Hiss Golden Messenger - the pseudonym for M.C. Taylor - has put out 14+ records since 2009 both independently and via Merge Records, including a Grammy nomination for Best Americana Record in 2019. We chat about the idea of creativity being tidal with ebbs and flows, how exercise and physical activity helps sustain creativity and touring stamina, and artists from The Grateful Dead to Public Enemy and De La Soul.
Hiss Golden Messenger - the pseudonym for M.C. Taylor - has put out 14+ records since 2009 both independently and via Merge Records, including a Grammy nomination for Best Americana Record in 2019. We chat about the idea of creativity being tidal with ebbs and flows, how exercise and physical activity helps sustain creativity and touring stamina, and artists from The Grateful Dead to Public Enemy and De La Soul.
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All music written, performed, and produced by Aaron Shafer-Haiss.
[00:00:00] Aaron: Hey, and welcome to this week's episode of The Other 22 Hours podcast. I'm your host, Aaron Shafer-Haiss.
[00:00:04] Michaela: And I'm your host
Michaela Anne, thank you so much for
[00:00:07] Aaron: being
here. We like to think of ourselves as the anti album cycle podcast, so we're not
like a normal music interview show where people are gonna
come on and talk about their latest record.
We're gonna ask all the questions about.
What we
as musicians do offstage
usually outside of the public eye and some of the
tools and routines that we use to stay creative,
stay inspired, and stay sane while we're trying to
do something pretty crazy, which is build a career around our art.
[00:00:31] Michaela: Between the two of us, Erin and I
have almost 25 years of experience in the music business in all different avenues and sections,
[00:00:39] Aaron: and.
through a lot of failure, we've learned that there's not one right way to build a career around your
passion
[00:00:44] Michaela: And in an industry where so much feels out of our control and left up to luck, depending on who you know, being in the right place at the right time, we wanted to have conversations focusing on what is within our control.
[00:00:55] Aaron: And so with that in mind,
we decided to invite some of our friends And
some of our
favorite artists on and ask 'em the question, what do you do to build sustainability in your life so that you can sustain your creativity
that friend today is actually a new friend,
and that is Mc Taylor, better known as his golden
messenger.
[00:01:11] Michaela: Mc has been touring for the
past 30 plus years, I think he said, starting out in punk rock bands and bought his
[00:01:18] Aaron: first tour van at 17.
Yeah.
[00:01:20] Michaela: Wow. and
started his Golden Messenger in 2007, has been putting out records ever since independently and with Merge Records.
He was nominated for Best Americana album in 2019 for his record
terms of
[00:01:33] Aaron: surrender. And through all of this, he
says that he really just started. Focusing
on his career in 2018. So that's a pretty great record. Yeah.
[00:01:42] Michaela: We covered a lot of different topics from being gentle on yourself and accepting of your current creative process, The important physical
and mental benefits of exercise and taking care of your body.
[00:01:54] Aaron: and we talked about one of my favorite things, learning through failure and through wrong decisions. And then also I would like to pat ourselves on the back because we do talk about the Grateful Dead in this episode. And we didn't fall into only talking
about the Grateful Dead the whole time. So have no fear. We are not a Grateful Dead podcast. We didn't fall
victim to that. We
[00:02:12] Michaela: did talk about them
for quite a while, but I found it very interesting and I'm not a hardcore
deadhead.
[00:02:18] Aaron: We're still working on it anyways. In a really meta version of this podcast,
You
get to see the other 22 hours in action as our conversation
gets cut short. MC was, talking to us via his
phone, which just promptly died, kind of at a really beautiful moment in the conversation.
But it ends very abruptly and you get to hear Mikayla and I try to
write the ship. So sorry for the abruptness, but.
This is a real life podcast. Without
[00:02:44] Michaela: further ado,
here is Mc Taylor from his Golden messenger.
Thank you for being
here.
[00:02:50] Hiss: Sure. Yeah. Thanks for having me.
[00:02:52] Michaela: Yeah.
we are just gonna jump right in. We were talking about
inviting you on and the
fact that we have a lot of our guests so far have been people that we know And we have never
met you in person. We've, Yeah. Hi. Good to meet you.
[00:03:06] Hiss: good to meet you guys.
[00:03:08] Michaela: lots of
mutual friends. But one of the questions
right off the bat, because this podcast is motivated by our goal and
intent of trying to
pull the curtain back a little bit on what
life. As professional musicians, as creative beings is, really like, and a lot
of creating or, growing a music career can be built on this idea of developing this,
Image.
And some artists and bands are much more particular about
How they present themselves on social media. It might be a bit more
Curated, And being a fan of yours and following
your social media for a while, you
present pretty honestly. And from not knowing you personally, it
comes off like you're pretty revealing and forthcoming about how you feel about things, what the reality of touring can be, which really attracted us to wanting you as a guest.
So I kind of wanted to start there and say, Was that an intentional thought on your part, or is that just you don't know any other way to be?
[00:04:10] Hiss: It's me that's doing the posting. it's a tricky thing thinking about this because it sort of makes me think about our relationship to social media and how liberating it started out feeling 10 or 15 years ago and how confining it feels now, actually.
feel like I've really. cut way back actually on my presence on. On Instagram now. I haven't been on Facebook in years and years, and I'm not on Twitter anymore either. and I don't I'm too old to join any new social media
Mm-hmm. I think this is it for me. if I'm gonna post stuff that's personal out into the world for people that I don't know, it generally feels like, I don't think that transparent is the word, but just, I should just say what I wanna say and it's kind of like, let the. The cards fall, however,
[00:05:07] Michaela: Yeah. And I wanna differentiate between,
Revealing
personal stuff on social media. Like you're not,
Live streaming your family and
talking about you know, your relationships with your kids and your
partner and come off real in How you communicate your thoughts on what's going on in the world or the reality of the finances of, touring with a band solo
that I think
not
everyone is comfortable with because
especially in, the last couple years of it was such a huge thing for some bigger bands to reveal like, we're canceling this tour because
we're gonna lose too much
[00:05:41] Hiss: right.
[00:05:42] Michaela: and other, other bands
will
Cancel a tour due to unforeseen circumstances, and you might then hear behind the scenes from knowing them, oh, it's because we were gonna lose too much money, but
they didn't want
to reveal that
[00:05:53] Hiss: Yeah. I mean, I, I feel like everybody has a different way that they negotiate that, I certainly don't feel a fan of any band that might be canceling or struggling to like, put all the pieces in place. I don't feel owed. That kind of transparency, that's seems to be a, thing that is endemic of where we are right now.
And this media has pushed us into these spaces I don't know. I mean, I like the transparency. I think it's good and interesting, but at the same time, I don't feel like anyone should be obligated to discuss stuff that is the nuts and bolts of making a music career work.
I mean, I think the one thing we can all agree on is that it's pretty fucking impossible. There are lots of ways to make it work and, and I've made it work, but the way I've made it work actually is just putting one tiny little, piece in front of the next for, you know, I bought my first tour van 30 years ago. mm-hmm. Yeah. I was 17 years old so, I don't know. It's hard and it's easy as a, as an artist to. The more you expose yourself to people talking on social media, it's easy to start to feel either undervalued or confused about how to make it work.
[00:07:15] Aaron: Yeah, absolutely. And a continuation of what McKayla was saying. You know, I, I agree with you, you know, I don't think anybody is, everybody's
entitled to run their business or their social media presence, however they see fit for what they want to do. The other side of the coin with that is that
we've noticed it makes a lot of people feel like what they're experiencing with their
career or their struggles in the music business is unique to them.
I'm not gonna do this tour cuz I'm gonna lose $55,000. Um,
you know, it's a bit of refreshing and, and all of our, the large majority of our listeners are,
musicians and varying, stages of their career.
So that was,
part of the impetus to start this, was to be like, just
build some community around the fact that like, it doesn't matter
if you're selling out the Beacon Theater or you're selling 20 tickets at the basement here in Nashville. There's a lot
of struggles on every level.
Yeah.
There's a lot of parallels for everybody.
[00:08:04] Hiss: Oh my
God. No doubt. Yeah. It's tricky, but like the place that I, I am coming from and,
it's wild how deeply embedded this time period is in my D n A, but I grew up playing like punk rock and hardcore music, and was no such thing as a career. never even crossed my mind for the first God, 10 or 15 years that I even was climbing into a tour van unpacking my, my instruments and my amplifiers.
Even when I was deep in it and giving everything of myself to it, it never crossed my mind that it would be a career. I was just doing it because it was fun and it was the thing that I felt most connected to in the universe. it is interesting, like I have so many people in my life who went to music school, did you guys go to music school?
[00:08:58] Aaron: we did.
[00:08:58] Hiss: Right. So like we're, we're coming at this from different angles. we have similar hopes, but I think that when you come at it from a, music school angle, sometimes, it's, it feels like, seems like a more legitimate pathway than I ever thought it was. mm-hmm. So if you come out of music school with massive student debt and are expecting to follow this pathway It's so unpredictable. It's almost unlike in a lot of ways, any other degree you could get. I mean, then, then I, Then I like think about that and I think about it's, any degree is like what that degree looks like when you're out of school is it's much different than what you're imagining it's gonna be when you're going in.
so I never had this idea of like, I have all these skills. I don't know how to read music. all this stuff that I do with his golden messenger, this is why it has taken so long, is I learned how to do it from making a ton of bad choices and like being open enough I guess. Sometimes to be like, Oh wait, I, that totally, that doesn't work at all. Actually, that's not how you run a band. That's not how you behave on a stage. That's not how you like break up an eight hour drive from here to here. That's not how you deal with taxes. Oh Every single little bit of my life and music really has been me learning through making a terrible choice and then having to try again the next time or the next year, or the next fiscal or the next tax season.
[00:10:43] Aaron: So, you said that you
Came out the gate just wanting to play
music and wanted to keep doing that. When did it switch
to, when, and I guess how did it switch to, understanding that you were
running a business. you kind of have the realization like, oh wow, I'm Making a living at this. I should figure out how to do this better? Or was it like, man, this is really hard.
I wonder if there are things that I can do on the business end that make this a little bit more sustainable.
[00:11:06] Hiss: When did that happen? Probably like a year ago. Yeah. Yeah. No, um, it's a good question cuz you know, there are a lot of ways to like, take the temperature of where your career is at. But I will say probably unfortunately, but fortunately actually, that temperature is rarely taken on a creative level, You know, I played music for a really long time, but was a pretty shitty songwriter.
I was a pretty shitty singer, bad at playing guitar. But over time, as you like, flex those muscles, you figure out like what your workout routine is. Like. I got to a point, maybe what year were we in 2023? Like, I got to a point maybe 12, 13, 14 years ago where I had the confidence and I still like carry this confidence, this creative confidence to know that like I'm a good songwriter.
I mean, What I do is specific. and I'm not doing anything that a million other people haven't done, but I know that I can do this thing that, taps into a certain. Vulnerability that I think is absolutely a baseline requirement to any creative endeavor, Like, I know I have that thing.
If I really put my mind.
to it, I can write 12 of those things and I can make a record. and, anybody that is an artist and is making a living is like struggling with how to compartmentalize your creativity and then the like, business part of it, right? That's the part that's so hard.
I started to sharpen that side of my. Thing when I started having to deal with tax bills, that felt pretty massive. Mm-hmm. You know, what I mean? And I was like that wasn't the main thing, but that was one thing that was like this, Mike, you gotta get your shit together. Because not that I wasn't putting money aside for taxes, but it was more like not knowing what's the tax bill gonna be this year? did I like, was I operating at a loss?
So am I gonna not have a tax bill or am I gonna have a $50,000 tax bill? There were literally a couple years where that was a question in my head, and then I was thinking like, wait a second. There's a whole universe of people that can help you deal with this stuff. Yeah.
[00:13:29] Michaela: Where did you go when you were like, I need to get my shit together? where were your resources?
[00:13:33] Hiss: mean I at that point I was working with my manager, who I started working with in 2018. His name is Brian Schwartz, and he owns a management company called Sevens. Great dude, great friend. he has had a lot to do with you know, I said that my career has been tiny steps for a really long time, and Brian helped me make the, each of those steps a little bigger, By the time we'd been working together for a little bit, maybe a year or two, I was like, Brian, I need help with how to deal with stuff like, taxes so that I'm not going into panic mode every march as people start talking about taxes, which, Which we did.
we.
just got through this tax season and now I'm kind of like, who gives a shit? Because I just, have my method and I can't help but think about how Donald Trump paid $600 in taxes.
[00:14:26] Michaela: likewise. Yeah. There's so many things to be angry about, but
[00:14:30] Hiss: But it is funny, like during tax season, for some reason that figure is always running around in my head.
[00:14:35] Michaela: yep. the bookkeeping data, all of that stuff is something that comes up a lot in these conversations because, I was never someone who liked spreadsheets or numbers or
that part felt so daunting to me. And now
I've grown to really find comfort in my like, tour budgets.
Every time I'm planning a tour, I have my, Google sheet. I have an idea of what I potentially will make or lose and then,
you know, Our taxes. I actually like doing my taxes now, which is so weird. I used to dread it and now I'm like, Ooh, I can't wait to do all my spreadsheets. Like
[00:15:13] Hiss: Yeah, I mean my, my, my methods are pretty primitive and I also despise that part.
[00:15:21] Aaron and Michaela Video: yeah.
[00:15:21] Michaela: Mm-hmm. Yeah. I think just the knowledge can help
me feel more comfortable with just existing,
[00:15:30] Hiss: No doubt the knowledge, just the knowledge is like, it can be a real bomb when there's so much about being a creative person for a living that makes no sense or is so unpredictable that, you could hire the best publicist in the business and they could have a, not a single thing written about your record.
You know what I.
mean? So it's just like everything is like walking into a casino. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. that's really actually why I feel like the one guarantee. The one guarantee in being a creative person is your relationship to your creativity. I find that I'm at my happiest, my calmest when I'm really like, sunk into my, creativity.
And and if I drift away from my creative process for too long, or if I drift away too far, I start to feel it. And it actually manifests in all kinds of ways. It can even be physical, I think it's just my brain needing the, what are the endorphins, the happy making chemicals that come from being in a place that is productive and.
Satisfying to the person for me making music.
[00:16:44] Aaron: Yeah. Absolutely. my progression has been, 15 years on the road with a ton, of different bands just being a
sideman and, somebody called be like, Hey, I have this tour, this is the budget. And I'm like, great, cool.
jumping from van to
van, and now I,
spend most of my time producing records and all that.
So it's kind of more have more have my
own business in a way, and getting the business end together for me.
I've set up my systems now and they're running and I'm like, cool. That's handled for keeping track of everything, But the head space that that has cleared up is incredible. I'm like, oh wow. There was actually like a lot of
tension and a lot of just fog and
dissonance
before. The tension and release on all of it was really nice. Which it's another conversation we have on here frequently that I'm a big
fan of is like getting things set, systems or whatever, routines or
practices so that you can show
up and be creative more easily more frequently.
And it sounds like that's what you were just, talking about as well.
[00:17:38] Hiss: I definitely have my systems, I have my that I need to be in place. I think I'm realizing as I get older that I have some o c D tendencies and I need to thread those, because sometimes that can then be me saying I need to get everything all done. I allow myself to be creative and that is this way for my brain to distract itself and not let me get into the very pleasurable, but very hard work of being creative, right? Because it's like you're, twerking your brain to make something that feels fresh and to go to these places that can push on certain things that can feel uncomfortable.
And sometimes my like O c D Nest is like, you can see my little studio space right now. you're not possibly gonna write anything good or interesting until this whole space is cleaned up. Yeah.
[00:18:37] Michaela: I, I do that with my office,
but it's been like my office hasn't been clean since we moved into this house eight years
ago.
That's my constant, like
once I organize, then I can write a
great song.
[00:18:50] Aaron: Yeah.
[00:18:51] Hiss: sometimes that's true. Sometimes that's
[00:18:53] Aaron: Mm-hmm.
Yeah. Yeah. I hear you. I
fall into the same thing where, I feel
like,
I'm, making progress towards being creative. Cause I'm like, oh, I need to get this set and I need to get this set and I
need to, and I'm just doing tasks and it's Just all these tasks, and then all of a sudden I don't have time to actually be creative.
And then
it just starts all over again. So one thing I've been trying to
focus on is what is good
enough? Which just saying that kind of gives me a little bit of anxiety.
I'm like well, that, that's just settling.
but kind of defining for myself, like, I don't need to really get everything totally set.
Like what are the specific things?
are there things that you've identified that are like, kind of priorities that need to be checked? Whether it's Exercising or meditating or,
how you have to care yourself. Yeah. Or like making sure all your cables are curled up.
we're sitting in my studio. I do that
[00:19:35] Hiss: Yeah. I mean, I need to, like the house has to be vacuumed. Mm-hmm. Yeah, totally.
No um, my, my creative process is a little, ti in that there will be times when there's a lot of energy pushing forward and then there are times when like the tide is ebbing a little bit and that's where I'm kind of To the outsider, it looks like I'm just of puttering which I am. Like, I might pick up a guitar and like fuck around for a couple minutes. But last year hiss was, was super busy. We were on the road a ton, maybe more than we should have been. And then right at the tail end of all those shows, like I feel like we did almost a hundred shows, which is with travel and stuff.
That's a lot. And then right at the tail end of that, we went down to Texas and made a record. And the record is done, it's coming out this August. So like we're right in this spot where, or I'm right in this spot where I'm really just kind of shepherding all the pieces forward with the help of my management, my booking agent, my record label.
Like we're just, you know how it goes when you put a record out, you just are kind of like moving the pieces forward. Do you have the photos, the art, you have support for the tours? all that stuff. Yep. I feel like I've learned to go a little easier on myself creatively.
Like I'll mess around with stuff. Like I was just down in Florida for a couple days with if O Donovan, who's a good buddy, and writing songs together for something. Not entirely sure what it'll be, but our rapport is. good. And like, I think our musical skillsets compliment each other. But I don't think of myself as necessarily writing for a hiss record. in a couple days I'm going out to LA for a week just to write with people, but not for hiss, just to someone is needing some kind of song or maybe we write a, I write a song with someone that could get placed somewhere else.
That's creative work that I really like that I might not have been up for 15 years ago. But just my songwriting practice is such, at this point in my life that I'm not super precious about songwriting. It doesn't need to be all about me. I like the challenge of stepping into a scenario and someone being like, I wanna write like, I don't know what, something that is not necessarily my wheelhouse, and me just being like, oh, let's give it a shot and see.
I don't know. Let's see if we can come up with something. I mean, like, Great music is all about great melody, right? So whatever genre someone wants to work in ultimately I hear that as help me write melody. Melody is I'm chasing that all the time.
That's been, that's like my primary focus now, now that I like, understand how important melody is to the cosmos. That's all I'm chasing and like when we're making a new hiss record, My like, primary directive to everybody is just find fucking melodies everywhere. Yeah. Mm-hmm. You know?
Just like, as much melody, harmony, we can always take it away if it sounds like someone just threw up all over the song, but like, Yeah. know what I mean? it's just like melody is makes the world move.
I forget where we started with that question,
[00:22:55] Aaron: No,
a great place to be. I was kind of raised on the Grateful Dead And didn't, I know.
[00:23:01] Hiss: I know. What, but
[00:23:03] Aaron: we're not gonna go there. Just,
[00:23:04] Hiss: Oh no. Let's go there. Mikayla, do you like the Grateful Dead?
[00:23:08] Michaela:
My relationship
with the Grateful Dead is that I didn't
know who they were probably, until I met Aaron.
about right. In jazz school when we were in college, and then I fell into hanging out with all of these musician
guys who loved the Grateful Dead. And I was into musical theater and pop country and old jazz. and like nineties r and
b and so Grateful Dead Jam bands.
I
didn't know anything about them. And we played
music You know, My early twenties in New York City with all these guys that loved the Grateful Dead. and I have a very vivid memory of our friend Thomas Brian Eaton. We were playing a wedding
gig and had a two hour drive and his mission was to make me
love the Grateful Dead.
And he played me like some live
concert from 1970 something. He was telling me all this information and the harmonies were so terrible that I just kept being like,
dude, this is the worst thing to try and play me because I can't even hear the songs
[00:24:04] Hiss: All right.
[00:24:04] Michaela: said
their recorded records.
There are some songs and melodies that I love but I am not well versed enough and
it was not love at first.
Listen for me
[00:24:15] Aaron: Yeah, Yeah. Where
I was coming from was Realizing. Not too long after this period that Mikayla was just talking about, how all of the
Grateful Dead's music is entirely based
on melodies
[00:24:27] Hiss: Jerry Garcia was his melodic sense was, was very deep.
[00:24:32] Aaron: Yeah, absolutely. and then when you're talking about,
American folk music, you're talking about like fiddle tunes and like that whole lineage that's all like an oral music. So
it's all passed on from singing melodies and I
mean, you go to an old time
jam and it's 9,000 melodies happening on top of each other and
variations and all of that.
I agree. I hear it the same way I hear rhythmic melodies, I hear harmonic melodies, like all of that kind of making a fabric. So
[00:24:56] Michaela: wait, but I wanna know what your feelings are on the Grateful Dead.
[00:24:59] Hiss: I love 'em to death. There's, it would be, I would be hard pressed to. think of another band that occupies such a wide swath of my Emotional. core. They're also my favorite band to make fun of because I love them. I love them so much. but when I was growing up, and as I mentioned a little bit back, I was, a punk rock and hardcore person.
And that world of music didn't understand and therefore didn't care for the Grateful Dead. And, there's this Grateful Dead Box set that came out a couple years ago, and they asked me to write the forward to this thing. so I, I was writing about this then just the fact without even knowing what they sounded like, I was just like, I don't like the Grateful Dead.
don't like their crowd. I'm like into punk rock. and um, I remember there's a very well known in the punk rock world, a very well-known club in Berkeley called 9 24 Gilman Street. is still there. actually.
it's like an all ages, venue. And my punk rock band, the day that Jerry Garcia died, we were playing at this.
place. And my brother, who's two years younger than me and was into the Grateful Dead, he's also a musician. He just happened to tag along with my band when we were playing there, we were like so excited to play at this legendary place. This was a long time ago. This was, yeah, this was like 30 years ago.
Or no, it was whenever Jerry died, 95.
or something like that. So my brother being a dead fan, he was like, Jerry Garcia died. I'm gonna take the train into the city, into go to the Hay Ashbury and just see what the scene is. And we were just like, oh, why would you do that? And, you know, he came back, he was like pretty shaken, cuz people were so deeply moved and troubled that about his death.
But like over time, really not that much longer after that, night, I felt like I outgrew the dogma of punk rock. I appreciate music still, but, for a genre that proudly flouts rules, there were a lot of rules, right?
There were like rules about how you could dress and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, all that shit. So anyway, I just started like exploring. I was getting older and I remember the first time I ever heard the Grateful Dead's music I had to like, take the tape out and be like, this is what they sound like, what I knew was the Iconography.
and the skulls, and I thought the shit was gonna be evil.
[00:27:35] Michaela: Oh,
[00:27:36] Hiss: interesting. I thought it was gonna be like Hard Rock. I thought it was gonna be like Black Sabbath.
[00:27:41] Aaron: Okay. Oh,
[00:27:41] Hiss: Um, But uh, they were just, so deep. And I played in Phil Les's band for a couple shows a year or two ago, and just like being on that stage so close to him and hearing that sound, the sound that makes, it's such a specific bass sound.
It's such a specific tone and really felt like touching the hem and the garment a little bit. Yeah.
it's too deep to even really talk about in small segments.
Yeah.
[00:28:10] Michaela: it's like a. joke in our friend's circle of, because of me having no knowledge of
them and the intensity of the love that the people I was hanging with had for them.
like this was really intense. like our friend Jeff he's like a gravel dead encyclopedia.
He could name every concert it was so intense that I think it was overwhelming to me. And, but as I've gotten older, I'm like the fact that a band can connect to so many people
with that intensity
of, love and
adoration for what they create to the point that they
are totally fine and forgiving of the worst shows that they've ever played
is a really incredible
thing and.
that's how I feel about Lucinda Williams for instance, because I love her songs and, feel like I know her through her songs that she can do no wrong, her worst concert. I would
still just love
to sit through.
So that's just an interesting observation of our relationship to music.
When
I was, not a fan and was introduced in this. way via obsession it was overwhelming I, think for me. But then I had the same reaction you did of what they sound like. I didn't think it was gonna sound like Black Sabbath,
but some of the songs that I
did hear, like your cassette tape that you had, I was
like, wow, this is way more beautiful than I thought this, was going to be.
[00:29:36] Hiss: Yeah. I mean, I, I feel like it really is a testament to just there's something in the music that supersedes the technical performance of it. Right. And the fact that it, people can feel that, people that are non-musicians can feel that is, profound actually. It's like such a beautiful reminder of what I think music is supposed to do, which, you know, I don't really think that music is about chops.
I think music is about like having a language for these really vulnerable emotional. Places and they were really good at that. I think the Grateful Dead's writing Robert Hunter, his writing is that shit is deep.
[00:30:20] Aaron: Yeah, and then also the way that, Jerry was able to express that,
[00:30:25] Hiss: To do it.
[00:30:26] Aaron: the emotion that he's able to convey with his voice, from like pure joy to like anguish All of that is, it's
a really wide spectrum.
[00:30:35] Michaela: It's so interesting to think of in today's terms too, of like just the humanity that they
showed in their performances when today we're talking about AI creating songs and what's the future of artists now that we
have AI that's gonna write a song in
any genre, you know?
Mm-hmm. And
create this pristine recording versus hearing somebody perform a
song that's full of emotion, but maybe they're a little pitchy at some points,
[00:31:00] Hiss: yeah.
[00:31:01] Michaela: Now you guys are making me feel like I need to go do a deep dive
on some Grateful
[00:31:04] Aaron: Dead. I got you. Let's do it. I've
[00:31:07] Hiss: Sounds like you have a, sounds like you have a shirt, a Sherpa there that can help you
[00:31:11] Aaron: I wanna circle back to how, had mentioned like the dogma of hardcore music and punk rock and not really, even putting
in a, dead cassette because it wasn't that We went
to jazz school, totally saw
that. It's like, this is not jazz, that's not good music. And to a big extent you see that here
in Nashville in like the traditional country scene. You know,
it's like, that's not country music, all of that. And I find that like really
limiting. Like you said, like songs are songs. Music
is music. The DNA is the same throughout here. have you noticed that with other bands or other types of music that like you kind of Were resistant to
or was
opening up to the dead, did that open up the gates to being open to other stuff?
[00:31:50] Hiss: I mean, I think for whatever reason I was pretty, open to whatever and I have been for a long time. I mean, there, yeah, of course there have been moments in my life where I've been like, Ew, that stuff?
sucks.
But I always feel a little lame when I do something like that because that's not really like the kind of relationship I want to have with music.
And I'm always, trying to even to this day, cuz I'm still a really omnivorous musical listener, And, you know, I listen to stuff far outside the realm of, I never listened to songwriters. For instance, like because I feel like I know that stuff.
So, and, I want to be around stuff that challenges me to understand how it was made or why someone would play that way or, so I tend to listen to stuff that is really, not the easiest to listen to sometimes, partially to like Keep myself in this place where my like ears are wide open. I might be playing something and my wife will come home and be like, oh, what the f what is this? Can you please put something else on? And I understand, I understand. But I'm in a musical Space.
24 hours a day.
I don't ever stop dealing with music in my head. I have music on generally speaking, all the time. And I landed in this kind of world of songwriting, I guess because it felt like where I could take whatever skills I had and it felt. Genuine, like when I perform a song and that style, it feels real, Whatever real might mean, that feels important to me is like, if I'm gonna do this, I want people to feel like I'm not putting a costume on, even if I am putting a costume
I want it to feel believable and, but yeah, like my musical world as a listener is really broad.
[00:33:40] Aaron: yeah.
one thing I've struggled with,
Coming from music school and all of that is like listening just
for pleasure. I do, of course. But there's so much of the time I'm
listening, critically, and it's like, oh,
how is this made? Or, oh, what's that? Or, oh man, that's a, really cool texture, or something like that
am I picking up you listen the same way,
[00:33:57] Hiss: I mean, Yeah. Yeah. There's some stuff that, there's some stuff I'll put on and it's just I don't go too deeply on it, and other times I'm like, I gotta like move the needle back and what is happening there? the more you get into the process of making records, I feel like the more that becomes part of how you listen.
And it's not even like that is pleasurable for me.
Like I li I like that part. I don't listen like I did when I was 15 years old, but That's okay. I was at the gym. The other morning we didn't talk about exercise. I wouldn't say I'm a gym rat, but when I'm home, I'm at the gym six days a week.
so that's where I listened to a lot of music and I was listening to this Enemy record, if they're one of my faves when I was a young teen, a young little blonde-haired, blue-eyed white boy in, Southern California. Listening to Public Enemy, like it takes a nation of millions to hold us back and fear of a black planet. Those two records were really They're just loom very large in musical world. And I remember, vividly being. So confused about how they made those records when I was first hearing them.
I mean Literally that's what I think kept me coming back because there's other hip hop from that time period that as much easier on the years. those productions by that production team that made those records, they're called the Bomb, it's called The Bomb Squad, are Noisy it's like clacks on sirens and like insane layers.
And I just remember being like, how the fuck are they making these records? I do not understand this. And. 30 plus years later at the gym, like I can listen to these records and they still are meaningful to me, but I'm like, okay.
Yeah, I see what they were doing here. Yeah. from a technical perspective, this makes a lot more sense to me now. obviously I understand what sampling is now and like what kinds of drum machines they were using, how you would blow sounds out the way they were.
I mean, It must have been really fun for them to be making those records. had to know that there was gonna be some kid out there hearing them. Like how are they making these records? Oh
[00:36:15] Michaela: That's
incredible though, at 15, you
were questioning that. Just the idea of
how we all hear things so differently is fascinating to me because we, We started dating when we were 20, 21 years old. So we've like really grown up together in a lot of ways and it took us a while to realize we hear music so different
from each
[00:36:33] Hiss: Yeah. Yeah,
[00:36:34] Michaela: We had listened to a song and he'd be like, oh man, did you hear that bass part? and I'm like what? No, there's a
bass because, because early on, I don't think I started really
listening to all the parts of a recording until the last
several years
because I was so focused on, I just love singing.
I love the voice.
So I hear the voice.
And meanwhile, Aaron could tell you, all the instrument parts and what happened, but he could never identify who a singer was because he didn't tune into the voice, the
weight. I was like, how
[00:37:03] Aaron: do you not know? I
heard the Voice as a melody.
Yeah. I heard it like as
[00:37:06] Michaela: a, as one part
where I heard the. whole track as one thing and then the voice
above everything else.
[00:37:13] Hiss: I was young, I don't know that I listened to all music that way, but remember like. rap music, hip hop, that was new technology, just the idea that these guys were taking samples, they were basically recycling grooves or records was really fascinating to me.
Cuz I've always been like a groove person. So if someone found like an incredible, four bars of a song that had an amazing pocket to it, I was just like, Oh, that's so good. where did they get that? you know what I mean? And how did they do that? And this was like in that sort of golden era before, sampling, licensing was a thing.
Those de La Soul Records just got reissued and those guys were in all kinds of litigation for. Fucking 30 something years. I think the samples were cleared long ago. I think it was probably between the them and their record label. But I remember that if you were like into hip hop back then, that was like you were trying to figure out where those samples were coming from records are full of amazing samples from the weirdest places.
Like those people were seriously, they were spending time in, in record stacks for sure. Mm-hmm. I know that listening to Paul Simon's Graceland as like a 13 year old, 14 year old, I was probably just like, this is awesome, Yep.
[00:38:35] Aaron: Yeah, I remember hearing Graceland as a kid too, and just, being like what is going on? What
is this mix of stuff?
I'm a child of the eighties, so like the
talking heads were on in my house a lot,
and there was this, there's a similarity there, between those two, just really rhythmic.
Um, drums are my first instrument. So, Obviously these records were massive and, hip hop, hearing like Biggie and, tribe called Quest and like stuff like that kind of more not so
hard hip hop, but like the more pop leaning or
I don't wanna say soft cuz it's not necessarily soft either, but smoother in a way.
less like super
blown out
[00:39:07] Hiss: Red,
[00:39:07] Aaron: It's just oh wow, this is what
is going on? This is amazing.
[00:39:11] Hiss: Yeah. I mean, there's a, it's, it's the biggest music in the world, right?
[00:39:14] Aaron: Yeah. Yeah,
[00:39:15] Michaela: Going back to, you mentioned running and working out at the gym a lot is that just something that you do to take care of yourself or does that also feel like a vital part of you to stay mentally, centered? I'm, curious about like, the relationship of what you do to sustain your creativity and how like mental and emotional wellbeing feeds that, as well as the creativity feeding your mental and emotional wellbeing.
you
need to be caretaking all of it. And what's that like for you in that relationship?
[00:39:44] Hiss: I have been, um, physical person for a long time. I, I never like played sports or anything as a kid, but I did a lot of independent activities.
Like I was a big skateboarder, a big surfer. I spent a lot of time outside and um, I don't know, I would say over like the past 15 years maybe, like I've been trying to be more active, partially because I'm getting older and I'm interested in keeping on for as long as I can.
Being a musician is really physically taxing. the bigger part is actually the mental part. I think mentally I know that if I've exerted myself physically, I feel better about myself. I feel like I'm taking care of myself. I feel like I've Sweat the bad stuff out.
it's more of a mental practice than anything else. And it's harder when I'm on the road just cuz any routine is harder on the road. I still am pretty good about it on the road. But then when I'm at home, it's just part of my morning routine.
So I'll drop the kids off at school and go to the gym and I'll do an hour at the gym and then come home and I'll do yoga and sometimes kettle bells if I can convince myself to do those.
[00:40:57] Aaron: Yeah.
[00:40:59] Hiss: I talk about how much I hate it with my friends, but I don't really hate it. I love it.
it makes me feel good and I'm a creature of routine. I have to have routine. If I just have days stretching out ahead of me with nothing in place, it's not good for me. So, exercise is has become even more so in the past couple years.
Cuz I've been on this routine kind of since the gyms opened back up during Covid. after vaccines had come out. So we were like, I was going to the gym and wearing a mask at the gym and some people are still doing that, but, that's a big one for me. That's a big part of my life right now.
[00:41:36] Aaron: Yeah. On the road is it, going to the gym at the hotel,
or is it more like running?
[00:41:41] Hiss: Yeah. I'm more of a gym person now because I've found that um, I would prefer actually to be running outside. But I have found that when I'm like street running or trail running, I inevitably hurt myself in some way that like knocks me out of my routine. so being in a gym on an elliptical machine or on a treadmill is way less cool.
It's way more boring, but for me, it's more, it's more sustainable. I can actually like, I haven't had to stop for, six or nine months going to the gym six days a week. And, when I was running, I could probably go for a couple weeks and then something would happen and I'd have to recuperate.
It would take four or five days, and then I'm like off my
[00:42:23] Michaela: Yeah. Yeah. Unless unless you fall in
a treadmill like I have done.
[00:42:27] Hiss: Oh right, right. Well, luckily, knock on wood, now that you brought that up, that may Yeah. Yeah. that was a possibility.
[00:42:35] Michaela: Yeah. It's pretty embarrassing,
just to say the least,
but,
[00:42:38] Hiss: long as you didn't hurt, as long as you didn't break something.
[00:42:41] Michaela: I didn't break anything, but I did your ego. I broke my ego and I, and I roughed up my knee. There's a lot of blood.
So it's,
it happens. but we are getting to the end anyways. But I did wanna ask one last question
because I think a lot of times there's this idea of,
oh, if you can write songs or
if you're creative, that's your therapy.
And I'm curious with other people, because I don't feel that way. I feel like writing songs, is therapeutic for.
me. But if I'm really in the midst of shit, I can't write at
all and I have to really take care of myself and work through it in therapy and exercise and other ways that I can feel healthier.
And then I have the ability and capacity and strength to work through some stuff, through songs. And I'm wondering how that is. For you, if you're feeling low and not as healthy in your mental and emotional wellbeing, is being creative harder or is that a way to work through it?
[00:43:39] Hiss: I like this question. maybe a little mix of both, possibly. and also I've had a lot of issues with depression and stuff like that, And I'm actually like, feeling better in the past few months than I have for like, years. I'm like, oh, whoa, is what it feels like to wake up and just have your day.
Oh, that's amazing. but yeah, sometimes songwriting can help me process. Like I feel like record, quietly blowing it that I put out in 2021, that was like my last proper record was a processing even though I, I didn't want it to be. I was like, so talking to everybody about how it wasn't a a pandemic record, meaning However, the world was roiling at that moment in time. Whatever chaos we were experiencing in collectively. I didn't want that to show up in that record, but like listen to it now and it's like, can tell you when that record was made. so part of that was a processing.
I think there was just a lot of like, trying to get through each day in my head with that record. And I feel like songwriting in that case, that being creative, having a place to go in my house where nobody else was actually was big part of that record. And it helped me, I think it helped me make it through that time.
would agree with you though, that there are other times when I'm just like so much chaos in my head that I'm just like, I mean, the thought of even trying to be creative is
no way that I'm gonna like, write anything of value. not of value, maybe that's not the right word, but you know what I'm saying?
It's just like, there's no way I could be creative right now. I'm just not feeling it. not like, I don't wanna sit down with an instrument don't wanna write anything. then, like part of it right now, just this sort of emotional maintenance for me is going to the gym, coming home, skunking around on a guitar a little bit.
know what I mean? Just, it's no pressure. Like not, not putting any pressure on myself. just kind of being gentle with myself basically has been, good thing to do for the few months. I'm like enjoying that space. you know, a songwriter that makes records and employs people and enjoys being on the road, there are moments where I'm like, gotta write cuz I gotta make a record.
And I would agree that protection of creativity and the creative process pretty much paramount. let's let this thing be as untouched as we can. at the same time there's also like, We gotta make records gotta go do this thing cuz it's what we do and you know, yeah.
can kind of complain about it, but don't complain too much because it's what you asked for.
[00:46:31] Michaela: Yeah.
[00:46:32] Hiss: Um,
[00:46:32] Michaela: a privilege. Yeah. It's kind of like balancing of, okay, I have this intention of I wanna make a record, I gotta keep the business
[00:46:40] Hiss: yeah.
[00:46:40] Michaela: And maybe that's not gonna be my gentle song excavation. Or maybe it will have some of those, but maybe it will have some other stuff that I push through.
And that doesn't mean it's not as good or as deep. but kind of always balancing that. And like you said, being gentle with
yourself of your, whatever process you're currently in, I think is really essential challenging
when this is your profession.
[00:47:07] Aaron: Yeah. Allow the process to be what it is at the moment and allow it To develop as it is, and maybe the end result will be something that's surprising and something new.
[00:47:16] Hiss: That's
[00:47:16] Aaron: maybe it'd be like the Grateful Dead. You know, you might be resistant to the, the process at the moment, but you put it on and you go, oh man, this is an Iron Maiden. This is kind of cool.
[00:47:25] Hiss: totally. The, the Grateful Dead is my life, basically.
[00:47:29] Aaron: Yeah.
[00:47:30] Hiss: Um, I feel like in a, this crazy way with my life and my relationship to making music, our processes are just like these concentric circles, these spirals, we just kind of spiral forever.
But kind of like almost strangely, like back to this real innocent place with.
[00:47:50] Aaron: oh no, I knew that was gonna happen.
was having so much anxiety. I'm like, his phone is gonna die.
[00:48:00] Michaela: Well, he's
[00:48:00] Aaron: in an innocent place. He is. And in the first ever for this podcast, we're gonna have to wrap this up ourselves. Thanks to Mc for being here with us and, as we say with most guests, well, you're gonna have to do this again in the future.
Definitely. With that, thanks for listening. These are the other 22 hours. See ya.