20:33):
historical, legendary song, Enjoy the Silence.
But it wasn't sung by Depeche Mode when I heard it last week.
This is a rendition from your band Stornoway from this unplugged series of songs.
Can you tell us more about it?
For sure, yeah. I'm really glad that rendition reached you.

(01:20:55):
It's the track we've been hiding for a few months now.
We really enjoyed completing the recording of that back in, it might have been April.
So we sat on it through the whole summer working out the best way to present this to the world.
It's part of this this unplugged collection
like you say which is our word for

(01:21:18):
when we do things unplugged or acoustic so
in that specific song's case it it's
most commonly known as a synth and anthem
and people have listened to it in the
in the depeche mode version as this very electronic
sounding symphonic bit

(01:21:40):
of music and what we've done is stripped out all the electronics and
just made it plucked guitars and a bit of keyboard and
then my double bass which i was able to resume playing
after two or three years not really touching it
so we breathed our
own kind of new stornoway life into this song and i
think it's made it a kind of more tragic

(01:22:02):
song because it really sounds up close and
personal and wistful in a way where the the depression mode version has some
sort of euphoria to it because of the synths i think i've always felt the kind
of uplift when i listen to that our version is really dark but that's not the
only emotion we'll have on the collection the unfucked collection it's going to be.

(01:22:27):
Range of tracks i think it's somewhere in the region
of 15 of them songs from stormways
back catalog all recorded in these unplugged
arrangements and one of my favorite ones from that
collection is farewell appalachia so we talked
about that earlier and it's a track where
on the album version tales from terra firma i

(01:22:49):
have always felt that we sort of slightly lost
style way maybe and put so many layers in
it and the song kind of
didn't have room to breathe and on this version we've
sort of tried something different and we've stripped everything away just
to the three instruments i think
so the pluck guitar from brian you

(01:23:11):
know the pluck guitar from john which is played in
a more lead guitar sort of fashion and then my bass
and for this i borrowed borrowed a friend's hoffner violin
bass which was really beautiful to play so just
those three instruments and our singing and i think gripping
it all back to the bare minimum bare necessities has
allowed the original song to breathe a lot more and it leaves a lot more to

(01:23:34):
the audience's imagination i'm thrilled with this collection and i can't wait
to to hear what people make of it when they receive it in december so how can
people access this well the the unplugged collection will.
Be on all the streaming platforms but we're also
releasing a very limited run of the vinyl

(01:23:54):
and because we have a lot of kind of
collectors in the stone away fan base people who like
to get something physical and you know the best thing about vinyl is you can
frame it and put it on a wall so it's a bit like getting a poster so there'll
be a vinyl run of them and the the show The concert that goes with them is at

(01:24:17):
this magnificent chapel in London.
It's called the Union Chapel, and it's an 800-person seated venue with everything
you'd expect from kind of reverent religious space.
It's got these arches and a vaulted ceiling and stained-glass windows that mean
any music I've ever seen in there has been transformed into a really beautiful experience.

(01:24:40):
So we're very fortunate to have that venue to play in. So with these collections of songs,
was this a democratic experience in terms of everyone had a choice,
everyone had a say in the matter and say, you know, let's do a Depeche Mode,
let's do this one, let's do that one.
How did that process come about?

(01:25:00):
Yeah, very much so. The choice of covers. We've done some very unusual,
unexpected covers over the years and it's always...
Group decision one of the most successful covers we've
done is the only way is up by yaz and
i remember at the time we were sitting around in the
rehearsal studio i think we'd just completed all

(01:25:22):
the recordings for the bonksy album and we needed to think up a song to kind
of add to the set lists for the festival summer that we were about to embark
on and we genuinely were considering one more time by darth funk that was i
think top of the list and there was one or two other kind of.

(01:25:43):
Is it late 90s or early noughties tracks that's the
era that we all most familiar with in terms of pop music and
we like to pick pop songs because that way we're subverting the
expectations of the maximum number of people if
it's a song that everyone knows then and we can
we can change it up then we can surprise the highest number

(01:26:04):
of people so and then someone mentioned the
only way is up and slowly we sort of
went around the room going you know what what could we do
with that what what might the risks be it was
a very vulnerable moment everyone has their say
and eventually we were like yeah let's give
this a stab it's gonna it's gonna be a really

(01:26:24):
good one and we it was put together the
only way is up the other tracks
we've had done include things like ride on
time i can't remember who sings that then wearing my rolex or in our version
wearing my casio which was by wiley who's one of the most famous grime artists

(01:26:45):
in the world and that was pretty much the definition of vulnerability because
we were reaching into a genre that we
had nothing to do with and no experience of, and we'd never seen Wiley.
And we just, we were kind of treading on toes in a sense, but we got the banjo
out and made something of that.
And it went down really well with our audience.
So yeah, constructing these covers is one of the most fun elements of being

(01:27:08):
in a band because you get to apply your own sound and put your own stamp on
something that other people think they know, and then you can kind of submit.
Music.

(01:28:50):
What is coming down the line for you and or the band in 2024?
We will be working on new material and adding some very big,
exciting moves for 2026.
So next year we'll play all the UK festivals that we can, and maybe we'll head

(01:29:11):
over to Europe and play a couple of things.
It would be great if I could get the band over to LA, because,
you know, like I mentioned, Tom, our trumpet player, lives there,
teaches there, and all sorts of reasons why we could make that happen.
But I think my expectations are set on just playing a lot of festivals in the
UK and getting down into the studio so that come 2026, we'll have some real

(01:29:34):
high-quality new material to share with people.
If you could get to LA or San Francisco, oh my goodness.
This i've never seen you guys play live and what the hell i'm waiting for yeah
we've been only two or three times and it's not enough for you know the number

(01:29:54):
of fans i know we have there people getting in touch all the time saying stop
california scheming and let's make it a reality.
Oh if you need help i'll do
what i can all right in my hand i'm holding
a brand new record this is uh
nick cave in the bad seed oh yeah new album

(01:30:16):
called wild god a must own in my opinion it is fantastic talk about being vulnerable
yeah everything that he's been doing and what's been going on in his life before
we do our lightning round questions are there some albums you'd like
to recommend to our list yeah i

(01:30:38):
mean many but is there
is there a kind of specific you
know era or no anything from my goodness the clancy brothers to david bowie
to you know radiohead anything i think this year the album that i've listened to most is chet atkins,

(01:31:03):
the eclectic guitar that's going back almost to the dawn of,
Martin recorded guitar music he was one of the early innovators of electric
guitar playing and really set on learning more of the finger picking style that
he plays I can play a bunch of ragtime tunes but.

(01:31:23):
Pushed myself enough and i want to i want to learn some
of his arrangements all right other albums on regular rotation for me i mean
there's this artist of montreal kevin barnes is the guy behind of montreal and
i was that was a rabbit hole for me i was deep into the the of montreal fan.

(01:31:45):
Fandom from about 2007 till
maybe 2017 yeah
when he released he started releasing stuff that was a
little less like melodic and a bit more difficult and
he went solo during the decade in which i was deeply
in love with that band they were they were a band and he had regular

(01:32:07):
group of musicians around him the album i'd recommend
anyone from of montreal is maybe
toward the end end of that no no
i'll go to the very beginning of that phase the the the ultimate of
montreal album is satanic panic in the attic and it's
it's just really eloquent pop writing his words are pure poetry that makes sense

(01:32:33):
it's full sentences it's beautiful images and metaphors as references to psychology
and Greek mythology, all sorts of things.
It's very wide-ranging in the topics he covers in his lyrics,
but also the instrumentation is virtuosic and I guess, sing-alongable.
Yeah, so I'll just go with that. Of Montreal, Satanic Panic in the Arctic. And Chet Atkins.

(01:33:00):
Yeah. Are you ready for Lightning Round Part 2? Let's do it. Okay.
So, for all the listeners out there, I'm going to ask Ollie some questions,
and he's just going to go off the top of his head as fast as he can,
and we'll see what comes up here. Here we go.

(01:33:21):
Currently what is your favorite beverage oh
a cool still glass of water your
favorite animal it's the servo where do you go when you want to be alone i go
trail running if you could learn any language in one week which would it be

(01:33:43):
japanese what do you impulse buy most often in at a store?
Probably plectrums. What chore do you absolutely despise doing?
Anything with guitar strings. Tell us the name of a person who inspires you.
I'd say Kevin Barnes. Can you tell us the first concert you ever attended that you remember? member?

(01:34:11):
Well, it was in Oxford, a band called Sexy Breakfast.
Sexy Breakfast. Interesting.
What time of day are you most inspired? Morning. I mean, three dawns in the morning.
Okay, great. What is one food you would gladly get out of your life? Bread.

(01:34:33):
What is your job title now?
It's a software engineering director. If you could be a character in a movie,
what character would you want to be? Maybe Shia Khan.
If you were stranded on an island and you had one book to read over and over

(01:34:53):
and over again, what book would that be?
Probably be Anna Karenina.
Are you an optimist or a realist?
I'd be a pessimist, but of the two, I'd say I'm a realist. Would you rather be social or be alone?
Aspirationally, I'd say I'd like to be more social. But as of today,

(01:35:16):
I'm most comfortable and creative and productive when I'm alone.
Let's do a few more. Dogs or cats?
Cats. An amusement park?
Amusement park or a zoo? An amusement park. Quality or quantity?
Quality. Would Ollie rather dress up or dress down?

(01:35:40):
Dress up. Wine or chocolate? Chocolate.
Peace and quiet or music? Music.
In one word, describe the band Stornoway. Humble.
Humble? Go to a concert or a sporting event?
Concert. If you could win an Olympic medal, what would it be in?

(01:36:04):
Basketball. what is the worst sound in the world to you silence who is ollie stedman at this moment.
I'm trying to get a little bit better every day and particularly better at piano playing every day.

(01:36:24):
Oli, thank you so much for all of your time.
Thank you for providing such great insight into nature, into the music,
and to who you are as a person.
That's what I connect with. And two, you have a wealth of experience that can
really open the eyes and ears of the podcast listeners and people that you surround yourself with.

(01:36:52):
Congratulations on being a father. Fantastic.
And the rollercoaster ride that's going to come with it, you seem very strapped in and ready to go.
And much continued success with the band Stornoway and looking forward to the
release of the Unplugged album which is December, correct? That's right.

(01:37:16):
And you get the last word before I read one more thing Anything else you want to share?
May everyone be safe, may everyone be happy and may everyone be fulfilled field.
I think you are a diver rather than a scanner.
Thank you. Here we go.

(01:37:37):
This is from the book, The Creative Act, A Way of Being, written by Rick Rubin.
I'll read something to you. No response.
If we can tune in to the idea of making things and sharing them without being
attached to the outcome,

(01:38:01):
the work is more likely to arrive in its truest form.
Rick Rubin Thank you, everyone.
My name is W, host of the High Art on the Edge page, host of this podcast called Surprise Cast.
And always remember this great art and nature is always around us you just have to keep your eyes.

(01:38:33):
Music.

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