November 5, 2024 • 52 mins
Divided Heaven is a a group comprised of singer, songwriter, and guitarist Jeff Berman plus a cast of amazing musicians based out of Lancaster, PA.
Jeff and I had compelling chat about his recent single, "Living Funeral" calling out the cult of the "Orange Man" and the events of Jan. 6.
To honor his intentions for this song and his exception work, I wanted to get this song published on election day 2024.
If you've not voted yet today, I encourage you to go excercise your right to do so. I hope Jeff's song is an inspiration for you however it hits you.
You can find the episode on all streaming platforms here:
B-Side Breakdown
https://linktr.ee/bsidebreakdown
Please follow Divided Heaven on their socials, buy their records, and stream their music on any of the available platforms.
You can keep up with them at:
Divided Heaven:
https://www.dividedheaven.com/
https://www.instagram.com/dividedheaven
https://dividedheaven.bandcamp.com/
...and their label:
Double Helix Records:
https://doublehelixrecords.com/
https://www.instagram.com/doublehelixrecords
Thank you for your continued support!
Brett Johnson
https://linktr.ee/brettjohnson
#DividedHeaven #JeffBerman #LivingFuneral #brettjamesjohnson #threecrowsclub #musicpodcast #bsidebreakdown
Jeff and I had compelling chat about his recent single, "Living Funeral" calling out the cult of the "Orange Man" and the events of Jan. 6.
To honor his intentions for this song and his exception work, I wanted to get this song published on election day 2024.
If you've not voted yet today, I encourage you to go excercise your right to do so. I hope Jeff's song is an inspiration for you however it hits you.
You can find the episode on all streaming platforms here:
B-Side Breakdown
https://linktr.ee/bsidebreakdown
Please follow Divided Heaven on their socials, buy their records, and stream their music on any of the available platforms.
You can keep up with them at:
Divided Heaven:
https://www.dividedheaven.com/
https://www.instagram.com/dividedheaven
https://dividedheaven.bandcamp.com/
...and their label:
Double Helix Records:
https://doublehelixrecords.com/
https://www.instagram.com/doublehelixrecords
Thank you for your continued support!
Brett Johnson
https://linktr.ee/brettjohnson
#DividedHeaven #JeffBerman #LivingFuneral #brettjamesjohnson #threecrowsclub #musicpodcast #bsidebreakdown
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Freetros says B Side Breakdown.
Speaker 2 (00:07):
Hey, everyone, welcome to the B Side Breakdown. My name
is Brett Johnson and I am your host. This is
episode twenty eight of a podcast where I talk with
other artists, musicians, and songwriters about a song they've written
that's meaningful to them that they want to discuss. On
this episode today, I'm gonna be talking with Jeff Berman
from the band Divided Heaven about their song Living Funeral.
It's a great song and I can't wait for you
(00:29):
to hear it, So let's get into it. Here is
Living Funeral by Divided Heaven.
Speaker 3 (00:37):
What a watch?
Speaker 4 (00:39):
What do you waiting?
Speaker 5 (00:40):
Fool?
Speaker 4 (00:40):
Send the face inside mouth?
Speaker 1 (00:44):
What do we watch?
Speaker 4 (00:46):
What do you waiting for?
Speaker 5 (00:49):
No?
Speaker 4 (00:52):
Fifteen man says.
Speaker 1 (00:53):
Enough for expucs enos.
Speaker 4 (00:57):
Bounce Monica about it and let the better means facility
of the mind sing with me.
Speaker 1 (01:15):
Comradis and sister singing in three, they says transferinger, so
that's gone.
Speaker 4 (01:23):
They mean you, Oh, oh, I'll be watching to be waiting.
Speaker 1 (01:37):
We send the stocking and his sign my paone, you
gotta shame's bollys gokay and you.
Speaker 4 (01:45):
Got slay all kill us all, which I.
Speaker 1 (01:49):
Cannot do the king if your income to say that
a forten the size, but generally not to fascist. It's
better sase God say a god.
Speaker 4 (02:03):
Go go go.
Speaker 6 (02:08):
Singing with me, Mo the some sisters singing and with me.
They say stress three hussle, that's go living. You say
(03:01):
Shasha song says come back.
Speaker 4 (03:14):
Say shah saya song.
Speaker 6 (03:21):
Sad colaba puno they say sha share song dot comb phnoye.
Speaker 7 (03:37):
O.
Speaker 2 (03:47):
All right, and that was Living Funeral by Divided Heaven.
We're gonna take a quick break and come back to
talk with Jeff Berman about the song. So please stay
with us and we'll be right back. All right, and
we're back. Let's bring in Jeff Burman to talk about
the song Living Funeral from the band Divided Heaven. Hey, Jeff,
thank you for taking the time this evening to talk
with me about the song.
Speaker 7 (04:07):
Thank you very much.
Speaker 2 (04:07):
Happy to be here, absolutely, you know I'd love to.
As soon as I first heard this, I'm like, man,
this is infectious. Like it's just been kind of running around.
There's so many hooks in it, and for me, it
just kind of keeps coming across my brain and I
just sort of get stoked every time I get to
turn it back on, So I can't wait to hear
(04:28):
from you. Yeah, absolutely, I want to hear from you.
You know, why what's going on with the song? And
why is the song meaningful to you? Please?
Speaker 7 (04:34):
Man, it's a loaded question. What's going on with the song.
There's a lot going on, But I'll speak to the
earworm factor that you were alluding to just a moment ago.
That was purposeful. I am very proud of the Divided
Heaven catalog and I'm currently working on my sixth record,
which is crazy to say out loud. If I look
(04:56):
back objectively at the songs that I've written, I tend
to be guilty of writing songs that have, you know,
choruses that are very long winded, and maybe they're really
poetic and they're lyrically poignant, but the melodies that carry
them aren't as memorable. And what I've been trying to
do in my songwriting recently is really create and craft
(05:19):
melodies that are memorable that you will sing to yourself
on the toilet in the shower when you're driving, you know.
And this song purposefully has like three or four specific
elements that I wanted to really repeat on purpose and
drive home from a melodic recognition and recall point of view.
(05:42):
So I'm glad to hear that you said it was infectious,
that was the goal.
Speaker 2 (05:45):
There's this ferocity I find in your verses too, just
the way that you're singing it and the lyrics and
the content of it all, and it's just I don't
know it. It's so upfront, and I love that, and
it just feels really like, well, this is what this is,
you know, and it just kind of doesn't leave a
whole lot to be you know, Oh, it could subjectively
(06:08):
be about something else maybe, but it just really feels
like it's pretty clear what you're talking about.
Speaker 7 (06:13):
So you who are you kidding? Before we get into
the lyrics, I will say that I have a really
good focus group in my house, and that is that
I have a three year old son, and I started
working on this song at some point when he was
one and starting to formulate words and to articulate, you know,
baby talking things like that, and I recognized that he
(06:34):
was singing the Oh yeah, he was doing that onto himself,
unbeknounst to me, prompting if I was playing the guitar
in front of him. He might say, oh, play woo
hoo song or something. But even when I didn't have
the guitar, you know, in my hands or on my lap,
he would still be singing it occasionally. And I took
that as as a good sign of, you know, in
(06:57):
crafting an element within the song that doesn't even have
you know, lyrics. It's just vocalisms, yep. But they're effective
from a memorability standpoint.
Speaker 2 (07:07):
Definitely, very much so, very much So. What about the
rest of the So I'm interested, tell me a bit
about before we get too far down this rabbit hole,
tell me a bit about Divided Heaven.
Speaker 7 (07:21):
So is this.
Speaker 2 (07:23):
Just strictly a you project or is this a is
this a band? Is it kind of what's going on with.
Speaker 7 (07:30):
This depends on he you ask. I've worked really hard
over the years to make it more of a collective.
Speaker 2 (07:36):
Okay.
Speaker 7 (07:37):
My manager thinks that that's hippie bullshit and it's just
not true, and Divided Heaven is Jeff Berman, and I
think he's right. I mean, that's what it is. And
I say that whilst trying to not be dismissive of
the great musicians that have played in the band with me.
But I'd say, the numerical breakdown is about seventy five
(07:59):
per Then of all the touring that I've done over
the past fourteen years for Divided Heaven has been solo
and the remaining has been with the band, and that
band has been kind of a rotating cast, in part
because I wanted to tour so much. It was a
It was a drag and a pull on a lot
(08:20):
of people's schedules. So sure, there was always kind of
a rotating cast of bass players that were on the records,
of rotating cast of bass players that were in the
van and on the road with us. Most of the
drumming and most of the time I worked with my drummer, Nick,
And I think that's what people associate, like from a
branding standpoint, when people think of Divided Heaven, that either
(08:42):
they think of it as me or they think of
it as me and Nick Moriali, who was my longtime
drummer and still is, like he's going to be on
songs on the new record. This song, however, is really
special to me because the drummer is my friend Carl Weirsbigie.
We're both from the same small city, Lancaster, Pennsylvania. We
both left as soon as we could. We both lived
in LA for a long time. We both you know,
(09:04):
did the touring thing, but we never played in a
band together. We never wrote or recorded together. And this
song Living Funeral is the showcase of our first work together.
And it's very exciting that, you know, you know, somebody
that I've known since I was fifteen, we're now getting
together and doing this one we're forty two. I think
it speaks to the longevity and genuine interest and admiration
(09:26):
that Karl and I have for each other, and also
our desire to still be creating interesting and dangerous rock
and roll music in our forties.
Speaker 2 (09:37):
Absolutely absolutely so you both respectively. So okay, you've known
each other since you were since you were fifteen, and
you didn't play music in Lancaster back then. That was
a thing, like you both just went to LA for music.
Speaker 5 (09:52):
Is that one? Now?
Speaker 7 (09:52):
We both we were both in bands. Yeah, we just
never ended up playing together in parings. I should have clarified. Yeah,
he was in a band, got it. He's going to
laugh when he hears it was sixty nine. Since was
Carl's band, and I was in a band called The
Cursed that then grew into a band called The Statics,
and I think that we were both in positions where
(10:14):
we were kind of the babies in our bands, okay,
and having to shoulder the weight of a lot of
the responsibility that our elder bandmates didn't take upon themselves. So,
you know, Carl's the drummer and the baby in his
band part time babysitter as well for the older members
(10:35):
in his band, And it was very much that was
a situation I was in in a number of bands
when I was younger, and now I think we kind
of look at it much differently, you know, being the
elder statesman in our respective bands ourselves. So it's good
that he and I have kind of, you know, gotten
we've had a lot of career parallels, so it felt
really good to come together and work on something.
Speaker 5 (10:57):
Got it.
Speaker 2 (10:58):
No, that's great, that's great. So I mean, I know
from your bio that you moved from Hollywood back to Lancaster,
and you did you go to Hollywood in the first
place specifically for music? Just I'm going to LA because
that's where it's happening, or no, is theres something else
I brought you there?
Speaker 7 (11:16):
Nope, I I left Lancaster. I moved to Washington, d C.
For college. I moved to New York City after that,
because that's what everybody did. And then I moved from
New York City to Los Angeles simply because I wanted
to experience living in California, and San Francisco was too
expensive at the time. In two thousand and eight, come
to find out that it would never not be expensive again.
(11:38):
So I ended up staying in Los Angeles and falling
in love with the Los Angeles and building a tremendous
life for myself in Los Angeles. But believe it or not,
when I moved from New York to Los Angeles, I
wasn't doing music. I wasn't writing, I wasn't playing, I
wasn't doing anything. I was just kind of in a
musical rut. And I was just working a lot. I
(11:59):
was being and bartending and making pretty good money and
just kind of focusing on different things and traveling and
backpacking around Europe and you know, just doing kind of
quote unquote normal things that aren't you know, dropping all
your free time and money and effort and sweat equity
into a punk band. And so it was a nice,
(12:21):
a nice respite. But once I re entered the musical
world and re entered the song writing part of my brain,
for lack of a better term, I could not stop,
and I haven't stopped, and so I'm glad that that's
that's how it turned out. But as a long witted
(12:43):
way of saying, no, I didn't move to Los Angeles
to become famous or make it in the quote unquote industry.
It just so happened that I moved there and got
the itch to start playing again. And coincidentally, here he
comes back around, mister Carl weir'spicky. I ran into him
at the ninety nine CeNSE. I didn't know he was
living in Hollywood at the time. He didn't know I
was living in Hollywood at the time. We had just
(13:04):
kind of lost touch. This is the age before what
modern social media is now, right, And so we caught
up and he said, Hey, my band is playing on
the Sunset Strip. Do you want to just play a
few songs before we take the stage. I thought sure,
And in a lot of ways, that was really an
impetus behind me having the the hutzpah, if you will,
(13:27):
or having the tenacity to continue doing it, because It's
one thing to you know, play shows in a basement,
you know, in Pennsylvania or just kind of do what
I was doing when I was in college, and it's
another thing to kind of, I don't know, there's gravitas
to me. There's gravitas to playing on the Sunset Strip.
Even if the clubs are ways shittier than we've romanticized
(13:47):
them to be, it still was important to me. And
so I always appreciated Carl kind of giving me that
olive branch. And then yeah, we just you know, kept
in touch, and like I said, we ended up both
moving back here to Lancaster, Pennsylvania roughly around the same time,
around twenty twenty. So it just it gives me it. Yeah,
(14:07):
so happy to be working with him.
Speaker 2 (14:08):
Yeah, oh that's great. That's great. So is it that
era then when you did those shows opening up for him,
playing a few songs and his band. Is that kind
of where Divided Heaven started? Or was it before that?
Speaker 7 (14:20):
That was where Divided Heaven restarted. One of the shows
that I played, I played with Carl's other band played.
We played at the Knitting Factory in Hollywood, which isn't
there anymore unfortunately.
Speaker 6 (14:31):
But.
Speaker 7 (14:33):
I met this guy, Bradley, Bradley Riot, and when I
met him, I tell this story frequently and he always
makes fun of me, but he was very much a
California dude. Yeah, dude, super super stoked on your set. Man.
It was awesome, man, I have a studio, dude, let's
fucking make a record, man. And I thought he was
just blowing smoke up my ass and come to find
(14:53):
out that he was telling the truth and he is
a wonderfully authentic person. But it was, you know, a
show that I played with Carl where I met Bradley,
and Bradley ended up producing my first record, which is
called A Rival City, and that came out in twenty eleven,
and that just kind of gave me the nudge. It
(15:14):
was kind of like kind of like Bradley like pushed
me off a cliff inadvertently, and I was like, all right, well,
either you're gonna fly or you're gonna fall flat. And
I hit a few bumps on the way down for sure,
but then I started to kind of fly from there.
And so I was thinking about this and Karl and
I were actually talking about this a couple of weeks ago.
(15:35):
The way in which he and I have stayed in
touch and kind of reconnected and now are working together
within this new chapter of divided Heaven. And I often
think about my own career in terms of longevity. I
never reached the heights of success that I imagined. I
think most people who get into music never reached the
heights that they envisioned for themselves or their rock star
(15:57):
dreams or whatever. And I think that's okay. But I
learned pretty early on that an advantage that I could
have as I could be wise in my decision making,
try to minimize my mistakes and maximize my efforts in
a way that would provide me a career in music
(16:17):
that rides on longevity. And I think that i've I've
succeeded in that.
Speaker 2 (16:25):
Got it, got it? No, good for you?
Speaker 5 (16:27):
Good for you?
Speaker 2 (16:28):
Yeah, that's that's a that's a conundrum talking to any
musician about so, what did you think success was going
to look like when you were younger. It's always interesting
for me to kind of, you know, hear that a
little bit from from artists and just you know, because
some have wild dreams and they change, of course, and
(16:49):
they change and evolve, and they have been flow as
we grow and mature and and just the things we
want are, you know, continue to evolve and become different.
But yeah, that's that's wonderful that you've been able to
find that way to sustain that longevity piece in your
instrumentation in that first show. So when you say that
(17:10):
you did a bunch of touring solo, are you is
it just you an acoustic guitar or electric guitar or
do you have I don't know, any other do you
play with like loop pedals or synths or samples or
anything like that, or is it just you in an
instrument in your.
Speaker 7 (17:28):
Voice, my voice in my guitar, sometimes electrics, sometimes acoustic.
But yeah, it was purposefully simplified, and it's worth noting too.
I would like your listeners to know that I tactfully
yet proudly consider myself a very good singer. But I
(17:50):
worked very hard at it. I was not a very
good singer. I took voice lessons for years and it's
still something that I work on. I'm not a naturally
inclined musician by any means. I have a natural love
for music and a natural attraction to music in certain genres,
and I feel like I have a pretty good feel
(18:10):
for it, if that makes sense. But in terms of
picking up an instrument and playing it does not come
naturally to me. It takes a lot of work, and
my voice was no exception. It was probably the biggest
challenge I've ever faced in music, but it was also
the most fun.
Speaker 4 (18:24):
You know.
Speaker 7 (18:24):
It was the most daunting challenge, but the most fun
challenge as well. So when I play solo, I rest
on those that's the wrong way of saying it. I
lean into those strengths. Whether people think about it like this,
bread like, whether people like my songs is beyond my control.
(18:47):
It's subjective, yep. Whether they think I'm a good singer.
I think everybody who sees me perform comes away thinking
that guy knows how to play guitar, that guy knows
how to sing. I don't really like his songs, but
you can do this, you know, And I'll take that
as a w for sure.
Speaker 2 (19:03):
Sure got it. No, that makes a ton of sense.
That makes a ton of sense, and that's it's also
nice to hear. Yeah, I think, just reflecting my own
experience with that, the problem that or not, it's not
a problem, but it's choice of words. The challenge that
(19:24):
I kept getting presented with over and over in songwriting,
particularly as a vocalist, was I wanted to be a
better singer than I was, and I didn't know how
I was singing incorrectly for so long, and I didn't
know any tools or tricks or really anything about it.
I was just really going at it from a no
(19:47):
way man like punk rock style, like this is what
I can do, and I can sing this way because
my heroes can sing like this, so therefore I can too,
and not really understanding range and capability and limitations and
really things that happened, you know, that are different with
every human being. And I have my own natural range
and voice and timbre and all of that, and really
(20:09):
have to work on, you know, my breath and my
control and not getting nasal when I sing, and how
do I know that, you know? And all these things
that I didn't learn inherently and tried to I think
fake a lot along the way, like trying to just
make it sound as good as it could, but know
and knowing that the expression was sincere. But I wasn't
(20:29):
able to really deliver it on the way that I
wanted to until I started taking vocal lessons myself, and
then when I started working with a teacher, she really
just know, we're building your voice from the top down,
which is counterintuitive, and there's so much we're gonna do
here that's counterintuitive. And I'm like okay, and just really
went with it. And I'm super like, super grateful because
(20:50):
I had a fall sell set it when I was thirteen,
and then it disappeared for thirty years, and then it
showed up again and I was like, wow, you know,
like I can sing in a way that I couldn't
sing for a long long time. So I mean, I
really I that what you're saying really resonates with me
on that and that's really good to hear. I mean, also, you.
Speaker 7 (21:07):
Man for putting the work in too, I mean give
yourself the credit for that as well.
Speaker 2 (21:11):
Oh thank you.
Speaker 5 (21:12):
No, I do, I do.
Speaker 2 (21:13):
It's it's hard, it's not easy, and it's hard to
well and it can be expensive and there's all kinds
of barriers that can keep it going depending But it's
like my teacher was super awesome in the fact that
she would just let's get to where you need to be.
What is the focus of this next thing? You're doing Okay, cool,
we got seven months to get you there, so let's
(21:33):
get you there and then we here's how to sustain
you know. And that was all just her approaches. Rad
I just was super into it. But how did.
Speaker 4 (21:43):
So with that?
Speaker 2 (21:44):
Did you have all this the vocal training and that
confidence in your in your vocal ability and guitar playing
when you were doing those first shows in LA I mean,
was that already there or had you started at work
after that point.
Speaker 7 (21:57):
I had started the work before that, Okay, so I
had that. I didn't have the control. You know, it's
you know, it's it's a it's a muscle. So when
I decided to start playing shows again in when I
was living in Los Angeles, I had the knowledge and
the means to get my voice back in shape, so
(22:17):
to speak. Sure, but I hadn't got back in shape,
so to speak. And I recognized that relatively recently. Actually,
in twenty twenty three, I did a whopping eight shows,
which is a drastic reduction from my usual you know,
one hundred and sixty shows that I was doing, you know,
eight years ago, nine years ago, ten years ago. But
(22:39):
they were of higher profile. So I wanted to make
sure that I was in good physical condition and good
voice condition. And what I recognized was that even though
I had done recordings and I had worked on certain
things with my voice through you know, twenty twenty and
twenty twenty one and twenty twenty two, I was doing
it conditionally. So I'd be like, all right, I need
(23:01):
to record vocals for this song because it's going to
be this single on this month, and I would do that,
but then I wouldn't work beyond what that scope was.
And I realized that when it came time for me
to get ready to start playing shows again. It's weird
to say this, Brett, but I was rusty. I had
to practice standing in front of a microphone stand again.
(23:22):
I oh playing up. I just got so conditioned in
the pandemic times that I was, you know, doing live
streams and playing. But yeah, I'm sitting on a stool
and I was playing in a way that wasn't befitting
what I did when I toured all the time. And
in the process of getting ready for the shows that
I played in January of twenty three, I did like
a divided Heaven boot camp. I mean, I got myself
(23:43):
back in physical shape. I was purposefully eating better and
trying to get more sleep, and a lot of vocal exercises,
a lot of working on the set. I practiced holding
the microphone, I practiced fingerpicking, I practiced my scales, I mean,
you name it. I was doing everything to just improve
my game. And the shows that I I played in
twenty twenty three, despite the decrease in volume and then
(24:04):
the amount of shows, were easily my best and the
most impactful, and I had the best voice control, I
hit my best falsettos, the jokes between the songs were
the best they ever landed. I just I took the
time to really craft a set, and that was something
I had never actually done before. I always just kind
of winged it and almost rested on the fact that
(24:27):
I had a pretty unique and strong voice and a
solid foundation of how to play the guitar in front
of other human beings. But in twenty twenty three, I
really pushed myself to get outside of my comfort zone
and do things that were scary and in front of
bigger crowds than I had ever played in front of.
And that was a really exhilarating experience, and it reminded
(24:51):
me that at other times in my career, specifically back
in this eighth nine twenty ten time where I thought
I was like keeping myself in shape or and voice shape,
I actually was cutting a lot of corners. And my
late thirties early forties self just won't won't allow that
to be. I have too much pride to cut corners anymore.
Speaker 2 (25:12):
No, good for you, man, that's really yeah, that's great
to hear the shows that you did in twenty twenty three.
And I'm saying this, and I'm asking this in for
the benefit of the listeners as well. Is there one
two questions? One did any of those shows happen to
get recorded that I could go find on YouTube? And two,
(25:35):
if so, which one should I go find? I think so.
Speaker 7 (25:39):
I mean I played a show here in Pennsylvania with
Chuck Reagan, Wow, which I mean it was like, you know,
like a three point fifty cap room that was full,
you know, So that's a big show for me.
Speaker 2 (25:52):
That's awesome.
Speaker 7 (25:52):
And then I played a festival in Orange County with
Frank Turner and that was also like four hundred people.
I mean I played the side stage, so it was
the big stage is like twenty five hundred. I think
my side stage was like maybe four hundred, but it
was the room was full. I honestly, I don't keep
track with who records what, so I'm sure there's stuff
(26:14):
out there, okay, but I don't know of the quality
would be befitting, you know, hearing you know, I just
can't speak to it.
Speaker 2 (26:22):
No, fair enough, fair enough. I just didn't know if
you knew, like for sure, yes, this show got recorded
because you just knew. You know, that's that's fair and fine,
and I get it, and I'm super it's awesome. You
got to play with track Reagan. That's really cool. I
finally got to see him live for the first time,
just this past weekend. I never had a chance to
see him before. It wasn't solo, he was with Hot
Water Music. But it was super fun and I was like, man, like,
(26:45):
I'd been a fan of his solo stuff for a
long time and a fan of Hot Water Music, but
I've always liked him and an acoustic guitar more than anything,
and so it was fun to see. But then, you know,
just hearing you got to do shows with him too,
that's pretty great.
Speaker 7 (26:59):
Yeah, he's he's top shelf, He's the best.
Speaker 2 (27:02):
Yeah, Yeah, wonderful. So then what brought you back to Pennsylvania.
Speaker 7 (27:10):
I married a girl from LA that wanted to get
out of LA and she loved my hometown. So that's
what we did. We moved back to my hometown at
her insistence.
Speaker 2 (27:20):
Nice.
Speaker 7 (27:23):
Yeah, nice. I don't know. Sometimes I think it's poetic
and sometimes it's tragic. I oscillate between the two. I
think this might be an interesting segue back to living funeral,
but I'll just say that I do miss living in
a major city that is overwhelmingly predominantly progressive and liberal
(27:46):
and doesn't tolerate all that hateful bullshit. And so being
back in a place where, you know, like, yeah, my
little city is kind of liberal, but we're in a
very very conservative area and a very religious area. Sure,
sometimes that that really bothers me. Sometimes it doesn't, but
(28:06):
sometimes it really it bothers me. So I kind of
oscillate between a number of different emotions about being back here.
Speaker 2 (28:15):
It's a that's an interesting there's a similarity there where
my wife's parents lived in this small town outside of Greenville,
South Carolina, between Clemson and Greenville, and it was a
very very small town and and it was sort of
(28:36):
the same thing. She wanted to move there for a
host of reasons, so we did. But it was it
was also that there's parts of it that were beautiful
and amazing to live in the base of the Blue
Ridge Mountains and to be able to ride a motorcycle
through them and just to be in that sort of countryside,
which is incredible and a different experience. And then there's
(28:58):
the other side of it where I'm like, Wow, I'm
being from Minneapolis, Minnesota, which is also a fairly very
progressive city, and and the friends and the scenes in
the in the and the folks that I would hang
out with, much different experience, and so I I resemble.
I think what you're talking about there. I truly connect
(29:18):
with that. Not living in Orlando now, No, I moved.
I was there for a few years, several years, and
then I moved to Orlando last December, and so it's
it's nice to be in a bigger city again. But yeah,
I too. I lived out in California. I lived in
Oakland in the Bay Area and worked out there for
(29:39):
a while, and just the being in a thriving, creative,
like fiercely creative and productive place is so inspiring. And yeah,
I tend to miss that. But anyway, I'm glad that
you got to go back to where you're from and
that you had a couple more kids that brought you
(30:02):
out there, right, or did you have children before? Is
this your first children that you've had were when you
were in Pennsylvania.
Speaker 7 (30:09):
No, it happened fast. We closed on a house in
February of twenty twenty, so really before the shit hit
the fan. And then by the time we got here,
you know, we had a lot of it was discovered
that there was a lot of immediate sickness within my
(30:30):
a lot of sickness within my immediate family that needed
our attention. So it was good that we had moved
back when we did. And then we found out that
we were pregnant with our first child, and so my
son was born in twenty twenty one, and then we
had a baby girl earlier this year, so we're in
the thick of it. I don't know if you can
hear a baby crying, but my daughter, Lilith is crying
(30:50):
her eyes out downstairs. So yeah, no, the kids, you know,
and it's cool. Yeah, even though and that's not the
right way to say it, we had our kids here
in Pennsylvania. We did not have them in California and
bring them here. But having them here allows me to
(31:10):
have a different Lancaster, Pennsylvania experience than I did as
a teenager. And I think if I was here and married,
but without kids and looking at Lancaster through the same
lens that I did when I was eighteen in nineteen
ninety nine, I would like it a lot less and
I'd be much more resentful. Now I'm not resentful or bitter.
(31:32):
I have those moments where I'm resentful and bitter that
I didn't make enough money or I wasn't fucking successful
enough to buy, you know, a swear foot of property
in Los Angeles, let alone a house. But I also
have my days that I'm grateful to be here. I
got to spend time with my family at a very
difficult time in our lives and in the world, and
(31:55):
my kids get to be close to my family, and
you know, there's we have a good community to hear.
So I'm very I'm very grateful.
Speaker 2 (32:02):
No, that's wonderful. And that brings me to your kind
of press photo, which which baby are you holding in that?
Speaker 7 (32:09):
That's Lilith? Yes, so you know, you can chock that
up to originality, but there's a reason for it. When
my previous record, Oblivion came out, one of the songs,
one of the lead singles, was a song called burn Me,
and it was about the h the manner in which
(32:31):
we all give way too much credence and gravitas to
people who say shitty things on comment boards, and we did.
We just give too much credo and and we prop
up too many stupid people on the Internet. And that
was my way of hitting back at all the haters.
(32:53):
And one of the things I really have come to
despise about the greater punk scene or music scene is
the played out everybody's got a fucking beard, Everybody stands
in front of a brick wall, everybody has the same
press photo where they're all wearing a different band's T shirt, right,
and you know, like you know, it's just just this weird, repetitive,
(33:18):
like carbon copy of the previous band that sounds just
like you know, it's almost like they're trying to out
hot Water Music themselves. They're just like cloning themselves after
like how hot Water music looked in nineteen ninety eight.
It's just it's embarrassing. I think it's stupid. So I thought,
how could I be different? All Right, I'm gonna hold
my baby just wearing his diaper. I'm gonna not have
a shirt on, and I'm going to hold up a
(33:39):
match with a light, a lit flame, and if it
looks cool, cool, So that's what we did. Now, all
these years forward, I had plans to get new promo
photos with a friend of mine in Washington, d C.
It didn't the schedules didn't come together. Double Helix Records,
my wonderful new label is breathing down my neck. We
need some press photos, Jeff, come on, And I thought,
I'll just repeat the same motif with my second child,
(34:01):
and it's still will work. A lot more gray hairs
on my head in this second version of the promo
photo with Wilith. But I think it's befitting the song,
and I think it's a it's a if nothing else,
it's a nice nod that my family and I can cherish.
Speaker 2 (34:18):
No, absolutely, and thank you so much for the context
and background on that. So let's then get back to
the song. Let's do it tell me more about I
mean to me, it seems fairly self evident. But I'd
love to hear it from you, like, what what is
the driving fire behind it that you needed to write
(34:40):
and put this out? I mean, and I just I
asked that that way. I think because you're you have
the way you're describing things to me, there's so much
deliberate focus and placement of how you're doing this, and
that's the impression I'm getting from you. Whether if I'm wrong,
please correct me. No, but I'm hearing that where like
(35:05):
you're saying, like even with vocal hooks, like the way
that you're writing specific things, you're focusing to create this,
to make this statement, to say this statement, to create
this impression on a listener. What was I mean? For me,
that's a lot of crafting beyond just the natural songwriting
(35:28):
that comes up, which I mean, I fully have my
own experience of that, so I mean, I understand from
my perspective what that is. But I'd just love to
hear it, like why that for.
Speaker 7 (35:39):
This Vinegar and Honey, this song is about January sixth.
I will get into the unapologetic nature of it and
break down the difference between verse one and verse two
and my motifs right as I'm sure some of your
listeners will listen to me talk about it and do
a masturbation motion because I'm like waxing poetic as the songwriter, Like,
(36:01):
I get that and I'm open to it, but I'm
writing from a fiery place, from an angry place, from
a place of vitriol. President Biden said that MAGA supporters
were garbage yesterday or today, and now he's backtracking and
Kamala Harris has to apologize for it. He's fucking right,
(36:24):
they're garbage. I'm not going to apologize for it because
I've seen and heard what they've said to me and
things about me and people in my family. So you know,
it's like the thing from twenty sixteen where Hillary Clinton said, oh,
the basket of deplorables and then she had to apologize.
And it's as if we hold certain politicians to a
(36:45):
higher standard to not say stupid things. And then Orange
Man says a whole myriad of stupid things and insulting
things and degrading things, and he gets a pass. So
I look at that as a landscape and I say, okay,
there is no high road. Comedians, late night talk show hosts,
(37:07):
they try to take a funny high Road to always
show how Voldemort is the worst person ever, and they
try to make him look stupid and it's all for
a laugh, and I put up sh I'm not a comedian,
That's not my thing, So Brett, what I try to
do is go lower than low and be unapologetic about it,
(37:30):
but also be catchy about it. So the vinegar is
the vitriol that I'm spitting in my lyrics. The honey
is that I'm trying to make what I'm singing memorable
and catchy enough that people want to sing along because
it is a song, after all, It's not a painting.
It's not something that can be You walk into a
room in a museum and you're like, you know, I
(37:52):
have three minutes and thirty ish seconds to try to
hit you with something with everything you're going to watch
and listen to all fucking day. The three minutes and
thirty seconds that somebody gives to Divided Heaven for this song,
I want to leave them with something that is lasting
and memorable that they might, you know, like the beginning
of our conversation, they might sing back to themselves later.
Speaker 5 (38:13):
Yep.
Speaker 7 (38:14):
And so that's the the aspect of Honey and vinegar
insomuch as I want people to be attracted to the
song in a natural musical way, and then if I
can entice them with my lyrics or what I'm singing about,
(38:36):
or the message gets through, then that's an added bonus.
But you know, I'm delibered if I didn't know if
you had a follow up, But we can get into
the specifics of the lyrics now or whatever. I'll follow
your lead on that. But I didn't want to jump
too far ahead.
Speaker 2 (38:53):
No go ahead, no go ahead. I mean, yeah, I
wanted to hear and continue with that in the same
sort of what you're doing. So, I mean, as I
when you talk about it being about January sixth, right,
I mean, it's like the I love the second verse
so much. It's so it's just so great. The uh
(39:15):
in the first verse as well, But it's like, I
get what you're saying. But I mean, yeah, I mean,
if you had specific if there's sort of specific narratives
you're trying to convey, I mean, by all means, please
share that.
Speaker 7 (39:27):
Yeah, I mean, the verses kind of take different approaches.
But like I was sitting I alluded to this earlier,
but like my dad was dying of cancer, and I
was taking him to and from his chemo appointments, and
I remember I was actually on the phone with Jen
from the Bomb Pops as it started as the riots
(39:48):
and insurrection started to unfold, and we were talking about
something on a song that we were working together, and
I was like, like, girl, good to talk to you,
but I got to get the fuck off the phone.
And I went and watched this on fold on television
with my dad. And you know, my dad was was
never a Trumper, but he was a lifelong Republican, and
(40:09):
I think that it like scared him. It's it's an
interesting dynamic to see your parent frightened. And anytime I've
ever seen either of my parents afraid, like it's always
really really struck a deep nerve with me. Yea, and
my dad watched that and was like visibly like fearful,
and and so was I obviously, and and it was
(40:33):
not to make light of it, but it kind of
reminded me of a like an aspect of a Twilight
Zone episode or institutionalized by suicidal tendencies, where it's like
you're crazy, this is crazy. I'm not crazy, don't tell
me I'm crazy. For thinking this is crazy, this is
objectively crazy, and the way that it played out that day, Yes,
(40:53):
it's crazy, this is horrible. The way it played out
over the next few weeks until Biden was inaugurated, Yes,
this is crazy, this was terrible, this was awful, This
was a terrorist attack, this was that. And then there
was just this recession and this walking back and the
Ted Cruises of the world and the Donald Trumps of
the world and other of his uh, you know, fanatical
(41:17):
and sick offense. Just they just kept walking it back.
And I would say to myself, I'm not a fan
of mister Mike Pence, but I didn't want to see
him hanged that day. But that was the intention, and
let's not kid ourselves into thinking that it wasn't so.
As we were approaching this election, and I knew I
(41:41):
wasn't going to have this is really inside baseball, But
I knew I wasn't going to have a new record
ready for this fall, but I would have this single ready.
It was important to me personally and professionally to put
out a political, fiery song of this nature about January sixth,
this specific topic before this election, in the off chance
(42:05):
the off slimmest fucking chance, Brett, that what I have
to say will remind somebody of what Orange Man helped
make happen on January sixth, and they vote for Harris instead.
It's a lofty goal, but that's the fucking goal of
(42:26):
the song, is to remind people who either have forgotten,
who wanted to forget, or let's not remember. You know,
we're old now, Brett. Presumably four years is like a
blink of an eye. For four years is like an
eternity for somebody who just turned eighteen from when they
were fourteen when this happened. Oh you know, so maybe
they just didn't register to them in the same way.
(42:48):
And that younger demographic is not my targeted age. According
to all the analytics that I have availability available to
me as an ar artists, those are typically I'm not
resonating with gen Z very much. And that's okay, but
fuck man, I'm still going to try. Yep, I'm still
(43:09):
gonna try. And you know you spoke to the different verses.
One verse is specifically about the poor who support Orange
Man and and the way in which that they they
do what they do for somebody who is like a
cult of personality a celebrity just doesn't He doesn't give
a fuck about them, and and there their ignorance to
(43:33):
that shouldn't be my problem, but because they have the
ability to put him back in power, it does make
it my problem. So I targeted them in one of
the verses, and then the other verse, I targeted the
very wealthy people who should fucking know better. And maybe
you know, they weren't doing that because they wanted a
fucking tax cut. You know, again, they were doing it
(43:54):
because it's a cult and they bought into it full on.
Speaker 4 (43:59):
So there's a.
Speaker 7 (44:01):
Trump messiah complex where he's jesusified. I'm going to sing
about that. There's this whole aspect of uh women in
the Maga movement that I want to fuck the dude.
I'm going to sing about that, and I'm going to
sing about come unapologetically. I'm just gonna go first low
as I fucking can go in order to just paint
(44:23):
a realistic picture lyrically with how I view this part
in our history, because so often everybody tries to play
it proper. The pundits try to play it proper, politicians
try to play it proper. Our neighbors want to play
it proper and it's it's it's not a proper event.
(44:45):
Let's let's speak to the reality of the darkness of this.
Let's speak to the reality of the dirt about this.
This this is a strange thing. And then I'll let
you get a word in but one of the one
the topics. No, this isn't a strange thing. This will
give your listeners and you an insight into how I
(45:06):
think about these things. When I was in college, I
was in a class that was taught by a Holocaust
survivor and it set in motion for me in my
professional life, me working at a Holocaust museum in Los
Angeles and being involved in with work with various Holocaust
survivors and getting you know, setting up speaking engagements and
all of that. That's something that's personal and part of
(45:29):
my professional background. But when I was in college, I
was in a class with Arnes sch Lustig, who passed
away about ten years ago or twelve years ago, and
he was a survivor and he wanted us to go
to the National Holocaust Museum. This was in Washington, and
just to write about it, and one of my classmates,
I wish I remembered her name, but she read. He
(45:50):
asked her to read her essay aloud, and she read
it aloud, and she said, in her essay, I told
my father, who's a second generation survivor, so the child
of a Holocaust survivor, he said. She said, I told
my father that, you know, I was prompted to go
to this museum and then write about it. And my
(46:10):
father said that they should take everything out of the
museum and just fill the entire building with blood and
shit and piss and puss, and that would be a
more befitting example of what people actually lived through than
a bunch of empty suitcases, old shoes, and a train
car sitting in an empty room. And I thought, WHOA.
(46:34):
I never put it that way before. I never allowed
myself to think about the subject on such a visceral, realistic,
harrowing level. I always thought about the Holocaust and genocide
in general in an academic sense. And hearing my classmate
say this quote from her father within her essay opened
(46:57):
up a means in me of wanting to commune n
Kate in a realistic way, as uncomfortable as it might
be for people when it comes to ugly portions of
our shared and collective history, and that's where we ended
up with January sixth and me singing about come perfect
(47:21):
glad you asked fu.
Speaker 2 (47:23):
Yeah, man, No, that's that's great. Yeah, and I applaud
you for doing it. I really do. I think that
I just always love to I love that deliberate intent,
and you know, frankly, that lights a fire for me
because I want to get this edited and out as
quick as I can to kind of help further that
(47:47):
sentiment of why you released this song when you did,
and to honor that, because I mean, it's a I
think it's an incredible song and and I would love
for as many people to hear it as quickly as
possible if I can help facilitate that in any way.
Speaker 7 (48:01):
Yeah, thank you very much. I appreciate the kind words,
and I thank you for the platform for sure. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (48:06):
Well good. So this song was released as a single
on October twenty third, Is that right?
Speaker 4 (48:15):
Yes?
Speaker 7 (48:16):
Okay, we could go today, We could go yesterday, we
could go today.
Speaker 4 (48:19):
Yes.
Speaker 2 (48:20):
Well, congratulations on your new release. And to that end,
where is the best place for listeners to go?
Speaker 5 (48:28):
Buy it?
Speaker 2 (48:29):
Get it? Support you, support the cause?
Speaker 7 (48:33):
Well, Brett, if anyone listening types in the words Divided
Heaven into the Google machine. Then you will either end
up at a film, a German film from the sixties
about a love affair during the Cold War, or you're
going to see my ugly mug and have access to
(48:53):
all of my social media again at whatever your streaming
platform of joys or social media of always just type
in Divided Heaven and you can easily find me. Now,
this song, I suppose if you want to buy it
old school on iTunes, you can do that. I know
that you can do that, but it will be on
the new Divided Heaven record that comes out in the
(49:16):
fall of twenty twenty five that I'm currently working on.
So for your listeners that are turned on by this
song and or a drawn to this song, I should say,
and then you know, aren't more interested in me as
an artist? I would encourage y'all to check out my
past records. But also, you know, dog your little spot
(49:38):
in your brain for when the new record comes out,
because I'm a firm believer and the next one is
the best one, and that's how we do it.
Speaker 2 (49:45):
Awesome, that's awesome right now, man, Well, Jeff, it's been
wonderful chatting with you about everything that we've talked about,
which we seem to cover a lot of ground. And
I really appreciate your openness and transparency and candor. And
I sure look forward to hearing your next record that's
coming out and diving back into your older catalog which
(50:07):
I personally haven't heard, but look forward to digging into
and A and then. It's just been a great, great
pleasure having you on the show. And uh, I look
forward to seeing you again. We're talking with you again.
Speaker 7 (50:18):
Thank you very much, Brett, appreciate it.
Speaker 2 (50:21):
Pre tross Up says Beside Breakdown.
Speaker 5 (50:30):
Chop.
Speaker 8 (50:33):
Up, flooded with child daylong.
Speaker 2 (50:52):
Many great, all right, and that wraps up another episode
(51:12):
of The B Side Breakdown. I want to thank Jeff
Berman for coming on to talk about the Divided Heavens
song Living Funeral. In the background, you're hearing a song
called Church Bells from the band Night Windows. If you
like what you're hearing, go back and listen to the
previous episode because that was the focus of it. Up
next is a song from a band called Va Sky,
and the song is called Lullaby. I'll give you a
(51:33):
snippet of them at the end of this episode. In
the meantime, I want to thank Carry Bosel and Adam
Coolong for helping me put together the jingle you hear
at the beginning and the end of this episode. Also,
please subscribe to this podcast wherever you get your podcast,
and I can't thank you enough for your ongoing support.
Please stay safe until the next one and we'll catch
up then. Thanks again, start.
Speaker 5 (52:08):
Card tripping all your bark's. It's hard to have faith.
Speaker 3 (52:25):
Left trade for reality. That's why afraid to sleep. Please gosh,
goin the Survanty.
Speaker 5 (52:41):
It's hard Star Art Bord
Freetros says B Side Breakdown.
Speaker 2 (00:07):
Hey, everyone, welcome to the B Side Breakdown. My name
is Brett Johnson and I am your host. This is
episode twenty eight of a podcast where I talk with
other artists, musicians, and songwriters about a song they've written
that's meaningful to them that they want to discuss. On
this episode today, I'm gonna be talking with Jeff Berman
from the band Divided Heaven about their song Living Funeral.
It's a great song and I can't wait for you
(00:29):
to hear it, So let's get into it. Here is
Living Funeral by Divided Heaven.
Speaker 3 (00:37):
What a watch?
Speaker 4 (00:39):
What do you waiting?
Speaker 5 (00:40):
Fool?
Speaker 4 (00:40):
Send the face inside mouth?
Speaker 1 (00:44):
What do we watch?
Speaker 4 (00:46):
What do you waiting for?
Speaker 5 (00:49):
No?
Speaker 4 (00:52):
Fifteen man says.
Speaker 1 (00:53):
Enough for expucs enos.
Speaker 4 (00:57):
Bounce Monica about it and let the better means facility
of the mind sing with me.
Speaker 1 (01:15):
Comradis and sister singing in three, they says transferinger, so
that's gone.
Speaker 4 (01:23):
They mean you, Oh, oh, I'll be watching to be waiting.
Speaker 1 (01:37):
We send the stocking and his sign my paone, you
gotta shame's bollys gokay and you.
Speaker 4 (01:45):
Got slay all kill us all, which I.
Speaker 1 (01:49):
Cannot do the king if your income to say that
a forten the size, but generally not to fascist. It's
better sase God say a god.
Speaker 4 (02:03):
Go go go.
Speaker 6 (02:08):
Singing with me, Mo the some sisters singing and with me.
They say stress three hussle, that's go living. You say
(03:01):
Shasha song says come back.
Speaker 4 (03:14):
Say shah saya song.
Speaker 6 (03:21):
Sad colaba puno they say sha share song dot comb phnoye.
Speaker 7 (03:37):
O.
Speaker 2 (03:47):
All right, and that was Living Funeral by Divided Heaven.
We're gonna take a quick break and come back to
talk with Jeff Berman about the song. So please stay
with us and we'll be right back. All right, and
we're back. Let's bring in Jeff Burman to talk about
the song Living Funeral from the band Divided Heaven. Hey, Jeff,
thank you for taking the time this evening to talk
with me about the song.
Speaker 7 (04:07):
Thank you very much.
Speaker 2 (04:07):
Happy to be here, absolutely, you know I'd love to.
As soon as I first heard this, I'm like, man,
this is infectious. Like it's just been kind of running around.
There's so many hooks in it, and for me, it
just kind of keeps coming across my brain and I
just sort of get stoked every time I get to
turn it back on, So I can't wait to hear
(04:28):
from you. Yeah, absolutely, I want to hear from you.
You know, why what's going on with the song? And
why is the song meaningful to you? Please?
Speaker 7 (04:34):
Man, it's a loaded question. What's going on with the song.
There's a lot going on, But I'll speak to the
earworm factor that you were alluding to just a moment ago.
That was purposeful. I am very proud of the Divided
Heaven catalog and I'm currently working on my sixth record,
which is crazy to say out loud. If I look
(04:56):
back objectively at the songs that I've written, I tend
to be guilty of writing songs that have, you know,
choruses that are very long winded, and maybe they're really
poetic and they're lyrically poignant, but the melodies that carry
them aren't as memorable. And what I've been trying to
do in my songwriting recently is really create and craft
(05:19):
melodies that are memorable that you will sing to yourself
on the toilet in the shower when you're driving, you know.
And this song purposefully has like three or four specific
elements that I wanted to really repeat on purpose and
drive home from a melodic recognition and recall point of view.
(05:42):
So I'm glad to hear that you said it was infectious,
that was the goal.
Speaker 2 (05:45):
There's this ferocity I find in your verses too, just
the way that you're singing it and the lyrics and
the content of it all, and it's just I don't
know it. It's so upfront, and I love that, and
it just feels really like, well, this is what this is,
you know, and it just kind of doesn't leave a
whole lot to be you know, Oh, it could subjectively
(06:08):
be about something else maybe, but it just really feels
like it's pretty clear what you're talking about.
Speaker 7 (06:13):
So you who are you kidding? Before we get into
the lyrics, I will say that I have a really
good focus group in my house, and that is that
I have a three year old son, and I started
working on this song at some point when he was
one and starting to formulate words and to articulate, you know,
baby talking things like that, and I recognized that he
(06:34):
was singing the Oh yeah, he was doing that onto himself,
unbeknounst to me, prompting if I was playing the guitar
in front of him. He might say, oh, play woo
hoo song or something. But even when I didn't have
the guitar, you know, in my hands or on my lap,
he would still be singing it occasionally. And I took
that as as a good sign of, you know, in
(06:57):
crafting an element within the song that doesn't even have
you know, lyrics. It's just vocalisms, yep. But they're effective
from a memorability standpoint.
Speaker 2 (07:07):
Definitely, very much so, very much So. What about the
rest of the So I'm interested, tell me a bit
about before we get too far down this rabbit hole,
tell me a bit about Divided Heaven.
Speaker 7 (07:21):
So is this.
Speaker 2 (07:23):
Just strictly a you project or is this a is
this a band? Is it kind of what's going on with.
Speaker 7 (07:30):
This depends on he you ask. I've worked really hard
over the years to make it more of a collective.
Speaker 2 (07:36):
Okay.
Speaker 7 (07:37):
My manager thinks that that's hippie bullshit and it's just
not true, and Divided Heaven is Jeff Berman, and I
think he's right. I mean, that's what it is. And
I say that whilst trying to not be dismissive of
the great musicians that have played in the band with me.
But I'd say, the numerical breakdown is about seventy five
(07:59):
per Then of all the touring that I've done over
the past fourteen years for Divided Heaven has been solo
and the remaining has been with the band, and that
band has been kind of a rotating cast, in part
because I wanted to tour so much. It was a
It was a drag and a pull on a lot
(08:20):
of people's schedules. So sure, there was always kind of
a rotating cast of bass players that were on the records,
of rotating cast of bass players that were in the
van and on the road with us. Most of the
drumming and most of the time I worked with my drummer, Nick,
And I think that's what people associate, like from a
branding standpoint, when people think of Divided Heaven, that either
(08:42):
they think of it as me or they think of
it as me and Nick Moriali, who was my longtime
drummer and still is, like he's going to be on
songs on the new record. This song, however, is really
special to me because the drummer is my friend Carl Weirsbigie.
We're both from the same small city, Lancaster, Pennsylvania. We
both left as soon as we could. We both lived
in LA for a long time. We both you know,
(09:04):
did the touring thing, but we never played in a
band together. We never wrote or recorded together. And this
song Living Funeral is the showcase of our first work together.
And it's very exciting that, you know, you know, somebody
that I've known since I was fifteen, we're now getting
together and doing this one we're forty two. I think
it speaks to the longevity and genuine interest and admiration
(09:26):
that Karl and I have for each other, and also
our desire to still be creating interesting and dangerous rock
and roll music in our forties.
Speaker 2 (09:37):
Absolutely absolutely so you both respectively. So okay, you've known
each other since you were since you were fifteen, and
you didn't play music in Lancaster back then. That was
a thing, like you both just went to LA for music.
Speaker 5 (09:52):
Is that one? Now?
Speaker 7 (09:52):
We both we were both in bands. Yeah, we just
never ended up playing together in parings. I should have clarified. Yeah,
he was in a band, got it. He's going to
laugh when he hears it was sixty nine. Since was
Carl's band, and I was in a band called The
Cursed that then grew into a band called The Statics,
and I think that we were both in positions where
(10:14):
we were kind of the babies in our bands, okay,
and having to shoulder the weight of a lot of
the responsibility that our elder bandmates didn't take upon themselves. So,
you know, Carl's the drummer and the baby in his
band part time babysitter as well for the older members
(10:35):
in his band, And it was very much that was
a situation I was in in a number of bands
when I was younger, and now I think we kind
of look at it much differently, you know, being the
elder statesman in our respective bands ourselves. So it's good
that he and I have kind of, you know, gotten
we've had a lot of career parallels, so it felt
really good to come together and work on something.
Speaker 5 (10:57):
Got it.
Speaker 2 (10:58):
No, that's great, that's great. So I mean, I know
from your bio that you moved from Hollywood back to Lancaster,
and you did you go to Hollywood in the first
place specifically for music? Just I'm going to LA because
that's where it's happening, or no, is theres something else
I brought you there?
Speaker 7 (11:16):
Nope, I I left Lancaster. I moved to Washington, d C.
For college. I moved to New York City after that,
because that's what everybody did. And then I moved from
New York City to Los Angeles simply because I wanted
to experience living in California, and San Francisco was too
expensive at the time. In two thousand and eight, come
to find out that it would never not be expensive again.
(11:38):
So I ended up staying in Los Angeles and falling
in love with the Los Angeles and building a tremendous
life for myself in Los Angeles. But believe it or not,
when I moved from New York to Los Angeles, I
wasn't doing music. I wasn't writing, I wasn't playing, I
wasn't doing anything. I was just kind of in a
musical rut. And I was just working a lot. I
(11:59):
was being and bartending and making pretty good money and
just kind of focusing on different things and traveling and
backpacking around Europe and you know, just doing kind of
quote unquote normal things that aren't you know, dropping all
your free time and money and effort and sweat equity
into a punk band. And so it was a nice,
(12:21):
a nice respite. But once I re entered the musical
world and re entered the song writing part of my brain,
for lack of a better term, I could not stop,
and I haven't stopped, and so I'm glad that that's
that's how it turned out. But as a long witted
(12:43):
way of saying, no, I didn't move to Los Angeles
to become famous or make it in the quote unquote industry.
It just so happened that I moved there and got
the itch to start playing again. And coincidentally, here he
comes back around, mister Carl weir'spicky. I ran into him
at the ninety nine CeNSE. I didn't know he was
living in Hollywood at the time. He didn't know I
was living in Hollywood at the time. We had just
(13:04):
kind of lost touch. This is the age before what
modern social media is now, right, And so we caught
up and he said, Hey, my band is playing on
the Sunset Strip. Do you want to just play a
few songs before we take the stage. I thought sure,
And in a lot of ways, that was really an
impetus behind me having the the hutzpah, if you will,
(13:27):
or having the tenacity to continue doing it, because It's
one thing to you know, play shows in a basement,
you know, in Pennsylvania or just kind of do what
I was doing when I was in college, and it's
another thing to kind of, I don't know, there's gravitas
to me. There's gravitas to playing on the Sunset Strip.
Even if the clubs are ways shittier than we've romanticized
(13:47):
them to be, it still was important to me. And
so I always appreciated Carl kind of giving me that
olive branch. And then yeah, we just you know, kept
in touch, and like I said, we ended up both
moving back here to Lancaster, Pennsylvania roughly around the same time,
around twenty twenty. So it just it gives me it. Yeah,
(14:07):
so happy to be working with him.
Speaker 2 (14:08):
Yeah, oh that's great. That's great. So is it that
era then when you did those shows opening up for him,
playing a few songs and his band. Is that kind
of where Divided Heaven started? Or was it before that?
Speaker 7 (14:20):
That was where Divided Heaven restarted. One of the shows
that I played, I played with Carl's other band played.
We played at the Knitting Factory in Hollywood, which isn't
there anymore unfortunately.
Speaker 6 (14:31):
But.
Speaker 7 (14:33):
I met this guy, Bradley, Bradley Riot, and when I
met him, I tell this story frequently and he always
makes fun of me, but he was very much a
California dude. Yeah, dude, super super stoked on your set. Man.
It was awesome, man, I have a studio, dude, let's
fucking make a record, man. And I thought he was
just blowing smoke up my ass and come to find
(14:53):
out that he was telling the truth and he is
a wonderfully authentic person. But it was, you know, a
show that I played with Carl where I met Bradley,
and Bradley ended up producing my first record, which is
called A Rival City, and that came out in twenty eleven,
and that just kind of gave me the nudge. It
(15:14):
was kind of like kind of like Bradley like pushed
me off a cliff inadvertently, and I was like, all right, well,
either you're gonna fly or you're gonna fall flat. And
I hit a few bumps on the way down for sure,
but then I started to kind of fly from there.
And so I was thinking about this and Karl and
I were actually talking about this a couple of weeks ago.
(15:35):
The way in which he and I have stayed in
touch and kind of reconnected and now are working together
within this new chapter of divided Heaven. And I often
think about my own career in terms of longevity. I
never reached the heights of success that I imagined. I
think most people who get into music never reached the
heights that they envisioned for themselves or their rock star
(15:57):
dreams or whatever. And I think that's okay. But I
learned pretty early on that an advantage that I could
have as I could be wise in my decision making,
try to minimize my mistakes and maximize my efforts in
a way that would provide me a career in music
(16:17):
that rides on longevity. And I think that i've I've
succeeded in that.
Speaker 2 (16:25):
Got it, got it? No, good for you?
Speaker 5 (16:27):
Good for you?
Speaker 2 (16:28):
Yeah, that's that's a that's a conundrum talking to any
musician about so, what did you think success was going
to look like when you were younger. It's always interesting
for me to kind of, you know, hear that a
little bit from from artists and just you know, because
some have wild dreams and they change, of course, and
(16:49):
they change and evolve, and they have been flow as
we grow and mature and and just the things we
want are, you know, continue to evolve and become different.
But yeah, that's that's wonderful that you've been able to
find that way to sustain that longevity piece in your
instrumentation in that first show. So when you say that
(17:10):
you did a bunch of touring solo, are you is
it just you an acoustic guitar or electric guitar or
do you have I don't know, any other do you
play with like loop pedals or synths or samples or
anything like that, or is it just you in an
instrument in your.
Speaker 7 (17:28):
Voice, my voice in my guitar, sometimes electrics, sometimes acoustic.
But yeah, it was purposefully simplified, and it's worth noting too.
I would like your listeners to know that I tactfully
yet proudly consider myself a very good singer. But I
(17:50):
worked very hard at it. I was not a very
good singer. I took voice lessons for years and it's
still something that I work on. I'm not a naturally
inclined musician by any means. I have a natural love
for music and a natural attraction to music in certain genres,
and I feel like I have a pretty good feel
(18:10):
for it, if that makes sense. But in terms of
picking up an instrument and playing it does not come
naturally to me. It takes a lot of work, and
my voice was no exception. It was probably the biggest
challenge I've ever faced in music, but it was also
the most fun.
Speaker 4 (18:24):
You know.
Speaker 7 (18:24):
It was the most daunting challenge, but the most fun
challenge as well. So when I play solo, I rest
on those that's the wrong way of saying it. I
lean into those strengths. Whether people think about it like this,
bread like, whether people like my songs is beyond my control.
(18:47):
It's subjective, yep. Whether they think I'm a good singer.
I think everybody who sees me perform comes away thinking
that guy knows how to play guitar, that guy knows
how to sing. I don't really like his songs, but
you can do this, you know, And I'll take that
as a w for sure.
Speaker 2 (19:03):
Sure got it. No, that makes a ton of sense.
That makes a ton of sense, and that's it's also
nice to hear. Yeah, I think, just reflecting my own
experience with that, the problem that or not, it's not
a problem, but it's choice of words. The challenge that
(19:24):
I kept getting presented with over and over in songwriting,
particularly as a vocalist, was I wanted to be a
better singer than I was, and I didn't know how
I was singing incorrectly for so long, and I didn't
know any tools or tricks or really anything about it.
I was just really going at it from a no
(19:47):
way man like punk rock style, like this is what
I can do, and I can sing this way because
my heroes can sing like this, so therefore I can too,
and not really understanding range and capability and limitations and
really things that happened, you know, that are different with
every human being. And I have my own natural range
and voice and timbre and all of that, and really
(20:09):
have to work on, you know, my breath and my
control and not getting nasal when I sing, and how
do I know that, you know? And all these things
that I didn't learn inherently and tried to I think
fake a lot along the way, like trying to just
make it sound as good as it could, but know
and knowing that the expression was sincere. But I wasn't
(20:29):
able to really deliver it on the way that I
wanted to until I started taking vocal lessons myself, and
then when I started working with a teacher, she really
just know, we're building your voice from the top down,
which is counterintuitive, and there's so much we're gonna do
here that's counterintuitive. And I'm like okay, and just really
went with it. And I'm super like, super grateful because
(20:50):
I had a fall sell set it when I was thirteen,
and then it disappeared for thirty years, and then it
showed up again and I was like, wow, you know,
like I can sing in a way that I couldn't
sing for a long long time. So I mean, I
really I that what you're saying really resonates with me
on that and that's really good to hear. I mean, also, you.
Speaker 7 (21:07):
Man for putting the work in too, I mean give
yourself the credit for that as well.
Speaker 2 (21:11):
Oh thank you.
Speaker 5 (21:12):
No, I do, I do.
Speaker 2 (21:13):
It's it's hard, it's not easy, and it's hard to
well and it can be expensive and there's all kinds
of barriers that can keep it going depending But it's
like my teacher was super awesome in the fact that
she would just let's get to where you need to be.
What is the focus of this next thing? You're doing Okay, cool,
we got seven months to get you there, so let's
(21:33):
get you there and then we here's how to sustain
you know. And that was all just her approaches. Rad
I just was super into it. But how did.
Speaker 4 (21:43):
So with that?
Speaker 2 (21:44):
Did you have all this the vocal training and that
confidence in your in your vocal ability and guitar playing
when you were doing those first shows in LA I mean,
was that already there or had you started at work
after that point.
Speaker 7 (21:57):
I had started the work before that, Okay, so I
had that. I didn't have the control. You know, it's
you know, it's it's a it's a muscle. So when
I decided to start playing shows again in when I
was living in Los Angeles, I had the knowledge and
the means to get my voice back in shape, so
(22:17):
to speak. Sure, but I hadn't got back in shape,
so to speak. And I recognized that relatively recently. Actually,
in twenty twenty three, I did a whopping eight shows,
which is a drastic reduction from my usual you know,
one hundred and sixty shows that I was doing, you know,
eight years ago, nine years ago, ten years ago. But
(22:39):
they were of higher profile. So I wanted to make
sure that I was in good physical condition and good
voice condition. And what I recognized was that even though
I had done recordings and I had worked on certain
things with my voice through you know, twenty twenty and
twenty twenty one and twenty twenty two, I was doing
it conditionally. So I'd be like, all right, I need
(23:01):
to record vocals for this song because it's going to
be this single on this month, and I would do that,
but then I wouldn't work beyond what that scope was.
And I realized that when it came time for me
to get ready to start playing shows again. It's weird
to say this, Brett, but I was rusty. I had
to practice standing in front of a microphone stand again.
(23:22):
I oh playing up. I just got so conditioned in
the pandemic times that I was, you know, doing live
streams and playing. But yeah, I'm sitting on a stool
and I was playing in a way that wasn't befitting
what I did when I toured all the time. And
in the process of getting ready for the shows that
I played in January of twenty three, I did like
a divided Heaven boot camp. I mean, I got myself
(23:43):
back in physical shape. I was purposefully eating better and
trying to get more sleep, and a lot of vocal exercises,
a lot of working on the set. I practiced holding
the microphone, I practiced fingerpicking, I practiced my scales, I mean,
you name it. I was doing everything to just improve
my game. And the shows that I I played in
twenty twenty three, despite the decrease in volume and then
(24:04):
the amount of shows, were easily my best and the
most impactful, and I had the best voice control, I
hit my best falsettos, the jokes between the songs were
the best they ever landed. I just I took the
time to really craft a set, and that was something
I had never actually done before. I always just kind
of winged it and almost rested on the fact that
(24:27):
I had a pretty unique and strong voice and a
solid foundation of how to play the guitar in front
of other human beings. But in twenty twenty three, I
really pushed myself to get outside of my comfort zone
and do things that were scary and in front of
bigger crowds than I had ever played in front of.
And that was a really exhilarating experience, and it reminded
(24:51):
me that at other times in my career, specifically back
in this eighth nine twenty ten time where I thought
I was like keeping myself in shape or and voice shape,
I actually was cutting a lot of corners. And my
late thirties early forties self just won't won't allow that
to be. I have too much pride to cut corners anymore.
Speaker 2 (25:12):
No, good for you, man, that's really yeah, that's great
to hear the shows that you did in twenty twenty three.
And I'm saying this, and I'm asking this in for
the benefit of the listeners as well. Is there one
two questions? One did any of those shows happen to
get recorded that I could go find on YouTube? And two,
(25:35):
if so, which one should I go find? I think so.
Speaker 7 (25:39):
I mean I played a show here in Pennsylvania with
Chuck Reagan, Wow, which I mean it was like, you know,
like a three point fifty cap room that was full,
you know, So that's a big show for me.
Speaker 2 (25:52):
That's awesome.
Speaker 7 (25:52):
And then I played a festival in Orange County with
Frank Turner and that was also like four hundred people.
I mean I played the side stage, so it was
the big stage is like twenty five hundred. I think
my side stage was like maybe four hundred, but it
was the room was full. I honestly, I don't keep
track with who records what, so I'm sure there's stuff
(26:14):
out there, okay, but I don't know of the quality
would be befitting, you know, hearing you know, I just
can't speak to it.
Speaker 2 (26:22):
No, fair enough, fair enough. I just didn't know if
you knew, like for sure, yes, this show got recorded
because you just knew. You know, that's that's fair and fine,
and I get it, and I'm super it's awesome. You
got to play with track Reagan. That's really cool. I
finally got to see him live for the first time,
just this past weekend. I never had a chance to
see him before. It wasn't solo, he was with Hot
Water Music. But it was super fun and I was like, man, like,
(26:45):
I'd been a fan of his solo stuff for a
long time and a fan of Hot Water Music, but
I've always liked him and an acoustic guitar more than anything,
and so it was fun to see. But then, you know,
just hearing you got to do shows with him too,
that's pretty great.
Speaker 7 (26:59):
Yeah, he's he's top shelf, He's the best.
Speaker 2 (27:02):
Yeah, Yeah, wonderful. So then what brought you back to Pennsylvania.
Speaker 7 (27:10):
I married a girl from LA that wanted to get
out of LA and she loved my hometown. So that's
what we did. We moved back to my hometown at
her insistence.
Speaker 2 (27:20):
Nice.
Speaker 7 (27:23):
Yeah, nice. I don't know. Sometimes I think it's poetic
and sometimes it's tragic. I oscillate between the two. I
think this might be an interesting segue back to living funeral,
but I'll just say that I do miss living in
a major city that is overwhelmingly predominantly progressive and liberal
(27:46):
and doesn't tolerate all that hateful bullshit. And so being
back in a place where, you know, like, yeah, my
little city is kind of liberal, but we're in a
very very conservative area and a very religious area. Sure,
sometimes that that really bothers me. Sometimes it doesn't, but
(28:06):
sometimes it really it bothers me. So I kind of
oscillate between a number of different emotions about being back here.
Speaker 2 (28:15):
It's a that's an interesting there's a similarity there where
my wife's parents lived in this small town outside of Greenville,
South Carolina, between Clemson and Greenville, and it was a
very very small town and and it was sort of
(28:36):
the same thing. She wanted to move there for a
host of reasons, so we did. But it was it
was also that there's parts of it that were beautiful
and amazing to live in the base of the Blue
Ridge Mountains and to be able to ride a motorcycle
through them and just to be in that sort of countryside,
which is incredible and a different experience. And then there's
(28:58):
the other side of it where I'm like, Wow, I'm
being from Minneapolis, Minnesota, which is also a fairly very
progressive city, and and the friends and the scenes in
the in the and the folks that I would hang
out with, much different experience, and so I I resemble.
I think what you're talking about there. I truly connect
(29:18):
with that. Not living in Orlando now, No, I moved.
I was there for a few years, several years, and
then I moved to Orlando last December, and so it's
it's nice to be in a bigger city again. But yeah,
I too. I lived out in California. I lived in
Oakland in the Bay Area and worked out there for
(29:39):
a while, and just the being in a thriving, creative,
like fiercely creative and productive place is so inspiring. And yeah,
I tend to miss that. But anyway, I'm glad that
you got to go back to where you're from and
that you had a couple more kids that brought you
(30:02):
out there, right, or did you have children before? Is
this your first children that you've had were when you
were in Pennsylvania.
Speaker 7 (30:09):
No, it happened fast. We closed on a house in
February of twenty twenty, so really before the shit hit
the fan. And then by the time we got here,
you know, we had a lot of it was discovered
that there was a lot of immediate sickness within my
(30:30):
a lot of sickness within my immediate family that needed
our attention. So it was good that we had moved
back when we did. And then we found out that
we were pregnant with our first child, and so my
son was born in twenty twenty one, and then we
had a baby girl earlier this year, so we're in
the thick of it. I don't know if you can
hear a baby crying, but my daughter, Lilith is crying
(30:50):
her eyes out downstairs. So yeah, no, the kids, you know,
and it's cool. Yeah, even though and that's not the
right way to say it, we had our kids here
in Pennsylvania. We did not have them in California and
bring them here. But having them here allows me to
(31:10):
have a different Lancaster, Pennsylvania experience than I did as
a teenager. And I think if I was here and married,
but without kids and looking at Lancaster through the same
lens that I did when I was eighteen in nineteen
ninety nine, I would like it a lot less and
I'd be much more resentful. Now I'm not resentful or bitter.
(31:32):
I have those moments where I'm resentful and bitter that
I didn't make enough money or I wasn't fucking successful
enough to buy, you know, a swear foot of property
in Los Angeles, let alone a house. But I also
have my days that I'm grateful to be here. I
got to spend time with my family at a very
difficult time in our lives and in the world, and
(31:55):
my kids get to be close to my family, and
you know, there's we have a good community to hear.
So I'm very I'm very grateful.
Speaker 2 (32:02):
No, that's wonderful. And that brings me to your kind
of press photo, which which baby are you holding in that?
Speaker 7 (32:09):
That's Lilith? Yes, so you know, you can chock that
up to originality, but there's a reason for it. When
my previous record, Oblivion came out, one of the songs,
one of the lead singles, was a song called burn Me,
and it was about the h the manner in which
(32:31):
we all give way too much credence and gravitas to
people who say shitty things on comment boards, and we did.
We just give too much credo and and we prop
up too many stupid people on the Internet. And that
was my way of hitting back at all the haters.
(32:53):
And one of the things I really have come to
despise about the greater punk scene or music scene is
the played out everybody's got a fucking beard, Everybody stands
in front of a brick wall, everybody has the same
press photo where they're all wearing a different band's T shirt, right,
and you know, like you know, it's just just this weird, repetitive,
(33:18):
like carbon copy of the previous band that sounds just
like you know, it's almost like they're trying to out
hot Water Music themselves. They're just like cloning themselves after
like how hot Water music looked in nineteen ninety eight.
It's just it's embarrassing. I think it's stupid. So I thought,
how could I be different? All Right, I'm gonna hold
my baby just wearing his diaper. I'm gonna not have
a shirt on, and I'm going to hold up a
(33:39):
match with a light, a lit flame, and if it
looks cool, cool, So that's what we did. Now, all
these years forward, I had plans to get new promo
photos with a friend of mine in Washington, d C.
It didn't the schedules didn't come together. Double Helix Records,
my wonderful new label is breathing down my neck. We
need some press photos, Jeff, come on, And I thought,
I'll just repeat the same motif with my second child,
(34:01):
and it's still will work. A lot more gray hairs
on my head in this second version of the promo
photo with Wilith. But I think it's befitting the song,
and I think it's a it's a if nothing else,
it's a nice nod that my family and I can cherish.
Speaker 2 (34:18):
No, absolutely, and thank you so much for the context
and background on that. So let's then get back to
the song. Let's do it tell me more about I
mean to me, it seems fairly self evident. But I'd
love to hear it from you, like, what what is
the driving fire behind it that you needed to write
(34:40):
and put this out? I mean, and I just I
asked that that way. I think because you're you have
the way you're describing things to me, there's so much
deliberate focus and placement of how you're doing this, and
that's the impression I'm getting from you. Whether if I'm wrong,
please correct me. No, but I'm hearing that where like
(35:05):
you're saying, like even with vocal hooks, like the way
that you're writing specific things, you're focusing to create this,
to make this statement, to say this statement, to create
this impression on a listener. What was I mean? For me,
that's a lot of crafting beyond just the natural songwriting
(35:28):
that comes up, which I mean, I fully have my
own experience of that, so I mean, I understand from
my perspective what that is. But I'd just love to
hear it, like why that for.
Speaker 7 (35:39):
This Vinegar and Honey, this song is about January sixth.
I will get into the unapologetic nature of it and
break down the difference between verse one and verse two
and my motifs right as I'm sure some of your
listeners will listen to me talk about it and do
a masturbation motion because I'm like waxing poetic as the songwriter, Like,
(36:01):
I get that and I'm open to it, but I'm
writing from a fiery place, from an angry place, from
a place of vitriol. President Biden said that MAGA supporters
were garbage yesterday or today, and now he's backtracking and
Kamala Harris has to apologize for it. He's fucking right,
(36:24):
they're garbage. I'm not going to apologize for it because
I've seen and heard what they've said to me and
things about me and people in my family. So you know,
it's like the thing from twenty sixteen where Hillary Clinton said, oh,
the basket of deplorables and then she had to apologize.
And it's as if we hold certain politicians to a
(36:45):
higher standard to not say stupid things. And then Orange
Man says a whole myriad of stupid things and insulting
things and degrading things, and he gets a pass. So
I look at that as a landscape and I say, okay,
there is no high road. Comedians, late night talk show hosts,
(37:07):
they try to take a funny high Road to always
show how Voldemort is the worst person ever, and they
try to make him look stupid and it's all for
a laugh, and I put up sh I'm not a comedian,
That's not my thing, So Brett, what I try to
do is go lower than low and be unapologetic about it,
(37:30):
but also be catchy about it. So the vinegar is
the vitriol that I'm spitting in my lyrics. The honey
is that I'm trying to make what I'm singing memorable
and catchy enough that people want to sing along because
it is a song, after all, It's not a painting.
It's not something that can be You walk into a
room in a museum and you're like, you know, I
(37:52):
have three minutes and thirty ish seconds to try to
hit you with something with everything you're going to watch
and listen to all fucking day. The three minutes and
thirty seconds that somebody gives to Divided Heaven for this song,
I want to leave them with something that is lasting
and memorable that they might, you know, like the beginning
of our conversation, they might sing back to themselves later.
Speaker 5 (38:13):
Yep.
Speaker 7 (38:14):
And so that's the the aspect of Honey and vinegar
insomuch as I want people to be attracted to the
song in a natural musical way, and then if I
can entice them with my lyrics or what I'm singing about,
(38:36):
or the message gets through, then that's an added bonus.
But you know, I'm delibered if I didn't know if
you had a follow up, But we can get into
the specifics of the lyrics now or whatever. I'll follow
your lead on that. But I didn't want to jump
too far ahead.
Speaker 2 (38:53):
No go ahead, no go ahead. I mean, yeah, I
wanted to hear and continue with that in the same
sort of what you're doing. So, I mean, as I
when you talk about it being about January sixth, right,
I mean, it's like the I love the second verse
so much. It's so it's just so great. The uh
(39:15):
in the first verse as well, But it's like, I
get what you're saying. But I mean, yeah, I mean,
if you had specific if there's sort of specific narratives
you're trying to convey, I mean, by all means, please
share that.
Speaker 7 (39:27):
Yeah, I mean, the verses kind of take different approaches.
But like I was sitting I alluded to this earlier,
but like my dad was dying of cancer, and I
was taking him to and from his chemo appointments, and
I remember I was actually on the phone with Jen
from the Bomb Pops as it started as the riots
(39:48):
and insurrection started to unfold, and we were talking about
something on a song that we were working together, and
I was like, like, girl, good to talk to you,
but I got to get the fuck off the phone.
And I went and watched this on fold on television
with my dad. And you know, my dad was was
never a Trumper, but he was a lifelong Republican, and
(40:09):
I think that it like scared him. It's it's an
interesting dynamic to see your parent frightened. And anytime I've
ever seen either of my parents afraid, like it's always
really really struck a deep nerve with me. Yea, and
my dad watched that and was like visibly like fearful,
and and so was I obviously, and and it was
(40:33):
not to make light of it, but it kind of
reminded me of a like an aspect of a Twilight
Zone episode or institutionalized by suicidal tendencies, where it's like
you're crazy, this is crazy. I'm not crazy, don't tell
me I'm crazy. For thinking this is crazy, this is
objectively crazy, and the way that it played out that day, Yes,
(40:53):
it's crazy, this is horrible. The way it played out
over the next few weeks until Biden was inaugurated, Yes,
this is crazy, this was terrible, this was awful, This
was a terrorist attack, this was that. And then there
was just this recession and this walking back and the
Ted Cruises of the world and the Donald Trumps of
the world and other of his uh, you know, fanatical
(41:17):
and sick offense. Just they just kept walking it back.
And I would say to myself, I'm not a fan
of mister Mike Pence, but I didn't want to see
him hanged that day. But that was the intention, and
let's not kid ourselves into thinking that it wasn't so.
As we were approaching this election, and I knew I
(41:41):
wasn't going to have this is really inside baseball, But
I knew I wasn't going to have a new record
ready for this fall, but I would have this single ready.
It was important to me personally and professionally to put
out a political, fiery song of this nature about January sixth,
this specific topic before this election, in the off chance
(42:05):
the off slimmest fucking chance, Brett, that what I have
to say will remind somebody of what Orange Man helped
make happen on January sixth, and they vote for Harris instead.
It's a lofty goal, but that's the fucking goal of
(42:26):
the song, is to remind people who either have forgotten,
who wanted to forget, or let's not remember. You know,
we're old now, Brett. Presumably four years is like a
blink of an eye. For four years is like an
eternity for somebody who just turned eighteen from when they
were fourteen when this happened. Oh you know, so maybe
they just didn't register to them in the same way.
(42:48):
And that younger demographic is not my targeted age. According
to all the analytics that I have availability available to
me as an ar artists, those are typically I'm not
resonating with gen Z very much. And that's okay, but
fuck man, I'm still going to try. Yep, I'm still
(43:09):
gonna try. And you know you spoke to the different verses.
One verse is specifically about the poor who support Orange
Man and and the way in which that they they
do what they do for somebody who is like a
cult of personality a celebrity just doesn't He doesn't give
a fuck about them, and and there their ignorance to
(43:33):
that shouldn't be my problem, but because they have the
ability to put him back in power, it does make
it my problem. So I targeted them in one of
the verses, and then the other verse, I targeted the
very wealthy people who should fucking know better. And maybe
you know, they weren't doing that because they wanted a
fucking tax cut. You know, again, they were doing it
(43:54):
because it's a cult and they bought into it full on.
Speaker 4 (43:59):
So there's a.
Speaker 7 (44:01):
Trump messiah complex where he's jesusified. I'm going to sing
about that. There's this whole aspect of uh women in
the Maga movement that I want to fuck the dude.
I'm going to sing about that, and I'm going to
sing about come unapologetically. I'm just gonna go first low
as I fucking can go in order to just paint
(44:23):
a realistic picture lyrically with how I view this part
in our history, because so often everybody tries to play
it proper. The pundits try to play it proper, politicians
try to play it proper. Our neighbors want to play
it proper and it's it's it's not a proper event.
(44:45):
Let's let's speak to the reality of the darkness of this.
Let's speak to the reality of the dirt about this.
This this is a strange thing. And then I'll let
you get a word in but one of the one
the topics. No, this isn't a strange thing. This will
give your listeners and you an insight into how I
(45:06):
think about these things. When I was in college, I
was in a class that was taught by a Holocaust
survivor and it set in motion for me in my
professional life, me working at a Holocaust museum in Los
Angeles and being involved in with work with various Holocaust
survivors and getting you know, setting up speaking engagements and
all of that. That's something that's personal and part of
(45:29):
my professional background. But when I was in college, I
was in a class with Arnes sch Lustig, who passed
away about ten years ago or twelve years ago, and
he was a survivor and he wanted us to go
to the National Holocaust Museum. This was in Washington, and
just to write about it, and one of my classmates,
I wish I remembered her name, but she read. He
(45:50):
asked her to read her essay aloud, and she read
it aloud, and she said, in her essay, I told
my father, who's a second generation survivor, so the child
of a Holocaust survivor, he said. She said, I told
my father that, you know, I was prompted to go
to this museum and then write about it. And my
(46:10):
father said that they should take everything out of the
museum and just fill the entire building with blood and
shit and piss and puss, and that would be a
more befitting example of what people actually lived through than
a bunch of empty suitcases, old shoes, and a train
car sitting in an empty room. And I thought, WHOA.
(46:34):
I never put it that way before. I never allowed
myself to think about the subject on such a visceral, realistic,
harrowing level. I always thought about the Holocaust and genocide
in general in an academic sense. And hearing my classmate
say this quote from her father within her essay opened
(46:57):
up a means in me of wanting to commune n
Kate in a realistic way, as uncomfortable as it might
be for people when it comes to ugly portions of
our shared and collective history, and that's where we ended
up with January sixth and me singing about come perfect
(47:21):
glad you asked fu.
Speaker 2 (47:23):
Yeah, man, No, that's that's great. Yeah, and I applaud
you for doing it. I really do. I think that
I just always love to I love that deliberate intent,
and you know, frankly, that lights a fire for me
because I want to get this edited and out as
quick as I can to kind of help further that
(47:47):
sentiment of why you released this song when you did,
and to honor that, because I mean, it's a I
think it's an incredible song and and I would love
for as many people to hear it as quickly as
possible if I can help facilitate that in any way.
Speaker 7 (48:01):
Yeah, thank you very much. I appreciate the kind words,
and I thank you for the platform for sure. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (48:06):
Well good. So this song was released as a single
on October twenty third, Is that right?
Speaker 4 (48:15):
Yes?
Speaker 7 (48:16):
Okay, we could go today, We could go yesterday, we
could go today.
Speaker 4 (48:19):
Yes.
Speaker 2 (48:20):
Well, congratulations on your new release. And to that end,
where is the best place for listeners to go?
Speaker 5 (48:28):
Buy it?
Speaker 2 (48:29):
Get it? Support you, support the cause?
Speaker 7 (48:33):
Well, Brett, if anyone listening types in the words Divided
Heaven into the Google machine. Then you will either end
up at a film, a German film from the sixties
about a love affair during the Cold War, or you're
going to see my ugly mug and have access to
(48:53):
all of my social media again at whatever your streaming
platform of joys or social media of always just type
in Divided Heaven and you can easily find me. Now,
this song, I suppose if you want to buy it
old school on iTunes, you can do that. I know
that you can do that, but it will be on
the new Divided Heaven record that comes out in the
(49:16):
fall of twenty twenty five that I'm currently working on.
So for your listeners that are turned on by this
song and or a drawn to this song, I should say,
and then you know, aren't more interested in me as
an artist? I would encourage y'all to check out my
past records. But also, you know, dog your little spot
(49:38):
in your brain for when the new record comes out,
because I'm a firm believer and the next one is
the best one, and that's how we do it.
Speaker 2 (49:45):
Awesome, that's awesome right now, man, Well, Jeff, it's been
wonderful chatting with you about everything that we've talked about,
which we seem to cover a lot of ground. And
I really appreciate your openness and transparency and candor. And
I sure look forward to hearing your next record that's
coming out and diving back into your older catalog which
(50:07):
I personally haven't heard, but look forward to digging into
and A and then. It's just been a great, great
pleasure having you on the show. And uh, I look
forward to seeing you again. We're talking with you again.
Speaker 7 (50:18):
Thank you very much, Brett, appreciate it.
Speaker 2 (50:21):
Pre tross Up says Beside Breakdown.
Speaker 5 (50:30):
Chop.
Speaker 8 (50:33):
Up, flooded with child daylong.
Speaker 2 (50:52):
Many great, all right, and that wraps up another episode
(51:12):
of The B Side Breakdown. I want to thank Jeff
Berman for coming on to talk about the Divided Heavens
song Living Funeral. In the background, you're hearing a song
called Church Bells from the band Night Windows. If you
like what you're hearing, go back and listen to the
previous episode because that was the focus of it. Up
next is a song from a band called Va Sky,
and the song is called Lullaby. I'll give you a
(51:33):
snippet of them at the end of this episode. In
the meantime, I want to thank Carry Bosel and Adam
Coolong for helping me put together the jingle you hear
at the beginning and the end of this episode. Also,
please subscribe to this podcast wherever you get your podcast,
and I can't thank you enough for your ongoing support.
Please stay safe until the next one and we'll catch
up then. Thanks again, start.
Speaker 5 (52:08):
Card tripping all your bark's. It's hard to have faith.
Speaker 3 (52:25):
Left trade for reality. That's why afraid to sleep. Please gosh,
goin the Survanty.
Speaker 5 (52:41):
It's hard Star Art Bord
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