August 11, 2025 • 41 mins
Minnesota-based Singer/Songwriter/Musician Ross Thorn joins me on the podcast to talk about his new album, “Fitting In,” Minnesota music, artists + more.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey, welcome to my little corner of the world over
to you. I have a wonderful guest this morning, and
he's gonna join us right from Duluth, Minnesota, so let's
get him up. His name is Ross Thorn. How are
you doing this morning? Are you up in Minnesota today?
I am, Yeah, I'm doing pretty well.
Speaker 2 (00:19):
Yeah. I'm a bit jealous those people who are up north.
Speaker 1 (00:21):
I don't think you get the heat and humidity quite
like we do here in the southeast US.
Speaker 3 (00:26):
Oh god, no, yeah, it's right now. It's as hot
and humid as it gets here, but it's nowhere near
what you get.
Speaker 1 (00:35):
Yeah, it was drenched this morning. I was like, oh
my god, I can't stand this. I'm like so jealous
of people up north. It's fantastic. So life in Minnesota, Yeah, yeah, excellent, excellent.
Speaker 2 (00:49):
Yeah. So how's it going up there.
Speaker 1 (00:51):
It's been a great summer for you so far.
Speaker 4 (00:55):
Yeah it's been good. Yeah, weather's been good.
Speaker 3 (00:59):
We just you know, dealing with some smoke from wildfires
right now, but u and other than that, weather's been good.
Speaker 4 (01:05):
I live on the lake, the big Lake.
Speaker 3 (01:08):
Lake Superior, so it's always nice to go down there
and just have a huge beach day.
Speaker 2 (01:14):
Yeah, that's nice.
Speaker 1 (01:15):
You could actually enjoy summer there. You're ten thousand lakes
and all of that.
Speaker 2 (01:20):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (01:20):
So the wildfires, Yeah, that's up now. It's always seems
to be happening up in Canada. I'm trying to figure
out where it's coming from now. It's it's always in
a different area of Canada.
Speaker 3 (01:34):
Yeah, I'm not totally sure myself, but yeah, whatever it is,
the smoke makes its way towards Minnesota or upper Upper Midwest,
and yeah, we get some air quality warnings from that.
Speaker 2 (01:45):
Yeah, I knew people in Ohio a few years ago.
Speaker 1 (01:48):
We're dealing with that and some of now I just
wafts on down Yeah, and especially the northeast. It's pretty
crazy how that happens.
Speaker 2 (01:56):
Wow, Yeah, you could smell that.
Speaker 1 (01:58):
We've had that here in the South as well. Sometimes,
like in Florida, sometimes there'd be wildfires and somehow waft
from south to north. It was very very unusual. It
doesn't a much. Yeah, awesome. So as far as like
music's going, are you keeping busy performing live throughout your
(02:19):
area there?
Speaker 3 (02:20):
Yeah, I'm kind of keeping summer a little bit chill
because I've got my album release and a tour in.
Speaker 4 (02:27):
August out West.
Speaker 3 (02:28):
So I'm having an album release show here in Duluth,
so trying to prepare for that without you know, making
the schedule to jam packed for my sanity.
Speaker 1 (02:40):
Really it's hard work, and people don't I mean, you
don't make it look fun and easy and all that,
but you know, there's exhaustion with that, with the amount
of you know, carrying things around using vans, planes, trains, automobiles,
just going all over the play.
Speaker 2 (02:56):
So yeah, that's you know, fun.
Speaker 1 (02:59):
It's the labor of love and all of that, but
it's you know, quite a quite a haul too.
Speaker 2 (03:06):
When you're going from one gig to the next.
Speaker 4 (03:09):
Totally yeah.
Speaker 3 (03:10):
And so like you said, it make people make it
look fun. Social media makes everything look like it's better
than it actually is. And the life of a musician
is really just sending a lot of emails and maybe
you get time to write music and play songs.
Speaker 1 (03:26):
It's so true. I mean, like, and I'm sure these
people who were boomers and the older Gen xers as well,
but like it's like we didn't have to do this
back in the day. Gosh, it's like now you have
all these other components you got to compete on social media.
I gotta get on TikTok, Instagram, all of the Facebook,
every one of those, just to try to get that
out there. You put so much work into that, and
(03:47):
it's like, hey, wait a minute, what about the craft.
Speaker 3 (03:50):
Yeah, and it's I feel like it's easy for me
to lose sight of that sometimes. But I feel like
there's a lot of musicians too that find themselves becoming
creators quote unquote.
Speaker 4 (04:03):
In a way that's like doesn't seem fulfilling to me.
Speaker 3 (04:05):
Like you'll look at some of their reels on Instagram
or on TikTok, and their most shared things are things
that are like not related at all to their music,
and it like gets them in front of more people.
But then you know, people kind of just view them
probably as like meme creators and that's about it.
Speaker 1 (04:22):
Yeah, it seems to get lost in that, and it
almost seems like okay, Yeah. On one hand, it's it's
kind of a requirement because you've got to get yourself
out there.
Speaker 2 (04:28):
Nobody knows who you are.
Speaker 1 (04:30):
And at the same time, it's like, well, this isn't music,
but you're thinking it's gonna drive people to the music.
But I would be afraid that it would kind of
get lost in the shuffle. It's like, yay, like you said,
it's a you're kind of a meme creator.
Speaker 3 (04:45):
Yeah, and maybe it does, you know, like maybe for
some folks it does. But I feel like any evidence
I see and I had like a song that was
sort of like Mimi Go viral, and it didn't really
do much for my music and arts aspect of my career,
you know, like I could have been kept making like
meme songs. And I think that comedy comedic music is
(05:06):
really cool, but it's not really what I I guess
what drives me.
Speaker 1 (05:12):
And so yeah, yeah, weird world, Yeah, it brings me
to that. The New Relays here in August early August
of twenty twenty five, is we're speaking fitting in is
the New Relays, and that standout track we were talking
about the World Wide Web, the Internet. You have a
tune on there called Internet Blues, which really taps into
(05:35):
all of those.
Speaker 3 (05:36):
Yeah, it's it's like almost directly inspired by all that stuff.
And you know, growing up on the Internet and online
gaming and all these sorts of things, like I always
really really embraced the Internet, and I think it's because
it was still kind of new even though I was
born in ninety four, you know, but you know, like
(05:58):
it was constantly around my parents. I didn't really know
how to use it, so it was kind of like
cool frontier for me to embrace. And at this point,
like I'm like kind of just turning away from it more.
I'm taking my music off of Spotify, and I'm you know,
as there's just AI everywhere and mostly bots interacting on
(06:19):
social media.
Speaker 4 (06:20):
I'm just kind of getting tired of that.
Speaker 1 (06:23):
Yeah, it's a worldwide web fatigue. It's just too much. Yeah,
back in ninety four and this is in it's moved
so fast since you were born. I remember around that
year I got my first Mac in a place called
Circuit City. Yeah, nice became a doorstop within maybe three
(06:44):
years because I took off so fast after that. Yeah,
I and this goes way back back then. In ninety four,
people had twenty four hundred bod modems, so you would
like have to anyway just take forever for things.
Speaker 2 (07:00):
Yeah, down load it was.
Speaker 1 (07:02):
It's by leaps and bounds well over thirty years now.
It's it's incredible, but it's impacted music. And I remember
clearly the days of Napster and how that really affected things,
and we're they thought, oh, yeah.
Speaker 2 (07:14):
We've crushed Napster. Where to no worries here?
Speaker 1 (07:17):
And oh my gosh, I mean who would have thought
things like Spotify, Apple Music, the way it's all become
so digitized and sewing your hands and convenient, but there
are a lot of downsides.
Speaker 3 (07:29):
Yeah, and like yeah, because that convenience is a double
edged sword, where like people now think that music is
free and that you can just get it whenever you
want and it's just for you as the listener, without
really much consideration for the artists who are trying to
make a living, you know. So like things like Spotify
that pay like less than pennies per play, you know,
(07:50):
is like kind of I think hurting, like the art's
ecosystem with how we think about how we interact with art.
Speaker 2 (08:00):
Yeah, that's sad.
Speaker 1 (08:01):
It's really sad. It just gets more and more sad
for musicians, and some people want to do it. But
like then again, people might be thinking, well, why do
I have to learn all this when like I could
have AI machines do my guitar and bass and drums,
And why do I even need to learn, and so
I worry about places like Guitar Center in these kind
of places. I did a story a couple of years
(08:23):
ago this guy who makes his own cigar box guitars,
which is really cool cool. He jammed with Ozzy Osbourne.
They were in Ozzy and Jack's travel show back on Ana.
Speaker 2 (08:35):
Okay, really really fun guy.
Speaker 1 (08:37):
But like I was thinking about this, here's a guy
who's manufacturing these guitars, and yeah, I kind of tied
it into how places like Guitar Center were gonna suffer
because people were like, why should why bother AI's coming in.
It's now going to be like, you know, it can
almost write my songs, yeah, depressing.
Speaker 3 (08:57):
Yeah, and we're seeing that and like with Spotify, like,
there was some news recently of this AI generated band
called the Velvet Sundown, which is like you go, all
their pictures are AI generated band, their music is AI
generated and like really hollow from like geez It's really
funny and sad and scary. They have they have like
(09:20):
this retro throwback sound and they're like on like some
sixties anti war sounding playlists or something. And then also
at the same time, Daniel Eck, the CEO of Spotify
is like investing in you know, AI military, Just.
Speaker 4 (09:36):
Like, what the hell is going on?
Speaker 1 (09:38):
Is anybody going to have a job in the future.
I really worry about that. It's like all the robots
and AI are going to do everything and even with musicians,
like everything, and you know, deliveries. Robots are going to
be driving the Amazon trucks.
Speaker 3 (09:51):
Yeah, it's it's in the worst way, you know, like
because like ideally we're like cool, but you can take
away the really poor, the bad parts of like work
or some really dangerous things or something like that. But
now people are just sort of willfully offloading their creative
thought to a machine rather than be like, oh, I
can think about this, or maybe I can just learn this,
(10:14):
you know, Like I like to dabble in graphic design
and make my posters and make my graphics and stuff,
and I really enjoy it and it's fun and it's
a struggle, but like you get to learn and you
get to get better rather than be like, generate this
for me, and then like wrinkle in my brain starts
to smooth out because I am you know, not really
working it anymore.
Speaker 1 (10:34):
Right, the brains are going to become kind of like
melons in the future. I think because you say, hey,
I generate my my poster for this tour or my
album cover, and it's like there used to be work
that went into that those kinds.
Speaker 4 (10:46):
Yeah, and then it's like, ay, I say good morning
to my wife for me.
Speaker 2 (10:49):
You know anything. It's crazy.
Speaker 1 (10:53):
What AI can't do I don't think can do right
now is the yodeling that you're doing on this track.
I don't think it can steal that away from you
that it's really incredible.
Speaker 4 (11:03):
Thank you.
Speaker 3 (11:04):
Like, I'm not really a yodeler, but like you know,
I was really. I grew up on the soundtrack of
like Oh Brother Art Thou. We were listening to that
all the time, and like I was really channeling, you know,
the Soggy Bottoms Boys when they're like in there and
one of the one of Tim Nelson, tim Blake, Tim Blake,
(11:26):
Nelson says his full name, the actor he like takes
hand off of his hat, off of his head and
then like, you know, it just gives his heart out yodeling,
and I was like, that's exactly what I'm trying to
do here, right.
Speaker 2 (11:38):
It's great.
Speaker 1 (11:39):
It's an Internet blues It's just yeah, really your standout
track here. But how long did it take you to
put this project together?
Speaker 4 (11:48):
Oh? Man, a while.
Speaker 3 (11:50):
So back in twenty twenty three, I want to grant
here in Duluth that the band Trampled by Turtles puts
on and so I got to open them. And then
it came with some days of recording time. And at
the time, like I just released my first album, and
I was like, and it came, yeah, with the studio time.
I talked to the studio person at Packaderam Studios in
(12:11):
Canon Falls, Nick is his name, and I was like,
I have no songs because like because like we were
talking about before, where like most of my time after
completing an album is spent sending emails and working on
these mixes, and I haven't had any creative time or
energy to like put into something new. So I was like,
give me like a year and maybe we can I'll
have some more stuff.
Speaker 4 (12:31):
So it kind of took a year to write.
Speaker 3 (12:32):
Some of those tunes, and then even up until recording
in November of twenty four, I was still working on
some of the tunes and writing some new ones, but
we were in the studio itself for like four days
and then like the weekend before had the band kind
of come together in a cabin and we just kind
of jammed and hung out to kind of coalesce around
(12:54):
the project. So yeah, and then since then I recorded
one other tune on there. The Midwestern Goodbye is the
name of the tune of Midwestern Goodbye, and that's uh,
that was after the fact, and that took a little bit,
but that Yeah, so it's kind of like spen spread
across all these months and whatnot.
Speaker 1 (13:15):
But yeah, good track, mournful and very lovely as they
described a Midwestern goodbye. Yah is one of those you know,
you have that place in the album. And I love
the order against because people just don't really even think
about order in the albums. And you have this cohesive
ten track, you know, thematic and getting a lot into
(13:36):
the personal things too.
Speaker 2 (13:38):
Yeah, that's that.
Speaker 1 (13:40):
It's just really woven together very nicely that way. But
one of your definitely standout tracks.
Speaker 2 (13:45):
And you have.
Speaker 1 (13:46):
A great cast of characters in this too, with your
your band and some people who.
Speaker 2 (13:51):
Have worked on the recordings with you.
Speaker 1 (13:53):
Very heavily heavy on the violins, and I really appreciate
that you could feel that that folky, country ish feel.
That's Cassandra Satas who shout out here.
Speaker 4 (14:08):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (14:08):
No, She's wonderful and great to work with and always
does a killer job. On my first record, we actually
had a song that like she was warming up to
do it on violin and then I was like just
sobbing because it was so beautiful and I was so
tired and I was like feeling everything. And then so
then we added a violent reprise of that tune. It
(14:28):
was called Grave Digger's Son and Grave Digger's Rest. But yeah,
so she she was great. We really leaned string band
because I picked up banjo in the past. It's been
two years now I've been playing banjo, So I wrote
a bunch of banjo tunes and when I started to
learn that, I was like plateauing with guitar and then
it sort of kind of unlocked something for me. So yeah,
(14:50):
the fiddle, the banjo, upright, bass and acoustic guitar sort
of just all kind of came together for that classic
folks sound.
Speaker 1 (15:00):
Yeah, it's throughout the entire thing, and you have one
purely instrumental track on their first Class Wagon.
Speaker 2 (15:06):
It's just.
Speaker 1 (15:08):
Now that's placed very nicely too within the set to
so you just like, oh, I get this straight on instrumental?
Was was that totally planned or I mean it's not
just filler. I mean this this is really nicely place
within the project.
Speaker 4 (15:23):
Thanks. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (15:23):
Yeah, it's definitely not like especially first class clown wagon,
Like there's a clown aesthetic to this whole thing. Like
the album artwork too has me in a tin type
in the center of it and with an illustrated everything
around it. So and I'm dressed as a clown. So yeah,
it was. It's an intentional song, an intentional placement. We
(15:47):
were kind of going back and forth and where to
actually put it. But yeah, it's a fun one.
Speaker 1 (15:54):
And your first singles already out in advance of the
album starts with a whistler that is or opening track. Yeah,
it really kicks it off. Baby, that's all all all
I need.
Speaker 4 (16:06):
It's yeah.
Speaker 3 (16:08):
Yeah, it's a sweet little tune. That's the oldest tune
on the record, and it's very very John Prime meets
Roger Miller, but specifically like the rooster from robin Hood,
the Disney's Robin Hood cartoon when he's whistling and you know,
playing the tunes and stuff like that, and narrating the story.
So yeah, that's uh, I really really enjoy that tune.
Speaker 1 (16:30):
Yeah, it does has that John Prime kind of feel
to that. I'm a warm in the grass, I'm the
moss in the tree. It's yeah, I love those a little, uh,
you know, pieces of the lyric, Yeah really, yeah, really,
it goes around very well. Now have you done some
of these live already in advance? So they're recording just
sometimes some artists will do that just to get the
(16:53):
audience feel if they're getting it.
Speaker 4 (16:57):
Yep.
Speaker 3 (16:57):
Yeah, So and specifically with baby That's all I Need.
I wrote that one shortly after recording my first record
and so like, and I didn't have a lot of
original songs, so I was just playing basically anything that
I've written at that point. So there's actually a live
recording of the tune already at a theater show that
I did with my brother, who Garrett Thorne. He's also
(17:18):
a musician too, so yeah, so I've been playing him
out last year, went on a little tour as well
and played some of them as I was, you know,
getting better at banjo and trying to sharpen my banjo performance.
Speaker 1 (17:34):
Yeah, you've been playing there and I think I've seen
some stuff up on YouTube too.
Speaker 2 (17:38):
You were an Eagle River, Wisconsin.
Speaker 1 (17:41):
It looked like a really nice venue for acoustic wise too,
it looks really nice.
Speaker 3 (17:48):
Yeah, that's like near our hometown. We grew up near
Ryan Lander Eagle River area in Wisconsin, which is like
far north. But yeah, so we put on like a
little Brothers theater show and raise some money for like
the arts department at the school North and Pines High School.
So yeah, it was it was a beautiful show, great summer. Yeah,
(18:12):
a good year really for our music, and we both
came out with That was the year we both came
out with our first like solo records.
Speaker 1 (18:20):
Nice musical family. So growing up in Minnesota, your parents
were into music.
Speaker 2 (18:25):
Did they encourage that?
Speaker 1 (18:26):
Obviously they had a very positive influence totally.
Speaker 3 (18:32):
Yeah, And growing up in Wisconsin actually we were is
where we grew up, and yeah, my grandma had a
karaoke bar and so we were going there all the time.
Speaker 4 (18:42):
And it was like on a lake.
Speaker 3 (18:43):
So we'd go swimming in the summer and then like
walk over and she'd make us some food and we'd
sing some karaoke or and we were involved with church
choirs like so many people in our family are singers.
Speaker 4 (18:54):
So yeah, oh it.
Speaker 1 (18:56):
Really gets handed down. Yeah, the apples not fall far from.
Speaker 2 (19:00):
The trees there.
Speaker 4 (19:01):
Yeah, definitely.
Speaker 1 (19:02):
So going through school, did you get formal lessons? It
was just saw a lot of playing by ear. Did
you learn to read music?
Speaker 3 (19:11):
Yeah, yeah, we did piano lessons as kids, and I
I didn't like it. I wasn't as passionate about it
as much as i'd probably you know, now, everyone I
think kind of regrets dropping off piano lessons when they
get older.
Speaker 2 (19:25):
They does they they did.
Speaker 1 (19:28):
Yeah, at the time I was motivated at so put
on these records.
Speaker 2 (19:31):
I just parodied what was going on there.
Speaker 4 (19:33):
I wasn't really yeah. Yeah, And so I'm I mean,
I'm one of them.
Speaker 3 (19:37):
I'm one of those folks who kind of like, oh man,
I wish I would have stuck with it longer. Wish
I would have, you know, done a little bit more
with theory or something. But like I had enough years
of that, and then I like did band in high school,
middle school and high school, and I was like, I
actually played drums, and I was the only like percussionist
that I think could like really read notes, And so
I was always like playing like the xylophone or something
(19:58):
like that, as much as I wanted to play like
the drum kit and like you know, actually like play
like a rock and beat.
Speaker 4 (20:04):
Type of thing.
Speaker 3 (20:05):
But yeah, so then, but around that time, I was
like teaching myself guitar. My brother was kind of learning
at the same time too, so we were kind of
just jamming and figuring it out. Got some really cheap
guitars and noodling around on them.
Speaker 4 (20:22):
And I started writing songs like in high school and
early college.
Speaker 2 (20:26):
And where'd you go to college?
Speaker 3 (20:28):
Steven's Point, Wisconsin. It's a state D three state school.
And then I did grad school and in Madison, Wisconsin.
Speaker 1 (20:36):
All in Wisconsin. So had you jumped the next day
over to Minnesota.
Speaker 4 (20:42):
Yeah, my partner got a job up here.
Speaker 3 (20:44):
We were kind of looking to kind of change scenery
a little bit, but not too much, to stay close
to home kind of a little bit, you know, to
stay closer to our parents if they needed us for anything.
So yeah, so Minnesota and Minnesota and Wisconsin. Like I'm
into sports and people are that's like the thing is,
like you know, like the Packers versus the Vikings or whatever,
(21:05):
and so I couldn't care less about sports.
Speaker 4 (21:09):
And so like understandable.
Speaker 3 (21:11):
Yeah with that respect, like it's so similar, like the
culture is basically the same.
Speaker 4 (21:16):
We're all like Midwestern folks and uh yeah.
Speaker 1 (21:21):
Yeah, that's it's just their culture up there. It's with
the pro sports teams here in the Southeast US, it's
with the college football teams.
Speaker 4 (21:30):
Yep, that makes sense.
Speaker 1 (21:32):
Oh my gosh, it's just total religion. It's like, I
just don't care about anything that's people are hitting a ball,
catching a ball. I like cycling and running. It's nice. Nice.
Speaker 2 (21:42):
I don't get the whole pickleball or tennis thing.
Speaker 4 (21:45):
Sure taken over.
Speaker 1 (21:50):
I hear people getting injured too doing that. I'm like,
I don't know how that happens.
Speaker 3 (21:54):
With a whiffle ball. Yeah, I don't know, but yeah, yeah,
Like I like to play sports. I played a little
college basketball and I played high school basketball too, and
like I think they're fun and they're a good time.
But also yeah, when it gets to pro sports and
the like the the pro sports.
Speaker 4 (22:14):
Uh, I guess industry. I think there's a lot that's like, uh,
I roll my.
Speaker 1 (22:20):
Eyes too, maybe yeah yeah, And it's the money gaming,
you know, it was the bigger markets typically, I mean, no,
I get interested in like the World Series or the
super Bowl, even if like you know, a real underdog
got in there, I'm like, yeah, I read for them.
Speaker 2 (22:34):
Because it's such a money game.
Speaker 1 (22:35):
It's usually the big money teams that's totally in the
whole thing.
Speaker 4 (22:40):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (22:41):
Yeah, I'm very very disappointing that way. But yeah, music's
a whole other things. Sometimes it matches. I mean, hey,
people play halftime into super Bowl.
Speaker 4 (22:50):
It's like right, yeah, absolutely so.
Speaker 2 (22:54):
It kind of gets in there.
Speaker 1 (22:55):
But yeah, so going through there, and how long have
you been in Minnesota now?
Speaker 4 (23:00):
Hm? About seven years now?
Speaker 1 (23:04):
Yeah, yeah, that's a really conducive place to be inspired
and to create, like as if you know, Prince was
the big thing there.
Speaker 3 (23:14):
Yeah, absolutely, yeah, I love that. And the history of
music in the Midwest and in Minnesota specifically too, is
you know, there's Bob Dylan, there's prints, lots of great
bands from around the cities and in Duluth, and great artists.
Speaker 4 (23:31):
And particularly too.
Speaker 3 (23:32):
One thing that like you don't really hear about unless
you're on the art scene like in Minnesota, is that
like the state funding for grants for artists is like
so great, Like it's like tenfold any neighboring states that
they put towards their arts communities and like grants and
(23:53):
artists and funding. It's it's kind of astronomical compared to that. So,
like it's really great to be able to to be
in a state that cares about that and like puts
their money where their mouth is, Like we like to
support the arts, and we like to support our artists.
So it's a it's a really great state to be
inspired and to like actually fiscally sustain being an artist.
Speaker 1 (24:17):
Yeah, that's very true about Minnesota. It's it's much different
than a lot of these other states. It's lucky to
be there in that sense as well, really supporting the arts.
So your band and everybody who you got together, do
you have like long deep roots with the people who
is especially played on this latest project.
Speaker 3 (24:36):
Yeah, so some of them, So my brother lives in Nashville,
and some of them like Cassandra and Clark who played
bass and helped produce the record. They're all in Nashville,
and I met them through my brother playing music down
there once in a while and just hanging out. So
they played on my first record as well. But then
(24:56):
they came up for this particular recording, and then Ian
and Jacob they're both de Luthians, so they're on bands
around here and play a lot of music full time.
So and I kind of wanted to make sure to
bring some local folks, you know, with me and to
(25:17):
connect with some old friends. And I had a couple
other folks sit into the Spine Steelers from Madison, Laura
Selner from Duluth and Kyle Orler from Dluth as well.
Speaker 1 (25:26):
Yeah, I say on these tracks, Jacob Mahon is really
giving it up there on What's Up with You and
giving him the spotlight there a little bit slower, great
guitar picking with harmonies. Yeah, very sweet track. So it's
nice to your gear you give them the space. And
then definitely with the Spine Stealers, it's just really far
(25:48):
and Away, I mean far Away is like this track
really really featured some amazing vocals and it's just so
great that you're you're giving them on your solo record
some base to people who are in your band and
really treating it as if you know, this is a
collaborative effort.
Speaker 3 (26:06):
Yeah, totally, and especially with What's Up with You, because
that's actually Jacob actually wrote that song, and so I
asked him if I could, you know, like cut it
for this record, and then I'd love, you know, I'd
want to him to sing it with me because it's
really like supposed to have that sort of like two
guys sitting on a porch vibe and just kind of
talking and connecting. And so I was really grateful, Yeah,
(26:26):
like collaborative across the board where he wrote it, let
me do it. But then yeah, so that was It's
really nice.
Speaker 4 (26:34):
It's a really special song.
Speaker 3 (26:36):
And yeah, for far Away, like the Spine Steelers, I've
been a huge fan of theirs for a couple of
years now and they're friends of mine that we're going
on tour in August out West together. And yeah, Emma
who sings lead on that, her voice is just insane,
really really ethereal and spooky and.
Speaker 2 (26:55):
So yeah, yeah it.
Speaker 1 (26:58):
So how often do you see Garrett he's in nash Well,
I'm sure he's busy. That's a great music community. I
speak with a lot of people from Nashville.
Speaker 3 (27:05):
Yeah, a couple times a year. We talk a lot.
Speaker 4 (27:09):
You know.
Speaker 3 (27:10):
One of the benefits of the Internet is that you
can stay connected with people who are far ways away.
So yeah, he's been busy though too. He's cutting another
solo record this year so or early next year or something.
He's constantly busy with, you know, kind of establishing his
life down there. He's been there for ten years now though,
so and then yeah, keeping at it.
Speaker 2 (27:33):
Really supportive community.
Speaker 1 (27:35):
I know people there who are just in all around
the industry. This is like totally getting away from Los Angeles,
Chicago or New York where it's just really competitive, and
it seems to me like, yeah, it's genteel, people are
really supportive. It's not this crazy cutthroat culture. I'm sure
he's thriving.
Speaker 3 (27:54):
Yeah, and I think there's probably pockets, you know, like
in Nashville from what I experienced it, you know, like
there's there's a little bit of something for everybody, and
you got to just find it a little bit. There
is probably you know, especially like the downtown scene is
probably a little bit more cutthroat type of thing, but
you know, you can find community and like the people
you know, like Cassandra and Clark who I met through him,
(28:15):
you know, like you can find.
Speaker 4 (28:16):
Pockets of really good people who are supportive.
Speaker 1 (28:20):
Yeah, so you're gonna be I'm gonna release this as
we're speaking, probably around the time you're releasing your album.
But you seem to be probably excited about your performance,
which will be at locally there in Duluth. You're gonna,
I suppose to premiere a lot of those songs, which
is August six, twenty twenty five at Bent Paddle. Growing
(28:41):
in Daliuth sounds like a really nice place, so Duluth
does all.
Speaker 2 (28:44):
It sounds like a nice does have.
Speaker 1 (28:45):
Like a quaint, nice little downtown where your place, like
Bent Paddle is at.
Speaker 3 (28:50):
Yeah, well Bent Paddle's not downtown, but yeah, there is.
It's it's kind of a weird city. There's like two
part or like there's the downtown area, a couple of
little neighborhoods that have some decent venues and this one
is in Lincoln Park and it's a little bit more
walkable and really nice though.
Speaker 4 (29:10):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (29:11):
But yeah, like as far as like the scene goes
and stages and sound folks like Bent Paddle is a
brewery and they do a lot for having you know,
good community accessible music.
Speaker 4 (29:24):
So it's gonna be a free show so that you know,
as many.
Speaker 3 (29:28):
People can come to it as possible, and yeah, debuting
a lot of these songs and full banding it and
it'll be great.
Speaker 1 (29:35):
Which I think nice little Uh so I'm gonna sing along?
Would be pick a d Day? Oh yeah, yeah, really
really folks. And now this harkens back to all the
folk people who I grew up with, you know, the
Peter Paul and Mary's and people like that. It's just
something that could be an out of that movie. I
don't know if you ever saw a Mighty Wind.
Speaker 4 (29:55):
Oh no, I didn't.
Speaker 1 (29:57):
It's it's kind of like you're familiar with the Christopher
Guest movies, like this is Spinal Tap, Yes, yes.
Speaker 2 (30:05):
Kind of.
Speaker 1 (30:05):
He did this thing. He explored the through his lens
the world of folk music. Okay, it's about these fictional
folk bands and then.
Speaker 3 (30:16):
Acts, Yeah, I'll have to because that sounds really good.
Speaker 2 (30:20):
You have to see it.
Speaker 1 (30:21):
A Mighty Wind and Harry Shearer, this wonderful comedian, isn't it.
Speaker 2 (30:27):
It's so good.
Speaker 1 (30:29):
It's down a Mighty Wind by Christopher Guest, who's just
this genius. And yeah, I did Spinal Tap and a
few other films. Best in the show where he was
doing a thing about dog competitions like the Westminster Dog
Shows like a parodies, right, Yeah, it's hysterical. That's really
(30:50):
really funny, stuffy, Yeah.
Speaker 4 (30:54):
Thank you. Yeah, yeah that'll be a fun one. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (30:57):
I think it's pretty it's pretty melodic, and that like
little catchy chorus.
Speaker 4 (31:04):
Type of thing is definitely something that people can get to. Yeah,
I'm stoked.
Speaker 2 (31:10):
Yeah, it's yeah, really great.
Speaker 1 (31:13):
And you know, when you go through the album, it's
just it's got many great tracks, but your most personal
is your your title track, fitting In, which I think,
now this kind of thing and this kind of goes
in with the whole theme of the project, is like
the whole idea of fitting in, and you explore that
it's a nice long closing track.
Speaker 2 (31:36):
Yeah, album.
Speaker 4 (31:37):
Yeah, I didn't intend it to be that long.
Speaker 3 (31:40):
It was it was I didn't it's almost eight minutes,
and I didn't set out to write an eight minute song,
and I think if I did, I would have failed
miserably if I tried to do that. But yeah, it
was like, that was one of the tracks that wasn't
done by the time we went to the studio, but
I knew I wanted it to be the title track
and to have the whole project after that, so I was,
(32:02):
you know, I'm the themes of it are surrounding, like
you said.
Speaker 4 (32:06):
Fitting in and not fitting in.
Speaker 3 (32:07):
Really it's it's more about how I don't typically fit in.
And I'm I'm a very large person. You can't see
it because I'm sitting down and we're on a screen,
but I'm six foot eight. So like, you know, if
I walk through that doorway, if I'm like on the upstep,
I will hit my head type of thing. And I'm like, yeah, right,
And I'm constantly reminded of, you know, that fact that
my body is not normal quote unquote that it's you know,
(32:31):
the rest of the world is not built to my specifications.
You know, whether it's like I go to a bathroom
and I look in the mirror and I like, I
literally can't see my own face unless I.
Speaker 4 (32:43):
Like crouch down.
Speaker 3 (32:44):
So so yeah, it's and it's a lot to wrestle with.
And it's it's you know, like people think it's mostly
a great thing to be really tall, and I and
a lot of you know, I think in sports, like
we said, it's great and really great for yeah, but
outside of that, you know, like I'm I have to
pay extra to get a seat that I'm not in
pain in on an on an airplane. Uh, you know,
(33:07):
I have to get preferred seating type of thing. And
people think that that's a luxury, but it's sort of
just a necessity for me. So yeah, it's it's like,
you know, trying to trying to grapple with a lot
of that stuff as I as I moved through life
and and show kind of empathy and you know, like
not only to show that side, but also to you know,
(33:28):
to in solidarity with other folks and other different identities
that like are on the margins of society, and society
constantly reminds them that they're not quote unquote normal. You know,
there's lots of us who are not quote unquote normal,
and that's.
Speaker 4 (33:44):
You know, it's nothing to be ashamed of.
Speaker 1 (33:46):
Yeah, absolutely, I mean, and I think it's hard growing up.
Speaker 2 (33:49):
It really is.
Speaker 1 (33:50):
We had when I grew up, I had a friend
who was six foot five by the time I think
he was in fifth grade.
Speaker 2 (33:58):
Oh God, and.
Speaker 1 (34:00):
My friends were young movie makers and nice one of
the movies we always put him in that you know,
in a lot of the movies we did as like
you know, the Jaws type character who you'd.
Speaker 2 (34:12):
See in James Bond, don't know if you've.
Speaker 1 (34:14):
Seen that franchise, the Jaws character in those movies. We
kind of like said he was perfect for that, and
I was like the kind of the lead and he'd
be tossing me around and stuff like that.
Speaker 2 (34:25):
But yeah, I mean it was very you know, it's
tough growing up and kids about the seventies and eighties.
Speaker 1 (34:31):
They were so cruel, they really were, and it really
it affects you so much of your life. And I
think in more recent years we've become so much more
aware of you know, like everybody's different, we always have.
Speaker 2 (34:45):
We should embrace what we have. Yeah, I think that's
really important.
Speaker 1 (34:48):
And those is the kind of the theme through what
writers like you were doing is like it's okay, you know,
we're all different.
Speaker 2 (34:57):
Mm hmm.
Speaker 4 (34:58):
Totally completely.
Speaker 1 (35:00):
So putting this together, did you do a lot of overdubs?
You went to studio there in Minnesota.
Speaker 3 (35:08):
Yeah, so Packet M Studios in Cannon Falls, Minnesota's it's
a pretty like fabled place, like Nirvana recorded in un
Row there and there's like lots of other big projects there,
but that's sort of like one of the Flagship Ones,
and it was great. Nick who is the main engineer
(35:28):
there and sort of manages the studio, is such a
great engineer. He's like literally just an angel and is
so talented. But the room is really set up for
great live recording, So we did mostly live recordings and
like trying to fit that like string band vibe, like
let's you know, we tried a couple different things of
like let's separate and let's see how we sound if
(35:51):
you know, we're a little bit more isolated, but we
can hear each other. And then what we ended up
sort of just gravitating for towards like the instrumental track
is like let's play around these old one mics, you know,
and then.
Speaker 4 (36:03):
Like just feel it out, play it together.
Speaker 3 (36:06):
So yeah, limit limited overdubs, but mostly mostly live takes,
which is really fun and kind of a challenge.
Speaker 4 (36:14):
Especially compared to my last record, which.
Speaker 3 (36:16):
Was mostly mostly overdubs and like kind of systematically, you know,
foundationally laid.
Speaker 1 (36:24):
But yeah, yeah, sounds like cool. I had asked this
one track called I Lost my voice in my accordion?
Speaker 2 (36:33):
Did that really even happen?
Speaker 4 (36:35):
No? No?
Speaker 3 (36:37):
Yeah, So the full the full title of that is
is a breath is a mouthful, it's a I lost
my voice in my accordion, but I still know how
to poka. And being from Wisconsin is like poka is
like everywhere, and like I grew up in a really
like a small Polish town and so like poka is
at every single wedding there's a poka. Like the Catholic
(36:59):
Church has poka mass, you know.
Speaker 4 (37:02):
So I didn't. I have an accordion and I can't.
Speaker 3 (37:06):
Really play it, but it's it's more of like I
wanted to write a funny PoCA. I think pokas are
just such silly songs and they get away with it
really well, and it's sort of inspired by the accordion
that I do have. My mom and I were barry
picking one time and we can't Like there was another guy,
(37:28):
he was a older man who was there and he
was also berry picking, and then like we got to
talk in a little bit and he had pulled out
this accordion out of his trunk and like played a
poka and like my mom and I like danced in like,
you know, and I was like this is so surreal,
Like is this guy even real? Or is he some
sort of like you know, mythical fairy creature. And then
like he was trying to sell it, and so my
(37:49):
mom bought it from him, and so I have that
same accordion in our basement, and yeah, I was like,
I still don't know if that was real. To this day,
you know, it's like like the Lady of the Lake
giving Excalibur. It's sort of the same thing, except for
I still don't know how to use the accordion. I
can't play it very well.
Speaker 1 (38:07):
Maybe one day it is. It's a very special thing.
I kind of grew up with some of that. I
grew up in Cleveland and Cleveland's I was on the
east side, but the west side had more of your
your Polish folks over there. And I think the ABC
affiliates back in the sixties and seventies they had a
show called Polka Varieties. So it tells you something about
(38:29):
that area because I was kind of familiar with some
of that stuff. Yeah, kind of, you know, because people
like that sittled in the Midwest. There was you know,
the Industrial Revolution and a lot of It's why a
lot of us were there and a lot of us
left because a lot of things faded up there. Yeah, yeah,
but yeah, wow, what a different world up there.
Speaker 3 (38:47):
Yeah, and it's yeah, so there's there's you know, deep
Polish roots and deep German roots, and both of them
really liked to poka and so uh so yeah, I was.
I was kind of inspired just by that and growing
up in my grandma having Big Joe's Poka Show on
like on Sundays and yeah, watching that on TV.
Speaker 1 (39:06):
So yeah, I'm sure. Wow, that's that's wild.
Speaker 2 (39:10):
Yeah. Good to Minnesota.
Speaker 1 (39:11):
Well cool, So you're definitely getting out there, hitting the
West coast.
Speaker 2 (39:16):
What cities are you hitting over there?
Speaker 3 (39:19):
Yeah, So when we leave to luth then we play
on our way out to the west coast, we play
in Missoula, Montana.
Speaker 4 (39:27):
Okay, yep, yep, Yeah, it's on the way.
Speaker 1 (39:31):
It's it's yep.
Speaker 3 (39:33):
And then we'll hit up Seattle, Eugene, Oregon, Portland, Oregon,
and then start making our way back via Salt Lake City,
a couple of towns in Colorado, Silver Plume, Denver, and
Fort Collins. And then we end in southern Wisconsin, Madison
and Milwaukee.
Speaker 2 (39:52):
Oh that's wonderful.
Speaker 4 (39:54):
Yeah, it'll be a good little run.
Speaker 2 (39:55):
Yeah, especially in the summertime.
Speaker 1 (39:58):
I think that's a great way to I mean, I
know you can get hot and dry out there too sometimes,
but I just, you know, way to escape the heat
at this time of the year.
Speaker 2 (40:06):
It's just be nice to go up to Seattle.
Speaker 3 (40:08):
Yeah, that's what I'm hoping that too, that it'll be
kind of nice, a little bit cooler. Yeah, we'll see
how we fare in Salt Lake City, which I hear
gets pretty darn hot in the summer.
Speaker 1 (40:18):
So yeah, it's a dry heat, but it's still hot.
Speaker 2 (40:21):
It's still hot.
Speaker 1 (40:22):
I've been in Vegas when it was like, yeah, oh yeah,
it's in triple digits, but it's a dry heat. I
was like, it's I'm still baking out here.
Speaker 4 (40:29):
Right.
Speaker 3 (40:30):
You can say it's dry all you want, but I
am sweating my ass off exactly.
Speaker 1 (40:35):
Well, thanks for dropping by. It's a pleasure. Best wishes.
Hopefully I'd love to see it come down here to
the Atlanta area. But uh yeah, that's that's tough to
do a lot of travel.
Speaker 2 (40:45):
It can get it. You can get kind of price, eh.
Speaker 4 (40:48):
Yeah, well I'm hoping, yeah, we'll see.
Speaker 3 (40:49):
I'm looking at some things for next year just to
see what kind of because i'd love to make it
out East. I got some friends who play music, like
in North Carolina and stuff like that, so maybe to
do this like Little Loop or something.
Speaker 1 (41:02):
Yeah, they'd love to see you at Eddie Zadok. I
keep promoting that kind of place. It's a small club
in Decatur, Georgia.
Speaker 2 (41:09):
Oh cool, those.
Speaker 1 (41:10):
Kind of your kind of acts, Like a lot of
folk musicians play there. It's really great venue. But yeah,
thanks for stopping by. I really had a great time
speaking with you.
Speaker 4 (41:21):
Yeah, thank you, Bob.
Speaker 2 (41:22):
Take care, have a good one, best wishes, Bye bye.
Hey, welcome to my little corner of the world over
to you. I have a wonderful guest this morning, and
he's gonna join us right from Duluth, Minnesota, so let's
get him up. His name is Ross Thorn. How are
you doing this morning? Are you up in Minnesota today?
I am, Yeah, I'm doing pretty well.
Speaker 2 (00:19):
Yeah. I'm a bit jealous those people who are up north.
Speaker 1 (00:21):
I don't think you get the heat and humidity quite
like we do here in the southeast US.
Speaker 3 (00:26):
Oh god, no, yeah, it's right now. It's as hot
and humid as it gets here, but it's nowhere near
what you get.
Speaker 1 (00:35):
Yeah, it was drenched this morning. I was like, oh
my god, I can't stand this. I'm like so jealous
of people up north. It's fantastic. So life in Minnesota, Yeah, yeah, excellent, excellent.
Speaker 2 (00:49):
Yeah. So how's it going up there.
Speaker 1 (00:51):
It's been a great summer for you so far.
Speaker 4 (00:55):
Yeah it's been good. Yeah, weather's been good.
Speaker 3 (00:59):
We just you know, dealing with some smoke from wildfires
right now, but u and other than that, weather's been good.
Speaker 4 (01:05):
I live on the lake, the big Lake.
Speaker 3 (01:08):
Lake Superior, so it's always nice to go down there
and just have a huge beach day.
Speaker 2 (01:14):
Yeah, that's nice.
Speaker 1 (01:15):
You could actually enjoy summer there. You're ten thousand lakes
and all of that.
Speaker 2 (01:20):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (01:20):
So the wildfires, Yeah, that's up now. It's always seems
to be happening up in Canada. I'm trying to figure
out where it's coming from now. It's it's always in
a different area of Canada.
Speaker 3 (01:34):
Yeah, I'm not totally sure myself, but yeah, whatever it is,
the smoke makes its way towards Minnesota or upper Upper Midwest,
and yeah, we get some air quality warnings from that.
Speaker 2 (01:45):
Yeah, I knew people in Ohio a few years ago.
Speaker 1 (01:48):
We're dealing with that and some of now I just
wafts on down Yeah, and especially the northeast. It's pretty
crazy how that happens.
Speaker 2 (01:56):
Wow, Yeah, you could smell that.
Speaker 1 (01:58):
We've had that here in the South as well. Sometimes,
like in Florida, sometimes there'd be wildfires and somehow waft
from south to north. It was very very unusual. It
doesn't a much. Yeah, awesome. So as far as like
music's going, are you keeping busy performing live throughout your
(02:19):
area there?
Speaker 3 (02:20):
Yeah, I'm kind of keeping summer a little bit chill
because I've got my album release and a tour in.
Speaker 4 (02:27):
August out West.
Speaker 3 (02:28):
So I'm having an album release show here in Duluth,
so trying to prepare for that without you know, making
the schedule to jam packed for my sanity.
Speaker 1 (02:40):
Really it's hard work, and people don't I mean, you
don't make it look fun and easy and all that,
but you know, there's exhaustion with that, with the amount
of you know, carrying things around using vans, planes, trains, automobiles,
just going all over the play.
Speaker 2 (02:56):
So yeah, that's you know, fun.
Speaker 1 (02:59):
It's the labor of love and all of that, but
it's you know, quite a quite a haul too.
Speaker 2 (03:06):
When you're going from one gig to the next.
Speaker 4 (03:09):
Totally yeah.
Speaker 3 (03:10):
And so like you said, it make people make it
look fun. Social media makes everything look like it's better
than it actually is. And the life of a musician
is really just sending a lot of emails and maybe
you get time to write music and play songs.
Speaker 1 (03:26):
It's so true. I mean, like, and I'm sure these
people who were boomers and the older Gen xers as well,
but like it's like we didn't have to do this
back in the day. Gosh, it's like now you have
all these other components you got to compete on social media.
I gotta get on TikTok, Instagram, all of the Facebook,
every one of those, just to try to get that
out there. You put so much work into that, and
(03:47):
it's like, hey, wait a minute, what about the craft.
Speaker 3 (03:50):
Yeah, and it's I feel like it's easy for me
to lose sight of that sometimes. But I feel like
there's a lot of musicians too that find themselves becoming
creators quote unquote.
Speaker 4 (04:03):
In a way that's like doesn't seem fulfilling to me.
Speaker 3 (04:05):
Like you'll look at some of their reels on Instagram
or on TikTok, and their most shared things are things
that are like not related at all to their music,
and it like gets them in front of more people.
But then you know, people kind of just view them
probably as like meme creators and that's about it.
Speaker 1 (04:22):
Yeah, it seems to get lost in that, and it
almost seems like okay, Yeah. On one hand, it's it's
kind of a requirement because you've got to get yourself
out there.
Speaker 2 (04:28):
Nobody knows who you are.
Speaker 1 (04:30):
And at the same time, it's like, well, this isn't music,
but you're thinking it's gonna drive people to the music.
But I would be afraid that it would kind of
get lost in the shuffle. It's like, yay, like you said,
it's a you're kind of a meme creator.
Speaker 3 (04:45):
Yeah, and maybe it does, you know, like maybe for
some folks it does. But I feel like any evidence
I see and I had like a song that was
sort of like Mimi Go viral, and it didn't really
do much for my music and arts aspect of my career,
you know, like I could have been kept making like
meme songs. And I think that comedy comedic music is
(05:06):
really cool, but it's not really what I I guess
what drives me.
Speaker 1 (05:12):
And so yeah, yeah, weird world, Yeah, it brings me
to that. The New Relays here in August early August
of twenty twenty five, is we're speaking fitting in is
the New Relays, and that standout track we were talking
about the World Wide Web, the Internet. You have a
tune on there called Internet Blues, which really taps into
(05:35):
all of those.
Speaker 3 (05:36):
Yeah, it's it's like almost directly inspired by all that stuff.
And you know, growing up on the Internet and online
gaming and all these sorts of things, like I always
really really embraced the Internet, and I think it's because
it was still kind of new even though I was
born in ninety four, you know, but you know, like
(05:58):
it was constantly around my parents. I didn't really know
how to use it, so it was kind of like
cool frontier for me to embrace. And at this point,
like I'm like kind of just turning away from it more.
I'm taking my music off of Spotify, and I'm you know,
as there's just AI everywhere and mostly bots interacting on
(06:19):
social media.
Speaker 4 (06:20):
I'm just kind of getting tired of that.
Speaker 1 (06:23):
Yeah, it's a worldwide web fatigue. It's just too much. Yeah,
back in ninety four and this is in it's moved
so fast since you were born. I remember around that
year I got my first Mac in a place called
Circuit City. Yeah, nice became a doorstop within maybe three
(06:44):
years because I took off so fast after that. Yeah,
I and this goes way back back then. In ninety four,
people had twenty four hundred bod modems, so you would
like have to anyway just take forever for things.
Speaker 2 (07:00):
Yeah, down load it was.
Speaker 1 (07:02):
It's by leaps and bounds well over thirty years now.
It's it's incredible, but it's impacted music. And I remember
clearly the days of Napster and how that really affected things,
and we're they thought, oh, yeah.
Speaker 2 (07:14):
We've crushed Napster. Where to no worries here?
Speaker 1 (07:17):
And oh my gosh, I mean who would have thought
things like Spotify, Apple Music, the way it's all become
so digitized and sewing your hands and convenient, but there
are a lot of downsides.
Speaker 3 (07:29):
Yeah, and like yeah, because that convenience is a double
edged sword, where like people now think that music is
free and that you can just get it whenever you
want and it's just for you as the listener, without
really much consideration for the artists who are trying to
make a living, you know. So like things like Spotify
that pay like less than pennies per play, you know,
(07:50):
is like kind of I think hurting, like the art's
ecosystem with how we think about how we interact with art.
Speaker 2 (08:00):
Yeah, that's sad.
Speaker 1 (08:01):
It's really sad. It just gets more and more sad
for musicians, and some people want to do it. But
like then again, people might be thinking, well, why do
I have to learn all this when like I could
have AI machines do my guitar and bass and drums,
And why do I even need to learn, and so
I worry about places like Guitar Center in these kind
of places. I did a story a couple of years
(08:23):
ago this guy who makes his own cigar box guitars,
which is really cool cool. He jammed with Ozzy Osbourne.
They were in Ozzy and Jack's travel show back on Ana.
Speaker 2 (08:35):
Okay, really really fun guy.
Speaker 1 (08:37):
But like I was thinking about this, here's a guy
who's manufacturing these guitars, and yeah, I kind of tied
it into how places like Guitar Center were gonna suffer
because people were like, why should why bother AI's coming in.
It's now going to be like, you know, it can
almost write my songs, yeah, depressing.
Speaker 3 (08:57):
Yeah, and we're seeing that and like with Spotify, like,
there was some news recently of this AI generated band
called the Velvet Sundown, which is like you go, all
their pictures are AI generated band, their music is AI
generated and like really hollow from like geez It's really
funny and sad and scary. They have they have like
(09:20):
this retro throwback sound and they're like on like some
sixties anti war sounding playlists or something. And then also
at the same time, Daniel Eck, the CEO of Spotify
is like investing in you know, AI military, Just.
Speaker 4 (09:36):
Like, what the hell is going on?
Speaker 1 (09:38):
Is anybody going to have a job in the future.
I really worry about that. It's like all the robots
and AI are going to do everything and even with musicians,
like everything, and you know, deliveries. Robots are going to
be driving the Amazon trucks.
Speaker 3 (09:51):
Yeah, it's it's in the worst way, you know, like
because like ideally we're like cool, but you can take
away the really poor, the bad parts of like work
or some really dangerous things or something like that. But
now people are just sort of willfully offloading their creative
thought to a machine rather than be like, oh, I
can think about this, or maybe I can just learn this,
(10:14):
you know, Like I like to dabble in graphic design
and make my posters and make my graphics and stuff,
and I really enjoy it and it's fun and it's
a struggle, but like you get to learn and you
get to get better rather than be like, generate this
for me, and then like wrinkle in my brain starts
to smooth out because I am you know, not really
working it anymore.
Speaker 1 (10:34):
Right, the brains are going to become kind of like
melons in the future. I think because you say, hey,
I generate my my poster for this tour or my
album cover, and it's like there used to be work
that went into that those kinds.
Speaker 4 (10:46):
Yeah, and then it's like, ay, I say good morning
to my wife for me.
Speaker 2 (10:49):
You know anything. It's crazy.
Speaker 1 (10:53):
What AI can't do I don't think can do right
now is the yodeling that you're doing on this track.
I don't think it can steal that away from you
that it's really incredible.
Speaker 4 (11:03):
Thank you.
Speaker 3 (11:04):
Like, I'm not really a yodeler, but like you know,
I was really. I grew up on the soundtrack of
like Oh Brother Art Thou. We were listening to that
all the time, and like I was really channeling, you know,
the Soggy Bottoms Boys when they're like in there and
one of the one of Tim Nelson, tim Blake, Tim Blake,
(11:26):
Nelson says his full name, the actor he like takes
hand off of his hat, off of his head and
then like, you know, it just gives his heart out yodeling,
and I was like, that's exactly what I'm trying to
do here, right.
Speaker 2 (11:38):
It's great.
Speaker 1 (11:39):
It's an Internet blues It's just yeah, really your standout
track here. But how long did it take you to
put this project together?
Speaker 4 (11:48):
Oh? Man, a while.
Speaker 3 (11:50):
So back in twenty twenty three, I want to grant
here in Duluth that the band Trampled by Turtles puts
on and so I got to open them. And then
it came with some days of recording time. And at
the time, like I just released my first album, and
I was like, and it came, yeah, with the studio time.
I talked to the studio person at Packaderam Studios in
(12:11):
Canon Falls, Nick is his name, and I was like,
I have no songs because like because like we were
talking about before, where like most of my time after
completing an album is spent sending emails and working on
these mixes, and I haven't had any creative time or
energy to like put into something new. So I was like,
give me like a year and maybe we can I'll
have some more stuff.
Speaker 4 (12:31):
So it kind of took a year to write.
Speaker 3 (12:32):
Some of those tunes, and then even up until recording
in November of twenty four, I was still working on
some of the tunes and writing some new ones, but
we were in the studio itself for like four days
and then like the weekend before had the band kind
of come together in a cabin and we just kind
of jammed and hung out to kind of coalesce around
(12:54):
the project. So yeah, and then since then I recorded
one other tune on there. The Midwestern Goodbye is the
name of the tune of Midwestern Goodbye, and that's uh,
that was after the fact, and that took a little bit,
but that Yeah, so it's kind of like spen spread
across all these months and whatnot.
Speaker 1 (13:15):
But yeah, good track, mournful and very lovely as they
described a Midwestern goodbye. Yah is one of those you know,
you have that place in the album. And I love
the order against because people just don't really even think
about order in the albums. And you have this cohesive
ten track, you know, thematic and getting a lot into
(13:36):
the personal things too.
Speaker 2 (13:38):
Yeah, that's that.
Speaker 1 (13:40):
It's just really woven together very nicely that way. But
one of your definitely standout tracks.
Speaker 2 (13:45):
And you have.
Speaker 1 (13:46):
A great cast of characters in this too, with your
your band and some people who.
Speaker 2 (13:51):
Have worked on the recordings with you.
Speaker 1 (13:53):
Very heavily heavy on the violins, and I really appreciate
that you could feel that that folky, country ish feel.
That's Cassandra Satas who shout out here.
Speaker 4 (14:08):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (14:08):
No, She's wonderful and great to work with and always
does a killer job. On my first record, we actually
had a song that like she was warming up to
do it on violin and then I was like just
sobbing because it was so beautiful and I was so
tired and I was like feeling everything. And then so
then we added a violent reprise of that tune. It
(14:28):
was called Grave Digger's Son and Grave Digger's Rest. But yeah,
so she she was great. We really leaned string band
because I picked up banjo in the past. It's been
two years now I've been playing banjo, So I wrote
a bunch of banjo tunes and when I started to
learn that, I was like plateauing with guitar and then
it sort of kind of unlocked something for me. So yeah,
(14:50):
the fiddle, the banjo, upright, bass and acoustic guitar sort
of just all kind of came together for that classic
folks sound.
Speaker 1 (15:00):
Yeah, it's throughout the entire thing, and you have one
purely instrumental track on their first Class Wagon.
Speaker 2 (15:06):
It's just.
Speaker 1 (15:08):
Now that's placed very nicely too within the set to
so you just like, oh, I get this straight on instrumental?
Was was that totally planned or I mean it's not
just filler. I mean this this is really nicely place
within the project.
Speaker 4 (15:23):
Thanks. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (15:23):
Yeah, it's definitely not like especially first class clown wagon,
Like there's a clown aesthetic to this whole thing. Like
the album artwork too has me in a tin type
in the center of it and with an illustrated everything
around it. So and I'm dressed as a clown. So yeah,
it was. It's an intentional song, an intentional placement. We
(15:47):
were kind of going back and forth and where to
actually put it. But yeah, it's a fun one.
Speaker 1 (15:54):
And your first singles already out in advance of the
album starts with a whistler that is or opening track. Yeah,
it really kicks it off. Baby, that's all all all
I need.
Speaker 4 (16:06):
It's yeah.
Speaker 3 (16:08):
Yeah, it's a sweet little tune. That's the oldest tune
on the record, and it's very very John Prime meets
Roger Miller, but specifically like the rooster from robin Hood,
the Disney's Robin Hood cartoon when he's whistling and you know,
playing the tunes and stuff like that, and narrating the story.
So yeah, that's uh, I really really enjoy that tune.
Speaker 1 (16:30):
Yeah, it does has that John Prime kind of feel
to that. I'm a warm in the grass, I'm the
moss in the tree. It's yeah, I love those a little, uh,
you know, pieces of the lyric, Yeah really, yeah, really,
it goes around very well. Now have you done some
of these live already in advance? So they're recording just
sometimes some artists will do that just to get the
(16:53):
audience feel if they're getting it.
Speaker 4 (16:57):
Yep.
Speaker 3 (16:57):
Yeah, So and specifically with baby That's all I Need.
I wrote that one shortly after recording my first record
and so like, and I didn't have a lot of
original songs, so I was just playing basically anything that
I've written at that point. So there's actually a live
recording of the tune already at a theater show that
I did with my brother, who Garrett Thorne. He's also
(17:18):
a musician too, so yeah, so I've been playing him
out last year, went on a little tour as well
and played some of them as I was, you know,
getting better at banjo and trying to sharpen my banjo performance.
Speaker 1 (17:34):
Yeah, you've been playing there and I think I've seen
some stuff up on YouTube too.
Speaker 2 (17:38):
You were an Eagle River, Wisconsin.
Speaker 1 (17:41):
It looked like a really nice venue for acoustic wise too,
it looks really nice.
Speaker 3 (17:48):
Yeah, that's like near our hometown. We grew up near
Ryan Lander Eagle River area in Wisconsin, which is like
far north. But yeah, so we put on like a
little Brothers theater show and raise some money for like
the arts department at the school North and Pines High School.
So yeah, it was it was a beautiful show, great summer. Yeah,
(18:12):
a good year really for our music, and we both
came out with That was the year we both came
out with our first like solo records.
Speaker 1 (18:20):
Nice musical family. So growing up in Minnesota, your parents
were into music.
Speaker 2 (18:25):
Did they encourage that?
Speaker 1 (18:26):
Obviously they had a very positive influence totally.
Speaker 3 (18:32):
Yeah, And growing up in Wisconsin actually we were is
where we grew up, and yeah, my grandma had a
karaoke bar and so we were going there all the time.
Speaker 4 (18:42):
And it was like on a lake.
Speaker 3 (18:43):
So we'd go swimming in the summer and then like
walk over and she'd make us some food and we'd
sing some karaoke or and we were involved with church
choirs like so many people in our family are singers.
Speaker 4 (18:54):
So yeah, oh it.
Speaker 1 (18:56):
Really gets handed down. Yeah, the apples not fall far from.
Speaker 2 (19:00):
The trees there.
Speaker 4 (19:01):
Yeah, definitely.
Speaker 1 (19:02):
So going through school, did you get formal lessons? It
was just saw a lot of playing by ear. Did
you learn to read music?
Speaker 3 (19:11):
Yeah, yeah, we did piano lessons as kids, and I
I didn't like it. I wasn't as passionate about it
as much as i'd probably you know, now, everyone I
think kind of regrets dropping off piano lessons when they
get older.
Speaker 2 (19:25):
They does they they did.
Speaker 1 (19:28):
Yeah, at the time I was motivated at so put
on these records.
Speaker 2 (19:31):
I just parodied what was going on there.
Speaker 4 (19:33):
I wasn't really yeah. Yeah, And so I'm I mean,
I'm one of them.
Speaker 3 (19:37):
I'm one of those folks who kind of like, oh man,
I wish I would have stuck with it longer. Wish
I would have, you know, done a little bit more
with theory or something. But like I had enough years
of that, and then I like did band in high school,
middle school and high school, and I was like, I
actually played drums, and I was the only like percussionist
that I think could like really read notes, And so
I was always like playing like the xylophone or something
(19:58):
like that, as much as I wanted to play like
the drum kit and like you know, actually like play
like a rock and beat.
Speaker 4 (20:04):
Type of thing.
Speaker 3 (20:05):
But yeah, so then, but around that time, I was
like teaching myself guitar. My brother was kind of learning
at the same time too, so we were kind of
just jamming and figuring it out. Got some really cheap
guitars and noodling around on them.
Speaker 4 (20:22):
And I started writing songs like in high school and
early college.
Speaker 2 (20:26):
And where'd you go to college?
Speaker 3 (20:28):
Steven's Point, Wisconsin. It's a state D three state school.
And then I did grad school and in Madison, Wisconsin.
Speaker 1 (20:36):
All in Wisconsin. So had you jumped the next day
over to Minnesota.
Speaker 4 (20:42):
Yeah, my partner got a job up here.
Speaker 3 (20:44):
We were kind of looking to kind of change scenery
a little bit, but not too much, to stay close
to home kind of a little bit, you know, to
stay closer to our parents if they needed us for anything.
So yeah, so Minnesota and Minnesota and Wisconsin. Like I'm
into sports and people are that's like the thing is,
like you know, like the Packers versus the Vikings or whatever,
(21:05):
and so I couldn't care less about sports.
Speaker 4 (21:09):
And so like understandable.
Speaker 3 (21:11):
Yeah with that respect, like it's so similar, like the
culture is basically the same.
Speaker 4 (21:16):
We're all like Midwestern folks and uh yeah.
Speaker 1 (21:21):
Yeah, that's it's just their culture up there. It's with
the pro sports teams here in the Southeast US, it's
with the college football teams.
Speaker 4 (21:30):
Yep, that makes sense.
Speaker 1 (21:32):
Oh my gosh, it's just total religion. It's like, I
just don't care about anything that's people are hitting a ball,
catching a ball. I like cycling and running. It's nice. Nice.
Speaker 2 (21:42):
I don't get the whole pickleball or tennis thing.
Speaker 4 (21:45):
Sure taken over.
Speaker 1 (21:50):
I hear people getting injured too doing that. I'm like,
I don't know how that happens.
Speaker 3 (21:54):
With a whiffle ball. Yeah, I don't know, but yeah, yeah,
Like I like to play sports. I played a little
college basketball and I played high school basketball too, and
like I think they're fun and they're a good time.
But also yeah, when it gets to pro sports and
the like the the pro sports.
Speaker 4 (22:14):
Uh, I guess industry. I think there's a lot that's like, uh,
I roll my.
Speaker 1 (22:20):
Eyes too, maybe yeah yeah, And it's the money gaming,
you know, it was the bigger markets typically, I mean, no,
I get interested in like the World Series or the
super Bowl, even if like you know, a real underdog
got in there, I'm like, yeah, I read for them.
Speaker 2 (22:34):
Because it's such a money game.
Speaker 1 (22:35):
It's usually the big money teams that's totally in the
whole thing.
Speaker 4 (22:40):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (22:41):
Yeah, I'm very very disappointing that way. But yeah, music's
a whole other things. Sometimes it matches. I mean, hey,
people play halftime into super Bowl.
Speaker 4 (22:50):
It's like right, yeah, absolutely so.
Speaker 2 (22:54):
It kind of gets in there.
Speaker 1 (22:55):
But yeah, so going through there, and how long have
you been in Minnesota now?
Speaker 4 (23:00):
Hm? About seven years now?
Speaker 1 (23:04):
Yeah, yeah, that's a really conducive place to be inspired
and to create, like as if you know, Prince was
the big thing there.
Speaker 3 (23:14):
Yeah, absolutely, yeah, I love that. And the history of
music in the Midwest and in Minnesota specifically too, is
you know, there's Bob Dylan, there's prints, lots of great
bands from around the cities and in Duluth, and great artists.
Speaker 4 (23:31):
And particularly too.
Speaker 3 (23:32):
One thing that like you don't really hear about unless
you're on the art scene like in Minnesota, is that
like the state funding for grants for artists is like
so great, Like it's like tenfold any neighboring states that
they put towards their arts communities and like grants and
(23:53):
artists and funding. It's it's kind of astronomical compared to that. So,
like it's really great to be able to to be
in a state that cares about that and like puts
their money where their mouth is, Like we like to
support the arts, and we like to support our artists.
So it's a it's a really great state to be
inspired and to like actually fiscally sustain being an artist.
Speaker 1 (24:17):
Yeah, that's very true about Minnesota. It's it's much different
than a lot of these other states. It's lucky to
be there in that sense as well, really supporting the arts.
So your band and everybody who you got together, do
you have like long deep roots with the people who
is especially played on this latest project.
Speaker 3 (24:36):
Yeah, so some of them, So my brother lives in Nashville,
and some of them like Cassandra and Clark who played
bass and helped produce the record. They're all in Nashville,
and I met them through my brother playing music down
there once in a while and just hanging out. So
they played on my first record as well. But then
(24:56):
they came up for this particular recording, and then Ian
and Jacob they're both de Luthians, so they're on bands
around here and play a lot of music full time.
So and I kind of wanted to make sure to
bring some local folks, you know, with me and to
(25:17):
connect with some old friends. And I had a couple
other folks sit into the Spine Steelers from Madison, Laura
Selner from Duluth and Kyle Orler from Dluth as well.
Speaker 1 (25:26):
Yeah, I say on these tracks, Jacob Mahon is really
giving it up there on What's Up with You and
giving him the spotlight there a little bit slower, great
guitar picking with harmonies. Yeah, very sweet track. So it's
nice to your gear you give them the space. And
then definitely with the Spine Stealers, it's just really far
(25:48):
and Away, I mean far Away is like this track
really really featured some amazing vocals and it's just so
great that you're you're giving them on your solo record
some base to people who are in your band and
really treating it as if you know, this is a
collaborative effort.
Speaker 3 (26:06):
Yeah, totally, and especially with What's Up with You, because
that's actually Jacob actually wrote that song, and so I
asked him if I could, you know, like cut it
for this record, and then I'd love, you know, I'd
want to him to sing it with me because it's
really like supposed to have that sort of like two
guys sitting on a porch vibe and just kind of
talking and connecting. And so I was really grateful, Yeah,
(26:26):
like collaborative across the board where he wrote it, let
me do it. But then yeah, so that was It's
really nice.
Speaker 4 (26:34):
It's a really special song.
Speaker 3 (26:36):
And yeah, for far Away, like the Spine Steelers, I've
been a huge fan of theirs for a couple of
years now and they're friends of mine that we're going
on tour in August out West together. And yeah, Emma
who sings lead on that, her voice is just insane,
really really ethereal and spooky and.
Speaker 2 (26:55):
So yeah, yeah it.
Speaker 1 (26:58):
So how often do you see Garrett he's in nash Well,
I'm sure he's busy. That's a great music community. I
speak with a lot of people from Nashville.
Speaker 3 (27:05):
Yeah, a couple times a year. We talk a lot.
Speaker 4 (27:09):
You know.
Speaker 3 (27:10):
One of the benefits of the Internet is that you
can stay connected with people who are far ways away.
So yeah, he's been busy though too. He's cutting another
solo record this year so or early next year or something.
He's constantly busy with, you know, kind of establishing his
life down there. He's been there for ten years now though,
so and then yeah, keeping at it.
Speaker 2 (27:33):
Really supportive community.
Speaker 1 (27:35):
I know people there who are just in all around
the industry. This is like totally getting away from Los Angeles,
Chicago or New York where it's just really competitive, and
it seems to me like, yeah, it's genteel, people are
really supportive. It's not this crazy cutthroat culture. I'm sure
he's thriving.
Speaker 3 (27:54):
Yeah, and I think there's probably pockets, you know, like
in Nashville from what I experienced it, you know, like
there's there's a little bit of something for everybody, and
you got to just find it a little bit. There
is probably you know, especially like the downtown scene is
probably a little bit more cutthroat type of thing, but
you know, you can find community and like the people
you know, like Cassandra and Clark who I met through him,
(28:15):
you know, like you can find.
Speaker 4 (28:16):
Pockets of really good people who are supportive.
Speaker 1 (28:20):
Yeah, so you're gonna be I'm gonna release this as
we're speaking, probably around the time you're releasing your album.
But you seem to be probably excited about your performance,
which will be at locally there in Duluth. You're gonna,
I suppose to premiere a lot of those songs, which
is August six, twenty twenty five at Bent Paddle. Growing
(28:41):
in Daliuth sounds like a really nice place, so Duluth
does all.
Speaker 2 (28:44):
It sounds like a nice does have.
Speaker 1 (28:45):
Like a quaint, nice little downtown where your place, like
Bent Paddle is at.
Speaker 3 (28:50):
Yeah, well Bent Paddle's not downtown, but yeah, there is.
It's it's kind of a weird city. There's like two
part or like there's the downtown area, a couple of
little neighborhoods that have some decent venues and this one
is in Lincoln Park and it's a little bit more
walkable and really nice though.
Speaker 4 (29:10):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (29:11):
But yeah, like as far as like the scene goes
and stages and sound folks like Bent Paddle is a
brewery and they do a lot for having you know,
good community accessible music.
Speaker 4 (29:24):
So it's gonna be a free show so that you know,
as many.
Speaker 3 (29:28):
People can come to it as possible, and yeah, debuting
a lot of these songs and full banding it and
it'll be great.
Speaker 1 (29:35):
Which I think nice little Uh so I'm gonna sing along?
Would be pick a d Day? Oh yeah, yeah, really
really folks. And now this harkens back to all the
folk people who I grew up with, you know, the
Peter Paul and Mary's and people like that. It's just
something that could be an out of that movie. I
don't know if you ever saw a Mighty Wind.
Speaker 4 (29:55):
Oh no, I didn't.
Speaker 1 (29:57):
It's it's kind of like you're familiar with the Christopher
Guest movies, like this is Spinal Tap, Yes, yes.
Speaker 2 (30:05):
Kind of.
Speaker 1 (30:05):
He did this thing. He explored the through his lens
the world of folk music. Okay, it's about these fictional
folk bands and then.
Speaker 3 (30:16):
Acts, Yeah, I'll have to because that sounds really good.
Speaker 2 (30:20):
You have to see it.
Speaker 1 (30:21):
A Mighty Wind and Harry Shearer, this wonderful comedian, isn't it.
Speaker 2 (30:27):
It's so good.
Speaker 1 (30:29):
It's down a Mighty Wind by Christopher Guest, who's just
this genius. And yeah, I did Spinal Tap and a
few other films. Best in the show where he was
doing a thing about dog competitions like the Westminster Dog
Shows like a parodies, right, Yeah, it's hysterical. That's really
(30:50):
really funny, stuffy, Yeah.
Speaker 4 (30:54):
Thank you. Yeah, yeah that'll be a fun one. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (30:57):
I think it's pretty it's pretty melodic, and that like
little catchy chorus.
Speaker 4 (31:04):
Type of thing is definitely something that people can get to. Yeah,
I'm stoked.
Speaker 2 (31:10):
Yeah, it's yeah, really great.
Speaker 1 (31:13):
And you know, when you go through the album, it's
just it's got many great tracks, but your most personal
is your your title track, fitting In, which I think,
now this kind of thing and this kind of goes
in with the whole theme of the project, is like
the whole idea of fitting in, and you explore that
it's a nice long closing track.
Speaker 2 (31:36):
Yeah, album.
Speaker 4 (31:37):
Yeah, I didn't intend it to be that long.
Speaker 3 (31:40):
It was it was I didn't it's almost eight minutes,
and I didn't set out to write an eight minute song,
and I think if I did, I would have failed
miserably if I tried to do that. But yeah, it
was like, that was one of the tracks that wasn't
done by the time we went to the studio, but
I knew I wanted it to be the title track
and to have the whole project after that, so I was,
(32:02):
you know, I'm the themes of it are surrounding, like
you said.
Speaker 4 (32:06):
Fitting in and not fitting in.
Speaker 3 (32:07):
Really it's it's more about how I don't typically fit in.
And I'm I'm a very large person. You can't see
it because I'm sitting down and we're on a screen,
but I'm six foot eight. So like, you know, if
I walk through that doorway, if I'm like on the upstep,
I will hit my head type of thing. And I'm like, yeah, right,
And I'm constantly reminded of, you know, that fact that
my body is not normal quote unquote that it's you know,
(32:31):
the rest of the world is not built to my specifications.
You know, whether it's like I go to a bathroom
and I look in the mirror and I like, I
literally can't see my own face unless I.
Speaker 4 (32:43):
Like crouch down.
Speaker 3 (32:44):
So so yeah, it's and it's a lot to wrestle with.
And it's it's you know, like people think it's mostly
a great thing to be really tall, and I and
a lot of you know, I think in sports, like
we said, it's great and really great for yeah, but
outside of that, you know, like I'm I have to
pay extra to get a seat that I'm not in
pain in on an on an airplane. Uh, you know,
(33:07):
I have to get preferred seating type of thing. And
people think that that's a luxury, but it's sort of
just a necessity for me. So yeah, it's it's like,
you know, trying to trying to grapple with a lot
of that stuff as I as I moved through life
and and show kind of empathy and you know, like
not only to show that side, but also to you know,
(33:28):
to in solidarity with other folks and other different identities
that like are on the margins of society, and society
constantly reminds them that they're not quote unquote normal. You know,
there's lots of us who are not quote unquote normal,
and that's.
Speaker 4 (33:44):
You know, it's nothing to be ashamed of.
Speaker 1 (33:46):
Yeah, absolutely, I mean, and I think it's hard growing up.
Speaker 2 (33:49):
It really is.
Speaker 1 (33:50):
We had when I grew up, I had a friend
who was six foot five by the time I think
he was in fifth grade.
Speaker 2 (33:58):
Oh God, and.
Speaker 1 (34:00):
My friends were young movie makers and nice one of
the movies we always put him in that you know,
in a lot of the movies we did as like
you know, the Jaws type character who you'd.
Speaker 2 (34:12):
See in James Bond, don't know if you've.
Speaker 1 (34:14):
Seen that franchise, the Jaws character in those movies. We
kind of like said he was perfect for that, and
I was like the kind of the lead and he'd
be tossing me around and stuff like that.
Speaker 2 (34:25):
But yeah, I mean it was very you know, it's
tough growing up and kids about the seventies and eighties.
Speaker 1 (34:31):
They were so cruel, they really were, and it really
it affects you so much of your life. And I
think in more recent years we've become so much more
aware of you know, like everybody's different, we always have.
Speaker 2 (34:45):
We should embrace what we have. Yeah, I think that's
really important.
Speaker 1 (34:48):
And those is the kind of the theme through what
writers like you were doing is like it's okay, you know,
we're all different.
Speaker 2 (34:57):
Mm hmm.
Speaker 4 (34:58):
Totally completely.
Speaker 1 (35:00):
So putting this together, did you do a lot of overdubs?
You went to studio there in Minnesota.
Speaker 3 (35:08):
Yeah, so Packet M Studios in Cannon Falls, Minnesota's it's
a pretty like fabled place, like Nirvana recorded in un
Row there and there's like lots of other big projects there,
but that's sort of like one of the Flagship Ones,
and it was great. Nick who is the main engineer
(35:28):
there and sort of manages the studio, is such a
great engineer. He's like literally just an angel and is
so talented. But the room is really set up for
great live recording, So we did mostly live recordings and
like trying to fit that like string band vibe, like
let's you know, we tried a couple different things of
like let's separate and let's see how we sound if
(35:51):
you know, we're a little bit more isolated, but we
can hear each other. And then what we ended up
sort of just gravitating for towards like the instrumental track
is like let's play around these old one mics, you know,
and then.
Speaker 4 (36:03):
Like just feel it out, play it together.
Speaker 3 (36:06):
So yeah, limit limited overdubs, but mostly mostly live takes,
which is really fun and kind of a challenge.
Speaker 4 (36:14):
Especially compared to my last record, which.
Speaker 3 (36:16):
Was mostly mostly overdubs and like kind of systematically, you know,
foundationally laid.
Speaker 1 (36:24):
But yeah, yeah, sounds like cool. I had asked this
one track called I Lost my voice in my accordion?
Speaker 2 (36:33):
Did that really even happen?
Speaker 4 (36:35):
No? No?
Speaker 3 (36:37):
Yeah, So the full the full title of that is
is a breath is a mouthful, it's a I lost
my voice in my accordion, but I still know how
to poka. And being from Wisconsin is like poka is
like everywhere, and like I grew up in a really
like a small Polish town and so like poka is
at every single wedding there's a poka. Like the Catholic
(36:59):
Church has poka mass, you know.
Speaker 4 (37:02):
So I didn't. I have an accordion and I can't.
Speaker 3 (37:06):
Really play it, but it's it's more of like I
wanted to write a funny PoCA. I think pokas are
just such silly songs and they get away with it
really well, and it's sort of inspired by the accordion
that I do have. My mom and I were barry
picking one time and we can't Like there was another guy,
(37:28):
he was a older man who was there and he
was also berry picking, and then like we got to
talk in a little bit and he had pulled out
this accordion out of his trunk and like played a
poka and like my mom and I like danced in like,
you know, and I was like this is so surreal,
Like is this guy even real? Or is he some
sort of like you know, mythical fairy creature. And then
like he was trying to sell it, and so my
(37:49):
mom bought it from him, and so I have that
same accordion in our basement, and yeah, I was like,
I still don't know if that was real. To this day,
you know, it's like like the Lady of the Lake
giving Excalibur. It's sort of the same thing, except for
I still don't know how to use the accordion. I
can't play it very well.
Speaker 1 (38:07):
Maybe one day it is. It's a very special thing.
I kind of grew up with some of that. I
grew up in Cleveland and Cleveland's I was on the
east side, but the west side had more of your
your Polish folks over there. And I think the ABC
affiliates back in the sixties and seventies they had a
show called Polka Varieties. So it tells you something about
(38:29):
that area because I was kind of familiar with some
of that stuff. Yeah, kind of, you know, because people
like that sittled in the Midwest. There was you know,
the Industrial Revolution and a lot of It's why a
lot of us were there and a lot of us
left because a lot of things faded up there. Yeah, yeah,
but yeah, wow, what a different world up there.
Speaker 3 (38:47):
Yeah, and it's yeah, so there's there's you know, deep
Polish roots and deep German roots, and both of them
really liked to poka and so uh so yeah, I was.
I was kind of inspired just by that and growing
up in my grandma having Big Joe's Poka Show on
like on Sundays and yeah, watching that on TV.
Speaker 1 (39:06):
So yeah, I'm sure. Wow, that's that's wild.
Speaker 2 (39:10):
Yeah. Good to Minnesota.
Speaker 1 (39:11):
Well cool, So you're definitely getting out there, hitting the
West coast.
Speaker 2 (39:16):
What cities are you hitting over there?
Speaker 3 (39:19):
Yeah, So when we leave to luth then we play
on our way out to the west coast, we play
in Missoula, Montana.
Speaker 4 (39:27):
Okay, yep, yep, Yeah, it's on the way.
Speaker 1 (39:31):
It's it's yep.
Speaker 3 (39:33):
And then we'll hit up Seattle, Eugene, Oregon, Portland, Oregon,
and then start making our way back via Salt Lake City,
a couple of towns in Colorado, Silver Plume, Denver, and
Fort Collins. And then we end in southern Wisconsin, Madison
and Milwaukee.
Speaker 2 (39:52):
Oh that's wonderful.
Speaker 4 (39:54):
Yeah, it'll be a good little run.
Speaker 2 (39:55):
Yeah, especially in the summertime.
Speaker 1 (39:58):
I think that's a great way to I mean, I
know you can get hot and dry out there too sometimes,
but I just, you know, way to escape the heat
at this time of the year.
Speaker 2 (40:06):
It's just be nice to go up to Seattle.
Speaker 3 (40:08):
Yeah, that's what I'm hoping that too, that it'll be
kind of nice, a little bit cooler. Yeah, we'll see
how we fare in Salt Lake City, which I hear
gets pretty darn hot in the summer.
Speaker 1 (40:18):
So yeah, it's a dry heat, but it's still hot.
Speaker 2 (40:21):
It's still hot.
Speaker 1 (40:22):
I've been in Vegas when it was like, yeah, oh yeah,
it's in triple digits, but it's a dry heat. I
was like, it's I'm still baking out here.
Speaker 4 (40:29):
Right.
Speaker 3 (40:30):
You can say it's dry all you want, but I
am sweating my ass off exactly.
Speaker 1 (40:35):
Well, thanks for dropping by. It's a pleasure. Best wishes.
Hopefully I'd love to see it come down here to
the Atlanta area. But uh yeah, that's that's tough to
do a lot of travel.
Speaker 2 (40:45):
It can get it. You can get kind of price, eh.
Speaker 4 (40:48):
Yeah, well I'm hoping, yeah, we'll see.
Speaker 3 (40:49):
I'm looking at some things for next year just to
see what kind of because i'd love to make it
out East. I got some friends who play music, like
in North Carolina and stuff like that, so maybe to
do this like Little Loop or something.
Speaker 1 (41:02):
Yeah, they'd love to see you at Eddie Zadok. I
keep promoting that kind of place. It's a small club
in Decatur, Georgia.
Speaker 2 (41:09):
Oh cool, those.
Speaker 1 (41:10):
Kind of your kind of acts, Like a lot of
folk musicians play there. It's really great venue. But yeah,
thanks for stopping by. I really had a great time
speaking with you.
Speaker 4 (41:21):
Yeah, thank you, Bob.
Speaker 2 (41:22):
Take care, have a good one, best wishes, Bye bye.
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