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Jan. 3, 2023 - This Past Weekend - Theo Von

02:46:19

E424 James Blake

James Blake is a Grammy award-winning musician and producer. In addition to his solo career, he has also collaborated with Kendrick Lamar, Beyonce, Frank Ocean and more. Check out his new album, “Friends That Break Your Heart”. James Blake joins Theo on This Past Weekend to talk about the origins of their friendship, the similarities between music and comedy, how to find your own creativity and more. https://www.youtube.com/@jamesblake ------------------------------------------------ Tour Dates! https://theovon.com/tour New Merch: https://www.theovonstore.com Podcastville mugs and prints available now at https://theovon.pixels.com ------------------------------------------------- Support our Sponsors: DraftKings: Download the DraftKings Sportsbook app NOW, use code THEO BlueChew: Visit https://bluechew.com/ to try Bluechew free with code THEO at checkout. BetterHelp: Visit https://betterhelp.com/theo to save 10% off your first month. Rocket Money: Manage your expenses the easy way at https://rocketmoney.com/THEO ------------------------------------------------- Music: "Shine" by Bishop Gunn: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F3A_coTcUek ------------------------------------------------ Submit your funny videos, TikToks, questions and topics you'd like to hear on the podcast to: tpwproducer@gmail.com Hit the Hotline: 985-664-9503 Video Hotline for Theo Upload here: http://www.theovon.com/fan-upload Send mail to: This Past Weekend 1906 Glen Echo Rd PO Box #159359 Nashville, TN 37215 ------------------------------------------------ Find Theo: Website: https://theovon.com Instagram: https://instagram.com/theovon Facebook: https://facebook.com/theovon Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/thispastweekend Twitter: https://twitter.com/theovon YouTube: https://youtube.com/theovon Clips Channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/TheoVonClips ------------------------------------------------ Producer: Zach https://www.instagram.com/zachdpowers/ Producer: Colin https://instagram.com/colin_reiner See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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	We've got tour dates to announce.
	Louisville, Indianapolis.
	We added a show in Indianapolis.
	Shreveport, Louisiana.
	Baton Rouge, Louisiana.
	Corpus Christi, Houston.
	We added a show in Houston, added a show in Phoenix, added a show in New York City, and added a show in Austin, Texas.
	Those are all at theovon.com slash T-O-U-R.
	Make sure to do ticketing through those links to get accurately priced ticketing.
	And thank you guys.
	That's all Return of the Rat tour.
	So if you've already seen it, it'll be similar to that still, just so you know.
	We've got lots of new merch up at theovonstore.com.
	Check out the new Hitter Hunting Collection.
	Also, the new Gang Gang crew necks in orange and purple and gold fits.
	We got the new Rat King t-shirt in purple and black.
	That thing, that's the thing, baby.
	If you haven't seen that one, check it out, Theovonstore.com.
	Today's guest is a Grammy Award-winning musician and producer.
	He creates, he's one of the most creative people I've ever met.
	He's a friend of mine.
	And he's someone I really enjoy talking to, and I haven't gotten to speak with him in a while.
	So I'm grateful for our opportunity today.
	He has produced music and written music for and with some of the top artists in the world.
	I'm excited today to catch up with him, to learn a little bit more about his creative process, and to just spend some time furthering our friendship.
	Today's guest is the one and only James Blake.
	Shine that light on me I'll sit and tell you about stories Shine on me And I will find a song I'll be singing I'm gonna stay I'm gonna stay what are they called?
	Lazy boys?
	The things that...
	You did?
	Lazy Boys are not a really big thing.
	They're not a thing in England.
	Bring your mic in.
	Let's see.
	Okay, there we go.
	With a seat, you mean?
	Yeah, like what they call a lazy boy doesn't exist in England, I don't think.
	Well, I think because we got it.
	once they got to America, people probably got more lazy, I would guess, right?
	Do you think that's what it was?
	I feel like a little bit.
	It's a circular situation.
	Like, I think the first chairs didn't even have a seat on it.
	It was just like a straight up piece of water.
	And then someone lazy sat on it.
	Yeah.
	And then they had to create.
	Yeah, they're like, oh, this could be better.
	Right.
	Yeah.
	Right.
	That's interesting.
	It's funny that we got to America and created a lot of like lazy stuff, you know, maybe.
	I don't know where the lazy stereotype came from.
	I mean, I mean, it seems like a pretty industrious place.
	Yeah, especially around the time when they got it.
	Well, I think, yeah, because then they hit the Industrial Revolution, you know, I think a couple, I don't know when people even got here.
	I mean, there's a lot of speculation, but you're from, originally from Britain.
	I'm from England, yeah.
	You're from England.
	And so if somebody says England, is that is that more top shelf than saying Britain?
	No, no, you know, I'll be careful how I say this.
	No, no, no.
	No, it's not.
	I mean, everywhere in Britain is, you know, it's just a sort of a collection of places when you say Britain.
	And I'm part of Britain as well.
	I'm part of the UK.
	I'm also probably a mix of a lot of different things, you know, historically.
	So I think I'm a bit Irish, a bit Welsh.
	Ooh, the Welsh I hear about sometimes.
	Yeah, they travel.
	Is he Welsh?
	Darren Till, do you think?
	Is he Welsh, that UFC guy?
	I looked that up.
	Zach, can you look up if Darren Tyl is Welsh?
	I don't know.
	You know what?
	I've really lost track of UFC recently.
	I haven't watched it for a couple.
	He's in English.
	Can he be both?
	He could be both.
	He could be both somewhere.
	I mean, the Welsh is, I think it's a dominant gene.
	Oh, he's a Liverpoolman.
	Yeah, I wish I had a better chance.
	I wish I had a better chart about the British.
	I don't have a good.
	You know, I believe in it.
	I've seen a lot of the, you know, I believe, I just, I mean, I got to see, I wish I knew more.
	About the British.
	Yeah, just kind of what it feels like.
	I feel like you have better posture inside of your soul.
	That's what I think it feels like when you talk when the British.
	They have like.
	I think this myth that we're sophisticated is very, it's pervasive.
	Right.
	But I honestly don't know where it comes from.
	And I think it's just the way we sound.
	It's not really.
	You know what I mean?
	I think sometimes phonetics and like someone's accent can make them seem something.
	And then it's just all complete bollocks.
	Yeah, because the British, they sound when they're talking like there's perfectly set silverware on the side of their mouth.
	That's what it feels like to me.
	Yes.
	When I hear someone British talking, like they even take that little spoon and you're like, what is that for?
	You know?
	Yeah.
	And they say it's for shrimp.
	you're like, How will you even use this on a shrimp?
	You know, without being a pervert.
	The little spoon.
	Yeah.
	You know.
	The little spoon is for, I mean, for sugar in tea.
	I guess I really don't know.
	I mean, the spoon differences in size of teaspoons here, it, you know, it catches me out a lot just when I'm making.
	If you want to make anything.
	But yeah, I think when I see British people, I guess there is like that.
	Yeah, I feel like I do feel a sophistication.
	I feel like I feel like I'm like they came out of the library and they're giving me information.
	I feel like there's something about it to an American person, you know?
	I just, again, I don't know where it comes from because I think when I came over here, I noticed that a lot of the smartest people I'd met were from over.
	I mean, I don't know.
	You know, it's just you got smart people everywhere, dumb people everywhere.
	And you also were getting into an age where you were probably going to start meeting more people.
	You were in your field.
	Yes.
	Yes.
	And also, you know, when it comes to musicians, we're not.
	We don't tend to be the most kind of articulate people for some reason.
	I think we're not the best people to have conversations with.
	I find that with musicians.
	So I had to branch out, not because I'm such a great conversationalist, but because I just I noticed that a lot of my conversations with musicians tended to be more one-dimensional.
	And then outside of that, there wasn't like a broad and I myself didn't have like a broad knowledge of stuff.
	And because I think music sort of funnels you into like a you know, it's a bit like it's kind of like Pavlovian conditioning, right?
	If you if you get if you're rewarded for for kind of your your primary way of speaking, which is through music, probably.
	If you're like a writer or a musician, then the likelihood is that you're better at articulating your emotions through music.
	And then outside of that, you can be kind of stumped.
	Which is, I think you find like a lot of like very sort of socially anxious musicians and stuff.
	Which I've definitely been myself.
	And then yeah, and then you then you're rewarded for that one expression, you know, constantly.
	Right, of course.
	Maybe you become successful, hopefully.
	And then people pay you for that expression.
	And no one's paying you to talk.
	Yeah.
	No one's paying you to express yourself in any other way or be funny or whatever it is.
	Right.
	So yeah, so you're going to have so much, like, yeah, you start to feel like that's where some of your reward is at.
	And so that's where most of your value is at.
	And so then, yeah, it makes sense to me.
	Yeah.
	And then I think after that, you just start to, all the other muscles atrophy.
	Right.
	So, so then chatting is not.
	I mean, when I met my girlfriend, I wasn't really finishing sentences.
	Because I don't think anyone sort of required me to.
	They'd just be like, oh, we know what he means.
	It's probably, that was probably very funny, wherever that was going.
	It's funny.
	Well, this is great because this is how you and I met.
	I met your girlfriend.
	Yeah.
	And she was a comedy fan.
	She loves comedy.
	Yeah.
	She loves to laugh.
	She introduced me to your special.
	Oh, she did?
	Yeah.
	And we came to see you.
	Oh, that's right.
	The first one.
	That's right.
	You guys came to see me.
	Where do we see you?
	Comedy store?
	Store?
	What's the, what's it called?
	Yeah, comedy store.
	Comedy store here.
	Yeah.
	Well, yeah, because I remember one time I saw her at the comedy store and she was like, yeah, I'm going to catch an Uber or something.
	I was like, oh, I'll give you a ride home.
	You know, she's like, I don't live far.
	And I'm just thinking, like, I'm like, beautiful girl.
	I got my hopes up.
	I got my hopes up, bro.
	My hopes have been, you know, I couldn't even, my hopes have been lost.
	I've been like, I'm like, literally, while she's talking, I'm like, hopes, hopes, hopes.
	I'm going to kick you up.
	So I got my hopes up.
	And I drive her.
	You know, I drive her.
	It's in Hollywood and it's kind of in the hills.
	It's in a nice place.
	There's a couple of roads.
	Yeah.
	We've actually moved since then.
	Not far.
	Yeah, yeah.
	Yeah.
	Not way out there, you know.
	Yeah.
	But and then she's like, you have to meet my boy.
	Well, that's not a good impression, but she's like.
	You've got to meet my boyfriend.
	Yes.
	And I was like, oh, God.
	He sounds like a great boy.
	And she goes, no, he would absolutely love you.
	Or she might have already said that he's a fan of yours.
	And then you guys came to the comedy store.
	Yeah, yeah, yeah.
	I was very nervous to meet you at the time.
	Yeah?
	Yeah, I was.
	Well, yeah, because I think, you know, there's this mutual appreciation, I think, between comedians and musicians.
	I think a lot of musicians want to be comedians and a lot of comedians want to be musicians.
	And, you know, that's like a general rule.
	Although I haven't ever heard you express interest in being a musician.
	And nor do I want to be a comedian.
	But I think there's, I didn't really have any comedian friends at that point.
	Yeah.
	And we'd been watching a lot of stand-up comedy and we'd been going to the comedy store and we've been going to like different shows.
	And I just kind of felt intimidated by the idea that I needed to be funny.
	Oh.
	You know, I thought like, not only did I, did I really respect what you did, but I don't get, I don't really get starstruck particularly.
	Yeah.
	Because just through exposure to, you know, the industry and stuff.
	But I also, but in this one way, I sort of felt insecure.
	I was like, wait, I think I told you this before.
	I was like, you know, do I have to like, do I have to be on?
	Do I have to like be funny and be smart and whatever?
	Because your comedy was smart and it was funny.
	And it was, I was like, what's he?
	And I didn't really understand the difference between the stage and the offstage kind of person, really.
	Well, it's interesting because, yeah, it's funny when I've talked to You sometimes I'm like, dang, do I need to know a lot about music, or can I just share about music how I think and feel about it?
	And that I don't know that much?
	Do I have to pretend like I know all of the names of every one of your songs?
	Like, I think that happens a lot of times when you meet somebody of a certain thing, right?
	Certain genre, like, what are you going to do?
	You do, you do.
	That's so interesting.
	Yeah, yeah, yeah.
	So, you know, I'll be quizzing you on that later when you're ready.
	Okay.
	Yeah.
	I mean, I do have some favorites, man.
	It's funny to say that you're not that like word.
	What do you say that words weren't very, like, articulate?
	Yeah.
	Well, I don't, I'm not saying I'm not in any way articulate.
	I'm just saying that as a general rule, musicians, like I had to find my words, really.
	You know, it was a process.
	Like, I think you, if you'd met me maybe sort of seven, eight years ago, I probably would have, well, I probably wouldn't have sustained a friendship for a start because I think I would have been intimidated or not been socially kind of comfortable enough to, especially not to do this.
	I mean, there's no way I'd have come in here.
	This would have been way too much.
	Wow.
	Yeah.
	That's incredible, man.
	That's right.
	We've talked about a lot of this kind of stuff.
	This is where a lot of our friendship kind of started was talking about that sort of thing.
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	I always admired how open you are about, you know, mental health and like all this other stuff and your own kind of shortcomings or your own kind of things you don't know.
	Yeah.
	You know, that's always been amazing to me.
	And I think that's probably, to me, is like a huge strength of yours is being the voice of people who are afraid to ask questions because they're worried that they're going to be, you know, made fun of or in some way kind of mocked because, you know, because there are a lot of things, I mean, it's hard to do sometimes.
	It's hard to ask a question.
	Especially when you feel like the world is so fast and it knows more than you.
	Yeah.
	You know, especially these days, if you feel like you're someone who's from a certain area or from a certain financial class, I would be scared.
	I remember when I was young to ask questions in like a nice person's house.
	Right.
	Like if it was a dump, I was like, I was just, you know, you know where you are with that.
	I'm just out, you know, I'm Alex Trebeck in there if it's a dump, but if it was a nice place, I'm like, whoa, I shouldn't be asking nothing right now.
	What does a little spin do?
	Stuff like that.
	But yeah, it was just, it's interesting how like different little comfort worlds that people find and where you're okay to communicate.
	And yeah, it's scary.
	Communication is kind of interesting.
	I mean, it's, I mean, obviously it's interesting.
	That's kind of a silly thing to say.
	No, but you do it really well.
	And I think you, you manage to, I mean, I don't know how you sit and talk, like on your solo shows.
	Oh, it's miserable sometimes.
	It must, I mean, it must get hard sometimes because I don't know how you sustain that level of talking for that long.
	It's like an improvisation.
	I sometimes, I mean, I was thinking about it yesterday, thinking about things that we have in common because I just there's some like I know we have some kind of like friend chemistry that I sort of like but as what but as on top of that I think we have a kind of there's some similarity between the way you think and the way I think when it comes to music and I think sometimes when I look when I wear when I see
	the way you're reaching for words it's like I find when I'm reaching for chords sometimes I have to find a kind of abstract chord or like some kind or maybe an unus you know like a an unusual chord or whatever to to to nail the emotion I'm looking for right and it's because the standard ones
	won't won't do the standard ones don't current you know don't quite scratch the itch of what I'm trying to think yeah they're roigy biv it doesn't have enough colour it's not uh yes you want to you're very specific yeah and it's like looking for that very specific hue and you seem to do the same thing with words it's like when you're looking for like a word to describe it I don't know what it was like a dog it's like a floorbearer I can't remember you just have this like you know you want to get specific because you want them to
	know exactly what you feel yeah and it's like or what you mean yeah and so you know the the basic language doesn't always cut it that's interesting man you know you have that what is it lyric you have that lyric i could drink a case of you and not fall off oh well that's a joni mitchell lyric which is it oh it is an even better lyric than i could ever write yeah it's a cover oh no no it's a cover but it's you it is the one of the best songs ever written so i didn't know that yeah that's so
	good man thanks man yeah yeah yeah thank you thank you uh on behalf of joni mitchell yeah yeah um what is something i love uh oh the i gave you punchlines oh yes man that's a good one that one really really resonated with me i gave them punchlines they gave me warning signs yeah that reminds me so much of your music to me matters i mean we'll get into your music so much of like that is my song yes it
	is that is that is my song we were the way we uh all uh say what you will say what you will yeah yeah god dude yeah thanks man appreciate it yeah i gave you punchlines you gave me warning signs that was like my whole i felt like that was my whole childhood man it was like you know i would all i had was like the way to make people feel something was through laughter or something and it was so like um but everything felt like a warning it was like the whole world felt
	like everything felt like warning signs like any reaction people would give to me i had to monitor every moment of it because i was always scared when it would go from everything was okay to everything was not okay yeah and man it was it's uh yeah you have such a way it's like watching somebody well first of all you're like a sound monkey like you like you're like oh you're listening to your music and you're like oh that's a sound okay i didn't know that was a sound like
	you're like i can almost see this like chimpanzee like swinging out into the unknown and then being like this is a sound you know yeah yeah It's um, well, you're doing that with what you do that with words, it's funny, and and maybe that's some of what it is, you know, watching some of it in like what you described earlier, like just an um the the the kind of exploration.
	It's like when you in order to emotionally regulate yourself, you've kind of got to find uh words or comedic moments or chords in my case to to just make it feel better.
	And that happens once and it feels a little bit better and you're like, okay.
	You subconsciously twig that that's now going to be your, you know, and but yeah, it's like this is a place to go.
	This is a chord I can use.
	This is a nice landing spot or a foothold.
	It's almost like you're doing some mountain climbing.
	Like, this is a grip.
	Exactly.
	And it's nice.
	Like, like I, I remember like when I was a, when I was a kid, there was this one standout.
	I mean, it was a small moment, but I remember it very vividly, which is where my friend was really was one of my best friends, but you know, I didn't have many friends.
	I have like one friend at a time.
	It was like, you know, like a shop.
	It was like one in, one out kind of thing.
	And I just had this day where he just relentlessly took the piss out of me.
	Right.
	And he was just being so cruel to me.
	Cause, and I think that when I was, when somebody was my only friend, I think they, they felt they knew they could do that.
	Right.
	So just, you know, when I was much younger, like eight or nine or something.
	Anyway, so this kid is, is, uh, I'm just like, oh, I was just feeling terrible.
	And I go into the other room and I start playing piano.
	Just, I just get up and I just go and start playing piano.
	He comes in and just mocks me even harder for coming over to play the piano to like to like, oh, is this your sad song that you're writing?
	And I remember thinking at the time, yeah, it is the sad song I'm writing because you're taking the piss out of me.
	It is the sad song.
	And that just is and always was my way of, you know, it's like if I became like a pressure cooker emotionally, then the only thing I had, the only outlet was music.
	It was the only way I could get it out.
	Or if you were like even like a rice cooker, like that was your rice.
	That was my rice.
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	That's cool, man.
	I learned to make, you know, like a, like a sous chef, like a Japanese sous chef.
	I learned to make the rice so many times, you know, day in, day out, that eventually I became a restaurateur.
	Yeah.
	Like a, I was going to say missionary star, but that would be that would, that would be highly self-aggrandizing.
	I think that's easy to say, man.
	I think a master of musical.
	I got good at rice.
	Yeah, basically.
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	Well, I think like, you know, I'm kind of a, I don't want to say your music is for like emotional people, right?
	Because I don't want to judge your music.
	You know, I'm kind of an emo kind of guy, like in a lot of ways.
	I sometimes, yeah, your, your songs, it's almost like I feel like the length of your song is like the length that takes a tear to go from like an eye to a cheek.
	Sometimes, in a strange, like some songs, some of them are more ballads, you know.
	Um, some I feel like it's like somebody like hitchhiking just through like a bunch of emotions, kind of.
	Yeah, they're all they're very, they're like highly emotional things.
	Also, yeah, that's why it seems so specific to me, what you do.
	It's like, God, this seems like it's not like somebody laid some cement.
	It's like each thing here is like a, somebody put a step here, and this one is a certain depth from the soil and it's a certain softness to it of the stone or whatever it is.
	It seems very intentional.
	Yes.
	Yeah, actually, I think there's good and bad that can come from being so intentional and being perceived to be so intentional, right?
	So sometimes it's not intentional and it just seems like it is because I'm improvising and I was just feeling a certain way and it just came out like that.
	And then I just edited it and just like put it in the song.
	Right.
	And so in moments like that, I think when the perception becomes, okay, you're super intentional and you're always in control, ultimately it leads to a place where you have to keep up.
	A, keep up that image, but B, people don't question you.
	You know, people will just like assume that you know what you're doing.
	And when you're working with people, they're just like, oh, I'm sure he knows what he's doing.
	I'm sure that's fine.
	I'm sure that's good.
	And they just gaslight themselves because it might just be shit.
	It might just be not a good melody or not a good lyric or whatever.
	Oh, so it can almost corner you in a way.
	Yeah, definitely.
	Oh, that's interesting.
	Yeah, people don't tend to.
	And it's brave of you to notice that and just say that.
	Like, yeah, sometimes my own ability or how people perceive some of my ability can then corner me into a place where I'm not getting probably earnest feedback on if something is quality enough for the situation or not.
	Yeah.
	And also people, because they're not as advanced at exactly the thing you do, they might be as advanced at something else.
	Right.
	But because they're not as advanced at exactly the thing you do, and the exact way that you came up build, you know, doing that up the mountain, you, you're not speaking the same language.
	You know, they don't feel that they have the knowledge to confront you on the idea that's not good sometimes.
	Oh, I could see that too, especially.
	Well, that's one thing I was going to say about when I met you.
	Since you're taller and British or sound British anyway, I'm thinking, oh man, you seem older than you are.
	And not saying you're not a great age, but when I first met you.
	I'm 34. Are you really?
	Just turned 34, yeah.
	Well, congratulations.
	Thank you very much.
	But I thought that you were a lot, I think.
	So that probably adds into the same thing where it's like, oh man, this guy's a dang wizard.
	You know?
	Do you think there's...
	I don't know.
	I think people have a...
	I don't know how much, I mean, it's obviously not something I could prove, but I think these kind of phrases mean something.
	Right.
	I don't know if they always mean exactly what, you know, the literal sense of like, you know, someone having been here many times or whatever.
	But whatever people are trying to say when they say that, I do identify with that.
	I've always felt like...
	It doesn't, yeah.
	It doesn't mean that I'm, it doesn't mean that I'm like in any way a wizard or in any way like, because I think actually, if anything, I'm inferior.
	I feel kind of insufficient in a lot of ways.
	You're a desk clerk at that point.
	You're running a hotel for souls.
	Right.
	You know, like you're at a certain point.
	Yeah.
	Sorry to step on you there.
	No, no, no.
	But I think that's kind of what it is.
	If it feels like some people, it feels like it's their first time through the galaxy.
	You know, you meet them.
	It's like, oh, this is a baby soul, it feels like.
	And it's not even judging that having, if you feel like you resonate with being an old soul, that it makes you better or anything.
	No, it doesn't.
	It just makes you, you're a damn, you know.
	You can be more cynical.
	You can be more sort of jaded.
	You can be, you can feel kind of too much.
	You can feel too much.
	You can, yeah, easily overwhelm.
	You can feel maybe, I mean, and these, these, obviously these character traits aren't just applied to the old soul, but they can be applied to any couple of different character or personality types.
	And like, there's also all sorts of psychological analyses and assessments that you could put on this.
	But I think I feel sometimes, I mean, my job extends beyond producing.
	I mean, I'm a producer, but I feel a lot of the time like a therapist.
	And like a therapist, a lot of therapists are very fucked up.
	They're not people who you should necessarily take, you know, all of your life lessons from.
	Or indeed, they might not be practicing exactly what they preach.
	But, you know, they're also people who've got an overwhelming sense of empathy and probably quite easy overwhelm themselves.
	And they've learnt to vocalize what it is that they're feeling so that other people can vocalize what they're feeling.
	Yeah, you know, I think I realized.
	And obviously I haven't gone to school to be a therapist.
	I'm nothing like a therapist in any way.
	I don't know, man.
	I think that, but your music might be, right?
	Right.
	And that's okay.
	And that's what's interesting sometimes about having any sort of gift in the world.
	I believe everybody has some gift, it could be some people's smile might be their song.
	It's like, man, they just smile at you, and it is like it can lift you up just as much as hearing, like you know, um, some Michael McDonald or something, you know, or some trying to think of something good.
	Love Michael McDonald's.
	Yeah, Nelly or something.
	How do you draw the line between Michael McDonald and Nellie?
	How did that?
	I was just trying to get some diversity in it.
	Teotherapy.
	Yeah, I was trying to get that.
	I think I was trying to get diversity.
	Right.
	And Nellie.
	Therapeutic guys.
	Well, Nelly was the last time I think that a lot of white people felt like they could really dance, honestly.
	That's interesting.
	When he came out with Country Grammar, and this is almost a little bit before your time, but when he came with Country Grammar.
	I remember it.
	God.
	I remember feeling like, I remember thinking, this is an amazing song, and I still can't dance.
	I mean, it was just our last hurrah, I feel like with the legs.
	It was the last Caucasian hurrah.
	So when things were still moving below the hips.
	Right.
	So how did you, so in terms of like your, because I want to know more about the connection between your emotional, your upbringing and comedy and why, why you sort of went into it.
	Like what, what, were there moments where you got a laugh from saying something in a certain way and it helped a situation?
	It helped like your relationship with someone or it stopped a situation from going badly or whatever.
	It became like almost like a, you know, diplomatic kind of tool or whatever.
	I think, you know, I think I didn't have a lot of feelings as a kid.
	I didn't have a lot of like comfortable feelings, probably.
	You know, there wasn't a lot of comfort in our home and there was a lot of question marks and not a lot of information.
	Right.
	So there wasn't a lot of information.
	There was a lot of attention to learning.
	You know, my mom made sure that we were learning.
	Like reading and yeah, reading, doing our homework, you know, but always reading.
	And my mother was an English major.
	That's interesting.
	So she, you know, knew words and she would use big words and she would use words that they would try to kick out of our town.
	You know, I remember they would come with torches when she used certain words.
	They'd never seen it, you know.
	They'd be like, she's a witch.
	She's a whore.
	And my dad would be like, I wish she was, you know?
	And so it was like, you know, my mom really probably had one of the best vocabularies in our town.
	But I didn't have much affection for my mother, and that's okay.
	She didn't have a lot to give.
	And so I think I probably somewhere in my head thought that, well, if I have word, if I'm using words, maybe she'll see me, you know, or if I'm, if, and, once I started to make people laugh, I'm like, oh man, they, you can make somebody.
	I just never knew if I was, if I was okay to my mother.
	I never knew if I was approved of by her.
	So once she.
	She withheld the approval.
	Yeah, and I don't even know if she knew she was, she didn't know she was doing it.
	No, people sometimes don't.
	Yeah.
	She just had like this kind of emotional kind of autism where she didn't understand that that was necessary.
	And so I think once I saw somebody laugh, it was like, oh, it was like, I'm okay for a minute.
	Got it.
	You know, and so then I think that just became an addiction that was beyond.
	I didn't have a choice at that point, but yeah, you're just compelled to do it.
	It was, yeah, because you have to, I think, feel okay at certain points as a human.
	Absolutely.
	Yeah.
	And also all of it is a survival thing.
	I mean, it's like anything that you had to do, even the things that you're ashamed of, ultimately have to be chalked up to something that got you by, something that kind of helped you survive.
	Yeah, I'm grateful that our arts at least aren't like looked down upon very much by society because a lot of people, they end up into the dark arts or things that are, you know, more taboo and it's just their survival methods, you know?
	I mean, I look at like strippers and, you know, some sex workers and stuff like that sometimes.
	Like, oh, they're just trying to, you know, express themselves or something.
	Well, yeah, I mean, also, it's just a job, isn't it?
	And I guess, I guess the I'm not overly educated on the complexities of sex work, but I'd say I would do a little.
	I probably would.
	Yeah.
	Yeah, ultimately.
	If it came down to it, to feed your family.
	Got to do what you got to do.
	I mean, I felt like I was compelled to do music.
	Did you?
	Well, it sounds like it even from that story of like, you know, you're like, I'm going to go in the other room here.
	My buddy's being a real prick and I'm going to express myself.
	So yeah, I think it's just interesting how our expression comes out.
	Yeah, I mean, maybe it was the...
	I wonder if it's written, it's kind of written, the writing's on the wall from the moment you kind of...
	Oh, is it destiny or is it like...
	I don't really believe in kind of genetic predisposition.
	I mean, maybe predisposition or like some inherited kind of consciousness, but I don't really believe in people being like born with a gift and shit like that.
	So do you believe that music, like, so you are very inclined, especially, I don't know all the instruments you play, James.
	I've just got to pat this down because it so easily looks like I've got an erection in this thing.
	It kind of like tents up like that very, very easily.
	Dude, do it.
	I mean, I'm having a good time, but I just try to, you know.
	Sell some tickets, bro.
	Raise that tent, man.
	I could do a revival in there, man.
	That's Good.
	Is piano like your main instrument?
	Is that okay to say or no?
	You play other instruments.
	No, no, no.
	It is my main instrument, yeah.
	Right.
	Because when I see you on stage, you're at the keyboard of the piano, right?
	Yeah, yeah.
	Okay.
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	Do you feel like that art, say art is just like an energy and it's going to come out of people.
	It's going to find its way out into the world because it's just the way the whole world is kind of put together, that the energy has to come out.
	And so it finds its way through you.
	So you can harness it or adjust to it, but that it's, or you can choose to use it or not.
	Maybe if you never even get to the keys and it just kind of hits a cul-de-sac inside of you.
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	Is that kind of more what you feel?
	Like it's just.
	That's a nice way of putting it.
	I think I sometimes feel sorry for musicians and artists and stuff rather than kind of mythologize them or kind of put them on a pedestal.
	Because in order for you to have arrived at that point where you need music as your expression, something had to happen, you know, and something had to make you boil over so much that there was only one way that was going to be, you know, and it just happened to be this.
	But it's not necessarily the most comfortable life.
	Not to say it's the worst life.
	I mean, I'm still super privileged to do what I do.
	And I'm very lucky.
	But I'm also one of the lucky ones.
	You know, there's millions of musicians who are not rewarded in the same way for basically expressing a lot of pain.
	And it's not an efficient method of doing it either.
	Like, I don't really feel that much better after I make a song.
	If I'm depressed, I'm just depressed.
	If I'm anxious, I'm just anxious.
	If I'm sad, I'm just sad.
	You know, making a song isn't going to fix that.
	And I had to find other ways eventually.
	But it felt like if we were to use the extended pressure cooker analogy, it's like through art, I was basically just like laying a little steam out every now and again, but I was never just like turning it off.
	You know, it's like I wanted to turn it off.
	I wanted to stop the endless swell of pain and anxiety and depression and stem the flow.
	And I had to find other ways to do that.
	And once I did that, I was able to look at music a bit more objectively.
	And it didn't have to prove everything.
	It didn't have to be everything all at once.
	There was less pressure on the songs.
	I didn't have to be the biggest artist.
	I didn't have to prove myself to the people, the kids at school.
	I didn't have to prove myself to even myself, you know, or less anyway.
	I mean, there's always going to be a bit of all of those things.
	Yeah.
	But there's less pressure on the art.
	Wow, that's fascinating.
	Yeah, because when you identify with it so much, which is what happens sometimes as you get successful, it's like, this is it.
	This is all you, not this is all you are, but there's you've become so like in tandem with it that everything you do, every, if you put out one wrong thing, you become so close to your thing.
	Like it's not just fluid anymore.
	Yeah.
	It feels like they're attached on you like sloths kind of and you can't get them off or you're afraid to let them just kind of just leave them on the path of the forest, you know.
	Yeah, it's interesting because some of your music, I feel like I'm like Eeyore, like Eeyore that showed up at a rave kind of, you know.
	Which is kind of perfect for me.
	I can totally see why like.
	That is who I am.
	Okay, good.
	Thank you for noticing me.
	Thank you for letting me judge you, man.
	Because I'm not Winning the Pooh.
	Yeah.
	And I'm not Christopher Robin.
	No, even though, but that's the reason.
	I think you might be Christopher Robin.
	I don't know, maybe.
	I got to look at some of his.
	You might be Winning the Pooh, actually.
	I think I'm crossed up.
	I think they had a child.
	Yeah.
	It could have been.
	I mean, who knows?
	They walked off into the sunset, and after that, we don't really know.
	We're missing a few chaps.
	Yeah.
	AA Milne let us down.
	What was it?
	So was there a kind of a moment?
	Because you and I have talked about this.
	I forget some of the things you and I have talked about because you and I, our friendship has just kind of had a hiatus through the pandemic.
	Right, yeah, yeah.
	Because I stayed in California, really, where I wasn't allowed out of my house.
	Yeah, you moved to, was it Nashville?
	Tennis Tennessee.
	Where people are just, yeah, we're out here.
	Just sneezing down each other's orifices.
	Just testing the theory.
	Everybody has Hep C now, but nobody has COVID.
	Yeah, they got everything else.
	But yeah, was it, because I remember there was, I think I remember there was a time where you kind of were, like, you and I talked about different modalities for relieving like, whether it be depression or whatever's going on in our lives.
	Yeah, yeah.
	Did you have a time where you kind of came to a head with some of that sort of stuff?
	I did during the pandemic.
	Oh, you tried to get me on the EMDR.
	Yes, I did.
	I was evangelizing EMDR.
	And I even went.
	I even went a few times.
	And I see a woman now with it with EMDR.
	That's amazing.
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	And I mean, I remember you saying it helped.
	But initially, the thing with EMDR is that you don't really, you don't go and then afterwards you like necessarily feel what's happened.
	It has this very strange, slightly sci-fi effect on you where you don't even remember feeling the way you felt when you went in.
	Tiny bit men in black.
	So a lot of people kind of come out of it and going, you know, oh yeah, I don't really think anything happened.
	But then they stop the pattern they've been in.
	Yeah.
	And they don't even realize.
	And they're just like, oh, I didn't, you know, I didn't endlessly turn on and off the hob and like check to see if it was still on or whatever the OCD thing is, or like they didn't, they don't, that pattern just isn't manifesting anymore because the trauma that leads to it has been disconnected from feeling it.
	Yeah, it is kind of black mirror, huh?
	It's like you kind of go behind the scenes and adjust a cable or something, and then the next time like your Christmas tree lights blink, they don't blink in that weird way that was uncomfortable or something.
	Yeah, exactly.
	Yeah, that's behind the bookcase and interstellar.
	Yeah, it's kind of behind the bookcase.
	Yeah.
	Are there other modalities and stuff that you've tried?
	I did mushrooms, which was quite very helpful for me, actually.
	I mean, I go into a really bad depression when I take mushrooms because I think I'm allergic to them or something.
	I go get really depressed for a couple of days.
	Afterwards or not during?
	Afterwards, yeah.
	No, during is amazing.
	I love them, but I've only done them a few times.
	But every time I've done them, something's changed in my life, like majorly changed.
	I've either given up an addiction or I've, you know, for example, I came off Twitter or stopped kind of really using it because I was kind of checking it all the time and like being quite engaged in it and invested in kind of what how I was doing, you know, how other people's opinions and even other people's opinions of what I was saying.
	And, you know, very overwhelming place for an artist, someone who's easily overwhelmed, but also I think it's an overwhelming place for a lot of people.
	And maybe they're not admitting it.
	But, and stressful.
	Yeah.
	It feels stressful even hearing you say it.
	Yeah.
	And it was kind of at a point where a lot of conversations were reaching a kind of fever pitch politically.
	And I just felt trepidatious about even being involved because I felt like all of my real life conversations were really compassionate and empathetic and loving, even if we didn't agree on something.
	You know, like ours, like we don't always agree on everything, but we just, you know, we approach each conversation with love and respect.
	So, you know, but on Twitter, it was like the opposite of that.
	It felt like if you didn't have the right opinion for the, for the group, you know, you were sort of out of the group, whichever group that is.
	Right.
	And I just felt really, over time, really, really stressed about that dynamic.
	And I took mushrooms one day.
	We were sort of on a road trip.
	And we were sitting by a pool.
	And I think this was the first time I actually ever did them, was during the pandemic.
	And I remember saying to my friend, I'm not really sure these are doing anything.
	Yeah, it's all these sneakier.
	Right.
	And then he goes, well, you've been taking photographs of that same flower for the last two hours.
	And I noticed it.
	And I looked down at my phone and there was like 400, I was like scrolling through and there's 400 photographs of this flower.
	It's a really beautiful flower.
	But in hindsight, probably the mushrooms had something to do with that.
	So I just looked down at my phone, opened Twitter, and it just looked like a vortex.
	There was a very, very strange, like, it was like fragmenting at the edges, you know, like a vorte, like an actual vortex.
	And it looked like extremely dark energy.
	It's hard to describe it in sober wording, but it was, you know, at the time, I would have just kind of felt this horrible kind of anxiety looking at it.
	And I just there and then deleted the app and just put the phone down and just got on with my day.
	And I didn't reinstall it.
	And there were a couple of other things I did as well.
	I did it with Instagram.
	I did it with like Fio, because I just noticed that the phone and actually the phone itself was like, just looked like it was like charged with horrible, like nebulous, like dark energy, like felt like a black hole, basically.
	Yeah.
	And it felt like it was like drawing me towards it, but not in a good way, like in a way that made me feel like I was dying.
	So I just thought, no, that's telling me something.
	You know, I've also noticed the way my dog reacts to my phone.
	He very often pours it away, but also just won't engage with it.
	He'll only engage with me.
	And if I'm engaging with it, then he'll just kind of walk off.
	Wow.
	So it's almost like here's a piece of life telling you, hey, man, that's not life.
	Yes.
	Yeah, that's what's interesting.
	Very well put.
	That's what's interesting about mushrooms, man.
	It gives you a little clue.
	Like, I did this ayahuasca treatment and I came home, right?
	And I cut on like dateline or some like murder show or something.
	Oh, wow.
	And yeah, it's probably.
	Is that advised?
	Did your shaman?
	I would say unadvised.
	So I'd say I was working, you know, I was going off script.
	Give another water too, Zach.
	Do you mind, please, brother?
	Oh, thank you.
	So I was going off script, but I turned it on and everything in me was like, don't you see how bad this is?
	Someone died and you're sitting here watching it.
	Wow.
	And it wasn't a dateline episode.
	It was like some murder, like in vet.
	Yeah, but something that was like really dark.
	So it kind of exposes the thank you, mate.
	Yeah, it exposes sometimes like just a level of truth that I think the addictiveness of modern day society that we're not able to feel anymore.
	And it almost feels like Something that you would have felt like a long time ago in like your ancestral, like right.
	If you, if you lived in a, in a more sort of primitive, like back in the day, like more, you know, no technology, no, and and it's it's as if somebody handed to you then.
	Yeah.
	You'd be like, this is and goes and goes, um, you know, when you wake up, you're going to check this and you're going to scroll through all the things that are happening way outside of your group.
	You're going to check for the opinions of others and they're going to tell you how you're going to feel today.
	And you're going to watch a bunch of videos and you're going to watch a bunch of people have sex and you're going to watch and you're going to like play games on here.
	They're not here.
	They're not in front of you with all these other people.
	They're not interactions with real people.
	You're going to play games on this thing.
	And most of your interaction, you know, you're going to look at this for at least 12 hours a day.
	And when you set this down, you're going to feel like there's nothing of you.
	When you set it down, you're going to be unsatisfied with what the world is like.
	Because this thing is going to stimulate you so much.
	If somebody told you that when you had no technology and you'd never seen anything like that before, you would tell them to fuck off immediately.
	Get away from me with that fucking dark magic.
	I don't want to ever see you again.
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	That's betterhelp.com slash tho, betterhelp.com slash theo.
	I love how even your meanness is pretty kind.
	I don't want to ever see you.
	You kill them.
	You might kill them.
	Yeah, you might kill them.
	You might kill them and throw this thing away so that no other human ever had to experience this.
	Yeah.
	And just, I mean, it goes on, you know, all your friends, all your friendships are going to be kind of regulated through this thing.
	Well, we don't have a voice anymore.
	It's like the talent.
	If you get up and just stand up on a soapbox now and speak.
	You look like insane.
	Right.
	If you, if you were to.
	That's the crazy part, too.
	So it's like we're all, there's no.
	If I got up and just said like one of the more mundane tweets that I've ever sent, you know, hoping that a lot of people would be like, yeah, me too.
	Yeah.
	Like, yeah.
	And then it would just like spin into virality.
	And you just said it in the street on a, on a soapbox, or you just got up and said it.
	People would be like, are you all right?
	Yeah.
	Go home.
	This guy's not doing good.
	Yeah.
	He's saying strange, relatable, mundane things.
	Yeah.
	But I'm on my way to work and I need to go and get coffee.
	You know, it's not.
	Somebody'd be like, you queer.
	We can take that out.
	But somebody would yell something like that.
	I'd be like, maybe.
	But, you know, but also.
	Porridge can be made with milk and also water.
	Yeah, don't you know?
	Spread the news.
	Yeah, it's amazing with oatmeal.
	You know, some of your journey with music as an outsider, you know, I didn't know even much about your genre of music until I met you.
	And I remember my girlfriend at the time, Megan, I think it was, we came to see you perform at a church over in the Presbyterian church or was it in downtown?
	That wasn't the Wiltern.
	It might be the Presbyterian Church.
	It was like a cool nighttime church.
	Was it actually a church?
	I think it was.
	Yeah, then it was Presbyterian, I think.
	It was like some special show you were doing or something.
	It was really amazing.
	Thanks, man.
	When I got into more of your music, I listened, like in the beginning, you had a lot of, or I don't know the total beginning, but early on, some of the stuff you released were like these EPs that had like, it was just a lot of beats and sounds and, you know, kind of wanderings.
	Less like lead vocals, more kind of abstract, like collages of shit.
	Yeah.
	Was it scary to then put your voice out there?
	Did you always know you were going to?
	Because your voice is like a big thing, especially for someone who comes from a place of like, you know, uncertainty or shyness or, you know, some of the realms that we've talked about, like emotionally, like, was that scary to put your voice out?
	Or did it seem like just the next instrument you were doing?
	It was.
	I mean, there was a lot of, there was a lot of toxic masculinity floating around, especially at that time.
	But like, I remember when the first, like, one of my earliest memories was I was upstairs in my parents' house and I was like 12 or 13 or something.
	And I was playing, what I used to do, one of the ways I learned to train my ear, which I didn't realize I was doing, but I just enjoyed doing it, was I'd play to records.
	So I'd put a CD on and I'd sit at my like keyboard, like, you know, cheap, just piano keyboard thing, like electronic kind of thing.
	Think Ross from Friends, you know, doing the thing, pressing the little drum thing and playing.
	Yeah.
	And then playing to the C D and learning all the like vocal runs and like learning how to play the chords, and like Stevie Wonder and like Mariah Carey and all these people.
	And I was playing at the time I was playing with the Whitney Houston song, uh, I can't remember the name of the song, very famous song.
	I will always love you that no, no, it was, it was I believe the children of the future, teach them well and let them lead the way.
	Yeah, you still remember lyrics, amazing.
	Yeah, so that one I loved that song and I was playing it and the chords are amazing.
	They're like very the you know, they're a tiny bit cheesy.
	It's a bit of a cheesy song, but it's like one of the best ever slightly cheesy songs, pop songs.
	And so anyway, and I'm singing it at the top of my lungs and the window's open.
	And my, I've got a couple of friends who live four doors down, right?
	And I'm playing very loud.
	I didn't realize the window was open.
	Open the windows, it's your first song on the radio, basically.
	Basically, yeah.
	And it's, it's me, it's me broadcasting this extremely kind of, I'd say at that point, you know, being a being a young man.
	Very Billy Elliott type moment.
	Very, very, very, yeah, like very like, I'd say in terms of our understanding of masculinity at the time, not the most masculine thing I could be doing.
	Right.
	Right.
	And I remember at the time, one of them shouting some homophobic slur from Three Doors Down.
	Oh, dang.
	And, and just being like, you sound like, you know, and it really like crushed me at the time because I didn't see music through a lens of like sexuality or, and I didn't see the problem in being gay or being bi or being anything.
	I just was like, but I did understand that there was a social kind of rejection of being gay and a social, you know, all that.
	And I just kind of froze and like, I started to associate music and singing with something shameful and feminine and like all these things that like were not not accepted.
	It went from like a hundred meter dash to like just like hurdles now.
	Like where you're like, now these, these different things have to make sure that they check enough of these things.
	Yeah, like don't be too, like, don't be too, don't express yourself too much because then you're this.
	And so, you know, I sort of kept, and it wasn't just that, but there was multiple reasons why they really showed anyone that I sang.
	I would go to the practice rooms at school every day.
	And I was, you know, very often like extremely sad and depressed and kind of going in there and just playing and fucking crying and like being, you know, very British.
	Is that British thing?
	Extremely.
	Well, no, the British thing to do is to, is to is to not find an outlet at all and then just abuse somebody.
	Whether it be physically or emotionally or indeed, you know, in any other way.
	Just find someone to kind of or not even just someone, but everyone.
	Yeah.
	Just like make other people experience the pain that you're supposed to process.
	Wow.
	So I actually found a way.
	I found an outlet.
	So I didn't have to like be a cunt to everyone else, basically.
	And I found myself just keeping it a secret.
	That you had this talent.
	Yeah.
	Like I could sing.
	You know, by that point, I was a good singer.
	I was by the time I've been singing since I was two.
	Yeah.
	I mean, you hit some notes where I'm checking my watch.
	I'm like, is this note going to end?
	This dude is.
	My gosh.
	It's like waiting for a long train to pass.
	I feel like one of those American usually trains.
	Jesus, come God.
	This guy's just- Yeah, so that's, you know, like, I ended up, to cut a long story short, eventually I started a little bit singing in like school assemblies and shit, but I generally just kept it quiet.
	And then when I was making music, I think I carried over that shame.
	And I just, you know, the dance music scene was super male dominated.
	And a lot of the discussion around it is like, it's very, it was very toxically masculine at the time.
	And so when I started to sing, there were a lot of comments a bit similar to what the guy had shouted at me three doors down, you know, like just very like, and, but they did, they couldn't say like, because, you know, things had moved on and they were adults and they were, they didn't want to like expose themselves as being homophobic or whatever, but they were saying stuff that kind of like almost dog whistling, like, you can't do this because that's this.
	Right, right, right.
	And kind of just discouraging me from expressing myself, basically.
	It's such a weird pattern of comfort that there's almost a comfort in people even doing that.
	Yeah.
	It's like this old thing.
	It's like, you know, I would always envision like there's some black kids on a white guy's lawn and the black guy comes out and yells the N-word.
	But then he goes inside and he's learning the moonwalk, you know?
	I'm trying to put it together.
	I'm trying to understand what you mean.
	I think it's that somebody will just say something that they like has been like part of a pattern.
	Okay.
	But then they don't even realize they're going inside and now they're trying to learn like a black guy's day.
	They've been practicing.
	So the white guy's saying the n-word or the black guy.
	The white guy or the white guy's the word.
	Oh, I see.
	So they're racially kind of living a double existence in the same.
	and you don't even realize it They're learning like a music or a dance or something of this culture at the same time.
	Yeah, they're confused, basically.
	Yeah, just like some things are just patterns.
	They're not the best patterns, and you know, obviously, but some of the even hateful things people say are just like, they don't know what else to say.
	They're ingrained.
	Also, they can be so deeply ingrained in people as a kind of like form of expression that they're not even aware of what the words are, what they mean.
	They lose.
	There's a thing called semantic association where in the moment you can say a word so many times that it loses its meaning completely.
	And, you know, like cactus, if you said that like 400 times or even probably 10 times in a row, it just starts to be a word that has no power whatsoever or any connotation.
	It just becomes like a shape of sound.
	We hear that even with music.
	You hear a song so many times, it's like, oh, I'm going to listen to this my whole road trip.
	And then at the 30th time, you're done, you know?
	Yes.
	So is there another evolution you start to feel like for your music?
	And not that you need one or anything, but.
	Yeah, I think we always need one.
	Yeah, yeah, yeah.
	We always want to.
	But even by putting your voice in, right?
	So at one point, it was like, okay, I'm going to put my voice in.
	Like, that's something new and different for me kind of, or, or put my voice out there to people attached to my music.
	Do you feel like there's just, I'm just trying to think, like, what would something else even look like, I guess, like a band?
	Oh, yeah.
	Well, you know, I kind of have a band we play with live, but there is always a slight insecurity in me that like I'm not shift, I'm not changing up enough every phase that we go into, like whether it's a new album or something like that.
	But I've tended to find that the three-piece band that I play with is just the best for me.
	And it's always kind of been that way.
	But singing is like, it's a form of expression unlike anything I've ever had.
	And I guess I just love doing it.
	And it really like, it feels great.
	And it's, it's, it just, it always, it's always challenging.
	And it's like, even just staying on the note, like, I have this voice where I can kind of easily fall off the note.
	And it almost sounds like I'm about to fall off the note, but I, but hopefully I don't.
	Sometimes I just do.
	But I don't have the most pure, clear voice.
	You know, someone like Whitney Houston, for example, is just like, you know, super defined notes.
	A lot of mine are quite precarious.
	Yeah, it's a perfect example kind of of you.
	I don't know, man.
	It's really interesting to know you and hear your music.
	Same with your comedy.
	It's interesting to see.
	It's kind of fascinating.
	One thing I always sort of found fascinating was just how you've internalized your childhood and like the way people, like all of your memories of all the stories you have of like where you grew up are so vivid.
	I can't remember most of the people in my town.
	I mean, I remember some of them, but I feel like we grew up in pretty different places.
	And a lot of the things that you remember and pick up on of the people that you grew up around, maybe it's the way you're telling them, but a lot of fucked up shit happened near you.
	Oh, yeah.
	A lot of perves, I think.
	We grew up around there, a lot of people perving out.
	Well, I think when people don't have much, they play with their body, you know?
	Or they're like, you know, you get reduced to kind of real limbic type of behaviors, you know, sexual or perved out or, you know, and especially you get out there in the rural areas where people aren't as educated.
	There's a lot more kind of, you know, I don't want to say incest, but people touching each other a little rurally.
	Yeah.
	You know, in that sort of behavior.
	And I grew up in, you know, the kind of the countryside, or not, it's not the countryside.
	Did y'all have the horse or anything?
	Didn't have a horse.
	Okay.
	That's where I draw the line.
	I did meet a couple.
	Yeah.
	But I didn't ever ride one.
	And I just, I just, I like, there were characters where I was from, definitely.
	But I think I don't, I guess I don't draw on them as inspiration.
	Yeah.
	Because they probably, I try, I probably avoided most people, I think.
	Whereas I think you must have just been more like viscerally attached.
	Yeah, we were more loose out just seeing stuff.
	You know, there was not much like supervision or like, and I didn't want to be at home.
	My father was so old.
	My mother was gone.
	There was like a clean, there was like a babysitter around.
	So it was just so like, I don't know, it's just being out and about, you know?
	And then your imagination becomes so big because something needs to have some value to you.
	So your imagination creates like a lot, like, I think it pays attention to a lot of stuff.
	Yeah.
	And it wants to.
	Sorry, come on.
	It wants you to have a bigger world.
	So your maybe your imagination gets attached to something else inside of you and they kind of grow synonymously, maybe?
	yeah because do you feel like when you go into rooms with people in like hollywood or or even just anywhere you are do you feel like your imagination is sort of overgrown in a way that theirs hasn't do you do you sometimes feel like uh like you've still got the curiosity of about people and about like things that a lot of people seem to have like
	You're keen to observe the thing that a lot of people wouldn't have noticed which you know is i mean that in itself is like a is like a a love of life it's not even though like i know that you've gone through a lot and you've and you've talked about you know bouts of depression and bouts of kind of not being interested and stuff but it's like even at your least interested even at your least engaged with humanity and everything you still seem so curious well thanks man i think um
	well some of it is i think you have to you start to develop a sense i need to know what is very important to this person that's in front of me right now because if i need them right or if i need to let them know i need communication from them or i need them to see me i need to be able to get to them immediately yeah so maybe there's a part in you that's like oh you can tell this about them or you can tell this or you could you know see by the way that they turn their neck or fix their hair or
	put something in their pocket that you can envision this bigger world behind them that you can either make a way for it to be funny to them or it can be really acute to them and it can be very factual maybe sometimes i think it's develop i think you just develop this sense in case i need someone yeah um i need everything i can get to show this person that i may that i can attach to them like a like a like a um like a detective yeah i think it is i think a part of you kind
	of becomes some type of a detective you know because it's like you're noticing stuff on people you know it's like when in detective shows where they're like yeah well you know his his right boot his right shoe had a lace untied yeah which means that recently he was like he's the kind of person you he's he's not no he's he's he doesn't have ocd he's not he's you know he's not paying attention he's he's loose he can he can't be trusted but you know it's like they'll draw all these conclusions from just that one aspect of someone's uh appearance or something or but
	you would also do it on the other side you would know what could hurt that person right you know right and you could know have you ever used that and then regretted it oh yeah i think growing up especially as a defense mechanism you would use it around our house like with communicating with my brothers and sisters it was the only way we communicated was uh very rudely uh making fun there was no like affection nobody like taught us you got to be brothers and sister there was no so you just find the thing that you thought was gonna like cut them
	down and just just just go for it right when they walked in the door amazing so it was every i mean it was just i was surprised that you didn't um sort of comment on this ridiculous uh onesie that i'm wearing well we've only had one other person that's worn something like that right robbie williams yeah but he dressed like a train conductor bring up robbie williams you look like damn slingblade you look unbelievable you look like i've got to see this oh yeah ring
	him up when he was on here if you can he was really on this podcast i'd love to see him oh my god we've basically dressed the same except i so he's wearing a we're both wearing dungarees but i look like i've grown through mine like just an extra two foot up because mine are lower yeah but he came in i mean he definitely looked like hey you're late for the train you know he definitely came in like he's got conductor on it written all over his yeah totally yeah he had kind of a sling blade
	gets a job at amtrak sort of vibe going on amtrak with a with an apple watch yeah yeah definitely not going to be late never gonna be late again um but it was fascinating i haven't seen robbie williams in a long time he's he looks great i think he's the only other british person oh and michael bisping oh wow so three brit three really interesting different british people that we've had on here yeah um yeah only three brits i think so i'm trying to think of maybe a different one is that uh
	max moore was from britain oh max moore he does the um cryonic freezing where they freeze people oh god or is he uh the freezer or the freezee he is the freezer okay yeah he's the freezer he's never been yeah i think he would he himself is planning on getting frozen i think but it was just interesting to learn he's never done it himself i would never go to someone who's never done it well there's only one way to do it you have to die right it's that thing that's the thing you have to die and then you go in wait so he freezes people who are dead yeah
	okay they catch them right when they're about to die that's why he's never done it right i got it so yeah there's only one entry point right um it seems yeah it seems niche yeah yeah yeah guesses that's a good way to say it yeah so what was his really i'd love to know what his chat was like is it i mean i could just go and watch the podcast his name is max moore so he also is named like a super villain type of name m-a-x-m-o-r-e so he he really lives this you know and he looks bring a picture of him
	up he looks like he's been damn frozen and thawed out 30 times he looks like they wanted him for dinner and then changed their mind but um he looks like bill burr like i mean he's just been in the frozen yeah there he is oh yeah he does wow he looks like he really uh sort of a whim hoff and bill burr had a heavy on the whim i think this dude is uh but very interesting he's the he's the he's the the post um he's the posthumous whim
	hoff in a way isn't he just with the freezing yeah he keeps them all they just you know they have all the bodies and that sort of deal real interesting he's for if things with whim half wim hoff go wrong he's your guy i think and they freeze him in like this different type of um what was that stuff called zach do you remember uh it's a certain type of gas i forget the name of it it's quite scary oh yeah but his plan his thought is this that if people like
	already they can take an embryo right they can say if your girlfriend wanted to donate eggs right and then they froze those eggs which they do for a lot of women now yeah they're basically freezing life before so he's saying that they could freeze you at The end, also, and then later when they have the technology, if your DNA is still alive, people are hoping that you know we can get revived like a mammoth, right?
	And he's saying, Why not?
	He goes, At one point, people thought climbing up a ladder was as high as you could get to something, and then now we, you know, we can travel through space.
	So, 100%.
	That's really ladders.
	I mean, I imagine the ladder was probably invented after some of the space travel we've not space travel, but maybe the hypothesis of it?
	Just maybe the hot air balloon.
	Yeah, I didn't think about that.
	I don't really know which came first.
	Dude, imagine when somebody showed up with that ladder, bro.
	Damn.
	I mean, one-eyed man in the kingdom of the blind.
	Oh.
	People, imagine all the chicks he got, too.
	All those rung honeys.
	Yeah.
	I mean, it would feel like a celebrity, I imagine, locally.
	Yeah, hey, he's coming over.
	He's bringing it.
	Yeah.
	People with all the things like on their shelves that they can't reach.
	People just hiding stuff up way high.
	Yeah, yeah, yeah.
	See it.
	Look at him go.
	just imagining how his life panned out if he, the inventor of the ladder, like, did he get royalties?
	Imagine the dark side of it then, watching people go get stuff and you're not.
	You're not making anything off it.
	Yeah, you're wandering around.
	Now you're cursing at people who are climbing up.
	Could have been a bitter older man, I imagine.
	Oh, I'd watch that movie.
	I'd watch that.
	There's a movie in it.
	I think that would be a very bad movie.
	It'd be a sad movie.
	I think you and I could make a really good sad movie, probably if we wanted to.
	I think so.
	I imagine, yeah.
	Combine both of our early lives.
	Yeah, we work together.
	So what about your early life?
	Was a lot of your pressure from just like acceptance or your peers?
	Because obviously if you were kind of shy and music was your scapegoat and you had these skills that were kind of frowned upon, which certainly are in certain areas, you know, it makes you wonder how much creativity has been really stifled by an environment, you know.
	I think, you know, sometimes I thought it was the singing, the fact that, you know, kids just didn't really...
	You know, when a kid says, I want to be a professional, you know, soccer player when I'm older.
	In England, that's like, you know, NFL here.
	You know, it's this almost unattainable dream that some people do genuinely break through and make it.
	But it's, you know, if a kid says that's what they want to do, you go, well, people go like, okay, but have a backup plan because it's probably not going to happen.
	Yeah.
	And music's a bit like that, where it's like, the odds are you're not going to be the, you're not going to be a superstar.
	Yeah.
	And you're probably not even going to make it as high as you want to, even if you do become extremely successful because it's never enough.
	So ultimately, convincing people to go into music for a living is actually slightly kind of a dubious thing to suggest because it's really hard and most people don't, you know, make it.
	But also, there's also loads of ways you can be involved in music that don't, you know, don't have so much pressure on them.
	And you can make a living.
	You can make a great living from music and not be famous and not be in the band and not be in the, you know, you can be working music in so many different ways.
	But they're not the ways that people focus on when they think of musician or whatever they think of like the famous ones.
	Right, right, right.
	They're not some of the most like ways that are kind of they're not the front man.
	Yeah.
	You think of the front front people, you know?
	Yeah.
	I don't.
	It's just advertising.
	Yeah, exactly.
	Yeah.
	What other things do you think about with music?
	Are there other worlds that you'd like to conquer?
	Like you've had such a, you know, you've gotten to work with like Travis Scott and Beyonce.
	You've won a Grammy, right?
	For best rap performance.
	Yeah.
	Was that right?
	Yeah.
	I mean, it was weird.
	I was actually on the way to the Grammys and they told me in the car that I'd won one for best rap performance.
	And I, so, so essentially it's on this.
	So on so Kedrick Lamar, we were supposed to work on.
	He asked me to work on the Black Panther stuff, the soundtrack.
	And then also there was this other song he was doing, which I think ended up on the Black Panther soundtrack as well.
	It was King's Dead.
	And I sent him this thing.
	It was going to be like maybe a verse.
	I don't really know what it was, but I tried something on this song.
	He wanted me to try and be on it.
	Anyway, they ended up using like a very, very, very small clip of what I'd done.
	It was like a couple of seconds and putting a lot of effects on it.
	So I wasn't particularly audible or it wasn't necessarily recognizably me.
	Now, obviously, I didn't care like that.
	It worked really well in the song.
	Like they did a great job.
	And I wasn't in any way like cut up about that.
	Like I just was like, nice to be included.
	Sample me.
	Cool, whatever you want to do.
	But anyway, they ended up putting my name on the song as one of the features.
	Now, usually a feature is something like someone does a verse or like that, you know, whatever.
	So anyway, I'm this thing.
	And I'm not really playing a feature role, but my name's on it.
	So I win a Grammy.
	They win a Grammy for the song.
	And because my name's on the actual song, rather than just like buried in the credits as a sample, I actually get a Grammy.
	Wow.
	So I've got, and it says best rap performance, which insinuates that I rap, which you can imagine I don't.
	Dude, that's crazy because sometimes you would think, man, they put my name on here.
	I'm not even really on here.
	This kind of mess.
	Some people might think it's kind of messed up.
	They're kind of using me here.
	But then it's funny how sometimes things turn around and it's like, oh, here you go.
	I mean, it's just funny.
	It was just a whole, the whole situation was funny.
	I didn't, you know, because we ended up doing other songs.
	So it was like, if that had been all they'd used, then Maybe I could have felt a bit sad about it.
	But, you know, you've also got to think like the man's a legend.
	The situation is legendary.
	Like, the song went was a hit, it went multi-platinum.
	Like, I was just like, cool, like, amazing.
	I'm happy to be involved at all.
	But the, yeah, just the Grammy's funny.
	I mean, it's currently hidden behind a big modular synth in my studio, just poking out the back.
	Is your studio now fancier than your studio when you first started?
	A little bit, but it's still pretty much the same principle.
	Just a keyboard, computer, mic.
	It's just like probably higher-end versions of those things, but quite simple, quite small.
	Because sometimes I think like, is it hard to get back to like the, because sometimes we look to our early stuff and like, those are the moments where I really wish I could just still feel like myself, you know, I even will have old podcast clips come up and I'm like, oh man, that's when I was just really felt like in the pocket of who I was as a person before I started to take any input from people's perspectives of me or before stuff got out there and anybody knew who I was.
	When who I was was a secret to me.
	Yeah.
	And I was my, it was like, it was almost like I had some value for myself that once everybody knows about it, it's almost like you don't not still have it, but it's not yours as much anymore.
	No, and you've, and you've kind of shown your cards.
	Shown your cards, basically.
	There's something, there's so, there's something so special about being a surprise.
	Yes, definitely.
	And the underdog and like all these things.
	And like, there was a time, I imagine, where it felt like you were people just kind of discovering your brain and how it works and kind of going, whoa, never heard anyone say anything like this or do anything like this.
	But, you know, that's a cool moment.
	But I think that your career especially has kind of been littered with really great moments that couldn't have happened during that phase.
	Like now you have this incredible fan base of people who love the way your brain works and know the way your brain works and look for, and look for confirmation about how great you are.
	And they're watching because they can count on you to make them feel that thing that you make them feel.
	And then also not just laugh, but also be understood and ask questions that they are too afraid to ask.
	And you get to meet all these people that they don't get to meet and they can see it through your lens.
	And every new person you meet brings something new out and you.
	So there's never, there's never been a point at which you were more capable of doing that than right now.
	It feels the other way, though.
	Right.
	Talking about?
	In what way?
	Like, do you ever feel like I want, oh, God, I wish I could go back to whatever.
	Yeah, but it's a, it's.
	But you can't get your brain back there.
	Like your brain, like, your reality grows and you can't go back, you know?
	Yeah, and I think, I think that's a good thing because what you probably, what we, you know, I have a similar thing, you know, I look back at some of my old music and I think like, oh, like I was thinking so much simpler back then or I really knew how to do this or like, I didn't overcomplicate or, you know, there were, oh yeah, like I really had a fire in my belly for this type of thing.
	Right.
	And that's cool.
	But that moment really only lasted for however long it lasted.
	And then after that, I had to, and I was finding a fire for other things.
	And I think, obviously, we can't revisit moments in time, but what we can do is make sure that our head is clear and that we're on our path.
	Because I think the feeling that we miss is the feeling of being on our path.
	It's not necessarily the thing we were doing at the time, that we were on our path.
	It's I am doing what I'm here to do because I'm exactly where I should be in the universe.
	And I am being integral.
	I'm not letting other people's opinions get to me.
	I'm pursuing what it is I love.
	I'm being authentic.
	And I'm enjoying every moment.
	And I'm being present.
	When you feel those things, the content that you put out is going to be great.
	And it will always be a moment people look back on because ultimately the thing that brought you to where you are now, sorry, into even into public consciousness was the fact that you were on that path.
	And your every essence, your actual essence is why you're there.
	Right.
	It's the way you look at the world.
	It's all the things that led to this.
	It's your childhood.
	It's the thing, the ways that you learn to kind of put those experiences into words or the way you learn to, you know, find those.
	So it's not like getting back to a certain dock.
	It's just like being still just being the stream kind of or getting, it's like that.
	In flow state.
	Right.
	It's finding flow state.
	Oh, because I always, I always mess up and think it's, oh, I got to get back to this dock.
	But it's like, no, that dock was just part of something you passed by as you were in a comfortable, healthy self.
	That was part of the scene.
	Right.
	I believe.
	I mean, that's what I believe anyway.
	I'm always looking out the window thinking, oh, I got to get back to where the car passed.
	But really, I just have to get back into this comfortably in the driver's seat.
	Wow.
	I think so.
	I think so.
	Yeah.
	And it's such a fight to try and think, how do I get back there?
	You know, and then you're always working from a loss because it's impossible.
	It's the Buddhist concept of desire is suffering.
	It's like if you want what you don't currently embody, then you are starting from a point of deficit.
	You don't have the thing.
	So therefore, you know, wanting something equals unhappiness.
	But you're kidding, bro.
	but I mean, that's, I think.
	No, it's good.
	It's cool.
	I have to pee really bad to you.
	I really do.
	All right, let's pee and then we'll come back and maybe talk about some news.
	Thanks for releasing me.
	Would you ever, and you got, it gets much colder in Britain, huh?
	Much colder, yeah.
	Well, actually, I say that.
	I mean, America's a big place and it gets much colder in Minnesota than it does anywhere in England.
	Do you ever feel like you've sold out your country by moving out of it?
	Interesting.
	And maybe that's not the best term to use.
	That's just a general term.
	No, I mean, it's definitely like, you know, as an English person, it's definitely like a concern that you in some way have insulted your, you know, your own by moving out.
	But no.
	I never felt like I lived anywhere, to be honest.
	I do feel English.
	I mean, all my cultural reference points are English and all my comedy, comedy references.
	Right.
	Any botanist would find roots of you there.
	You'd be busted there.
	Exactly.
	But that's interesting.
	Musical roots were, a lot of it was American.
	And a lot of other Japanese and like European music and, you know, just loads of different cultural influences that were not English.
	And also, I think on a spiritual level, I just didn't really resonate with nationality particularly.
	I didn't really have a national pride particularly or, you know, being English is complex, isn't it?
	And it's, you know, it comes with a history that's not necessarily, you know, some of it's great and some of it's quite shameful.
	And some of it, you know, I don't understand why I would really attach myself to the positive or the negative of my country's history when I wasn't part of it.
	Yeah, it's interesting.
	You know, with history, it's interesting because it's like people, it's easy to look back on history and be like, oh, this is, you know, this wasn't good, you know, from present perspectives and stuff like that.
	And, and, you know, I'm sure at the time, a lot of British people were like, we're taking over the world.
	You know, it was like a different, like, there was probably a pride that would seem foolish now if somebody had it, you know, like it would seem, you know, it's just interesting how time gives shape to things.
	Well, because all of our sort of reach of power is kind of just like slowly, and now we're just this little island that has, you know, a lot of cultural power and I guess some financial power, but we're definitely maybe got a tail between our legs a little bit.
	Might account for some of the self-deprecation that happens.
	Yeah, I think maybe a historical tail between your legs.
	Maybe.
	I'm curious to see, like, how does Britain kind of like how do they feel okay to show their, still show who they are or find who they are?
	I think with a little bit of difficulty, actually.
	I think like when you have a national kind of sense of like something, you know, we're not like, we've not always been part of, you know, the, you know, the British Empire, like the colonialism.
	We're, you know, I think finding pride has to come from other, obviously other sources, unless you genuinely are proud of that, in which case, don't know how, I can't help you, but, but that, this, this side of being English, like the comedy, the, the kind of the music, the culture, the cultural output of England is really amazing.
	I mean, I, I look back at, you know, a lot of my biggest influences have also been English bands.
	It's funny.
	I mean, I didn't actually really, wasn't really like a fan of Oasis at the time, but I went to, I'm a big Beatles fan.
	Lots of bands kind of eluded me until I was a bit older because I mostly listened to piano-based music and.
	Like Mozart?
	Yeah, whether it was classical or I listened to a lot of like soul classical Japanese kind of ambient type.
	Like kabuki or something?
	Is that?
	Like I don't know what that is, but I don't either.
	Yeah, but no, I mean, it could be a genre, though.
	It's something I don't know about.
	Yeah.
	I mean, Ryuchi Sakamoto is a good example.
	You should listen to him.
	I think you like him a lot.
	Sakamoto is very calming.
	Oh, really?
	Beautiful.
	Oh, I could use that.
	Ryuchi Sakamoto, yeah.
	Ryuchi Sakamoto.
	Can you bring him up?
	Let's see an image of him.
	I want to see a JPEG of this fella.
	Ryuki?
	Ryuchi.
	Ryuchi.
	Oh, wow.
	I love Japanese people, man.
	I went to Japan one time and we took a bunch of ice creams with us to the park and we gave them the kids and took pictures of meeting them.
	Oh, here he is.
	I mean, beautiful, man.
	Oh, God, he is, huh?
	He looks like my mother a little.
	In the face, not in the hair.
	Actually, if his hair was a lot longer.
	Yeah, right.
	Oh, yes.
	He looks like a composer, doesn't he?
	I mean, just a legend.
	I'd love to be Japanese, I think.
	It feels like everything's just so damn organized inside of you, you know?
	I feel like you swallow water and it immediately is ready to be yourself.
	Efficiently processed.
	Oh, there's no down.
	There's not all this milling around, you know?
	Right.
	I'm going through the kidneys.
	Get out of here, BS.
	Straight through.
	It's just red.
	Yes.
	Yes.
	It seems just like, here we go.
	You fit into a shirt size.
	I feel like if you're Japanese, you fit in.
	There is no like, you're in the middle.
	Okay, this looks bad on me.
	You know, I feel like you are.
	There's a definite, there's a, there's a definable, like when you go to Tokyo, for example, there's a definable style identity.
	Yeah.
	And I've found that Some of the most stylish people I've ever met have been Japanese, and some of the most stylish kind of like ideas in clothing have been come from.
	I mean, this is actually a Japanese.
	I mean, I'm not to say that this is, I'm not saying I'm sorry.
	I think this is like one of the what it is, and it is by um, it's by uh Yamamoto, um, Yoji Yamamoto, but uh, I wear a lot of Japanese clothes because I just think they all, I mean, Yamamoto and Isimiyaki are like my favorite designers.
	Wow.
	Yeah.
	And, and, you know, going back to when I was a kid, yeah, lots of, lots of Japanese music.
	And, and I think I was also fascinated by like Western and Japanese crossovers and just like the intersection between those sounds.
	And one thing you find is that every culture has its kind of own chord kind of or tonality, what's the sort of like world of notes that sound good together in that, you know, style.
	So, for example, in French music, right?
	So like French, early classical or whatever, it's like there's a there's a there's a world of tone that kind of sounds French if you know what you're listening to for.
	And when you go to the when you go to the Eurostar, which is funny, there's a sound that plays.
	It's like, whatever.
	It's like a thing.
	And it's the most French notes that have ever been written.
	Yeah.
	That's funny.
	If you know a lot about music, you're probably able to hear a lot of different little just things in the world and trace them back.
	It's almost like Latin.
	Like if you know sounds, it's almost like when you learn Latin.
	That's interesting.
	Everything's rooted in something.
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	Well, you know, when you go to Japan, there's a lot of sounds in like train stations and shit that they have.
	And you just go, wow, this is, I mean, nothing like anything that I'm used to.
	And it's kind of amazing.
	Do you think, do you notice any difference between the audiences like in different places, like in some of the behavior of them and stuff like that?
	Japan's a really interesting place to play because a lot of the audiences are they're like super respectful at least for the shows that we've put on they'll be completely silent during the music and then erupt in like the loudest possible applause and then as soon as they sense that you're ready to start the next song complete silence again like penny drop wow that's crazy does that feel crazy it feels or does it feel like right you
	know what it's just different it's like it feels right there but it's so i can understand the logic behind it and there's a such respect that comes with that it's like they really really respect the art and what you're doing and also we were there you know we're kind of we don't go there very often so and you're not you know if you go too often i think they probably get bored of you and you start to seem domestic almost but
	they respond especially like that i think to people who are from out of town who come in and just kind of um more of a rarity it's like they just really want to be present for the i don't want to miss it yeah we want to be in the moment yeah maybe they value the moment a bit more maybe there's a more of a value for the moment they have so much history well i wonder if it's also we're over in america politeness we'll pour beer on the moment people over here hey
	dude quit the moment it's like we're just people over here just you know just being yeah just like the moments uh it's like there's millions of moments right there's so many moments that it's it's kind of expansive and we've kind of had that in america like we got unlimited moments you know exactly but now i think we're starting i think things are starting to change a little bit and it's like man we need to value this moment i think the economy of moments basically it's like we are now in a moment where we
	don't have that many like live interactive experiences so i would think that people are starting to go when they go to comedy shows or whatever they're probably paying a little bit more you know they're like feel a bit more grateful to be there feel a bit more grateful to like have access to someone in real life after just spending a pandemic not being able to see anyone not being able to go out apart from in uh tennessee obviously uh but like the fact that someone has stood in front of you and
	they've spent their whole life perfecting this art form and then you go there and then you just talk all over it i mean the idea of doing that after the pandemic seemed seemed more insane than it did before because it would seem ungrateful like especially with music i mean you guys the people are more likely to be able to party and stuff during your shows and have fun you know with comedy you're really people have to kind of sit and listen for the most part yeah although a lot of people shush other people in my shows oh they do which annoys me oh so i actually hate it like tell me
	what happens what do you mean they shush well i'll be playing something and and i'm in the middle of a song and someone just goes like you know they'll say something crowd-like you know like uh oh yeah yeah yeah i love you yeah and i'm like in my brain i'm like i love you too but i can't can't say anything because i'm doing your work doing my thing and someone else just shot just goes and just and you're like what it says the thing is i
	always feel like responsible for for what they've just done because i feel like maybe something i put across maybe it's just an insecurity but i feel like something i put across has made them feel like i wouldn't like it oh that's interesting you know i wouldn't like it if someone like expresses how excited they are or whatever oh i feel like oh yeah i don't want you to think that they're a warden for me i feel like some kind of like yeah like real like stick up my ass fucking dude i used to feel that way About girl, like girls I would date and stuff.
	I didn't want any girl to be like a reflection of me.
	So it'd be like, if they made a mistake or like, I used to date this one girl who had no like beautiful, really sweet girl.
	She had no sense of like spatial awareness.
	She would just be like, you know, talking to you and like, she'd bump into 65 people somehow, like just while she was talking.
	She's a dodge.
	She's what?
	A dodgeman.
	We call them dodgements.
	Yeah.
	It's one of those, you know, like the cars that bump into each other in the fairground.
	Yeah.
	She was just like, gee, like, oh my God, don't you know somebody's right behind you.
	She would always turn and knock over a damn glass or a top hat off of somebody, you know.
	Yeah.
	And it would just like, it drove me.
	What would you do in that?
	It just, because I didn't want her to be a reflection of who I, it would be like.
	Yeah, yeah, yeah.
	I didn't want anybody thinking like, oh man, it's such a narcissistic thing, really.
	He, he endorses, he's like, right, cool with this, which makes him also as, as kind of unwieldy and fucking, you know.
	Uncool or whatever.
	Yeah, not cool.
	In some way, ultimately, it comes back to I'm not accepted or like, but you know, the, and I thought I did exactly the same thing, but with with like social interactions and like, if somebody said the wrong thing, I'd prickle up and like feel really tense and like want to, and I'll probably, it'll come out with a little comment towards them at some point, you know, later or even during the conversation.
	And I just couldn't hide it.
	I was so uncomfortable with somebody else fucking up.
	Because ultimately, like the school I went to was just like people were so hard on each other if some, if someone fucked up.
	Oh.
	Right.
	So you just develop this thing of like, no one must say anything wrong.
	No one can come into the situation with an energy that doesn't match everyone else.
	No one can.
	And it's like, it's such a like, you know, restrictive place to live that and I just would emanate that.
	Is that a very British thing you think?
	Yeah, for sure.
	Yeah.
	But I also just, I think it's just the way I grew up.
	The school I went to was like that.
	It was a very, the school I went to was like quite, it was a school where you had to take a test to get in, but it was free.
	So so it wasn't like a private school, but it was for kids who excelled in stuff.
	Yeah, it was for kids who essentially came from all manners of backgrounds, but had a certain level of reading comprehension or whatever it was.
	Like they tested you on multiple different things.
	And so it was a good school to be at because it had kind of like a culturally, like there was a lot of different cultures, but it was very intellectually, it was all about intellectual sparring.
	And like when kids are like, in some ways, I'd have preferred to have been beaten up than psychologically bullied, you know, because at least then I could have had a chance to like hit someone and get my anger out.
	I don't know, maybe I'm not really sure what's worse, but when kids are like super manipulative and like a bit able to like find your button and like fully fucking fuck the button and then just keep fucking it until you're just like not able to defend yourself.
	You know, it's like that that is like a different stuff.
	And I think it puts you in this like psychological like defense for the rest of your life.
	Oh yeah.
	Unless you fix it.
	I mean, I've just took fucking ages to like get rid of that thing of like, if someone says something or if I say something, the worst, honestly, the worst case scenario would be I say something and then in my mind, like everyone just like turns around.
	It's just like, why did you fuck did you just say?
	You know, everything stops.
	Can you imagine just like record and then I want to stop the music?
	Yeah.
	Right.
	And then oh, and it's awkward.
	That was like my worst nightmare, basically.
	Which is funny.
	It's a pretty tame worst nightmare to have.
	But it's what happens in that environment.
	It's a psychological thriller.
	Yeah.
	Which you just shared, you know.
	Yeah.
	Psychological thriller.
	It's just not a, yeah.
	Yeah, I think there's definitely like I speaking of psychological thrillers, I got a clip.
	What you got, man?
	A song broke out at a psych ward.
	Oh my God.
	They all broke out singing in songs of three.
	This is it now.
	insurance barely probably didn't cover this I wanted that way.
	Tell me why ain't nothing but a heartache ain't nothing but a mistake.
	Tell me why I don't wanna hear you say they got my vote.
	What party are they running with?
	This is unlike this is like living in my house.
	I mean I live with three people.
	So this is basically our house.
	Oh wow, really?
	Yeah, from all different rooms.
	Oh, you do?
	Yeah.
	Well, I mean, yeah, I live with two of my best friends and Jamina.
	Yeah.
	And we're just, yeah.
	Wow.
	It's a very, it's kind of a modern, modern thing.
	I wonder, it's, it's interesting how stuff like, like, I wonder if we're getting to this place in the world where it's like, um, I don't know what I'm trying to say.
	It's like we need, like, everything feels very vigilante now.
	It's like the person who's going to, like, it's like the world feels kind of like the wild west.
	You mean like individualistic, like people are just kind of just doing, they've kind of gone, fuck it.
	I've given up on society.
	I'm just going to do it my own way.
	The fabric of American society, I feel like, quickly unraveled.
	Like Betsy Ross is like the stitching somehow over the past five years has come out.
	Right, right.
	And I don't know if a lot of people are buying into this American ideal anymore.
	Interesting.
	I don't know if they're not.
	I just don't know.
	This is also like in Los Angeles right now.
	You don't get a really clear idea.
	I mean, Los Angeles is a very, very unclear picture of, or at least Hollywood.
	Yeah, Hollywood.
	That's what I'm saying.
	It's an extremely unclear picture of people's interaction in general.
	Because if so much of it is incentivized by success or power or fame, or in some way, somebody's desire or drive to achieve something, then obviously things just, they're not as pure as just a...
	Whereas I think most places are not like that.
	I mean, and also, you know, that is just speaking for an industry rather than like Los Angeles as a whole, because Los Angeles as a whole is multifaceted.
	Yeah.
	I forget that a lot too.
	A lot of times I'll say Los Angeles instead of really, I just mean Hollywood.
	Is there like other genres and stuff that you see where you would see yourself going into music?
	Is there anything that feels off limits?
	Do you feel like you're kind of – have your horizons of even possibility broadened over time or over the years or anything?
	Or do you – Yeah.
	I mean, I started doing – So scoring a film?
	Yeah, scoring a kind of visual thing.
	I call it a film, but it's not a kind of movie in the way that like a, it's not a, you know, the master or something or like a fucking narrative-driven movie.
	It's a kind of more of a visual thing.
	But I'm really excited about it.
	And I hope that it leads to more of that.
	And I want to do narrative movies, like proper movie, you know, that kind of thing.
	It's weird that my music is seen as so atmospheric, but that I've not really ever been involved in kind of scoring and stuff.
	But I have wanted to for a while.
	And I feel like, yeah, your music does feel like that.
	I feel like I'm hitchhiking through my own feelings kind of sometimes a little bit.
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	Or I'm hitchhiking through your feelings.
	Yes.
	I feel like somebody's kind of hitchhiking through my feelings.
	And you're picking them up?
	Sometimes.
	Or not.
	Sometimes I'm just watching them.
	Just being like.
	I don't know.
	I'll have to listen more.
	I think it just kind of depends on whatever feeling I'm in at that moment.
	What are the feelings that you kind of like when you listen to music?
	Like what, when, when do you listen to music?
	I listen to music for one when I need a pick-me-up.
	I'll listen to certain songs.
	There's a couple of songs I'll listen to.
	I think when I want to feel something, I'll listen to some other stuff.
	I listen to comedy when I need a pick-me-up, I think.
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	Because, yeah, because music is, I guess the thing is with our jobs is that they become jobs.
	Oh, totally.
	People are like, what are your hobbies?
	I'm like, I don't know.
	My hobbies became my job.
	Right.
	And now it's neither.
	Yeah.
	And so now I have to find out things outside.
	So outside of music and comedy, what do you...
	When you look at the world of people going and experiencing things like, you know, someone's skydiving and somebody's going surfing, like, do you ever go past the sea and watch people surfing and go, God, I wish I could just like be in the world like that, the way they are?
	Oh, yeah.
	I think that all the time.
	It's hard for, it's for, there's something about it that's tough for me.
	I think sometimes I did comedy.
	I want to be the person in the crowd having a good time.
	I want to be the one laughing.
	Like when Ye said, formerly known as Kanye West, said, my greatest regret is that I would never be able to see myself perform live.
	Seems like an egotistical thing to say, but I think in some ways it articulates something that a lot of performers feel not necessarily present at their own shows.
	And actually, they want to be more part of the feeling that everyone else is having than they are of the feeling they're having.
	Yeah, I think forever.
	I never went to any comedy or listened much at all.
	I think I didn't want to be influenced.
	And I think I was just so stuck in my own little world.
	I didn't want anything to mess up my world or anything to influence it.
	I just valued my own little creative space so much, really almost too much.
	It kept me isolated.
	But I didn't want to have any real influences outside of myself.
	And sometimes I thought, yeah, I wish I could be the person laughing at the show.
	But if I can't be, at least I'll be as the closest I can to that person will be someone at least making the humor.
	Yeah, totally.
	It's like at least then I'm part of the equation.
	That's how I felt about music.
	That's how I felt about DJing as well, because like I always felt really self-conscious about dancing and like expressing myself in those ways.
	And also, I'm very tall.
	I'm very, you know, I mean, I wouldn't say I'm out of proportion, out of proportion, but I, but I'm a long fella.
	But I'm a long person and I, and I, my limbs.
	You get shot first in an army.
	Exactly.
	I'd be, you know, what's that movie where they, they, they, a wire comes across the ship and all the people who are taller than a certain height get immediately killed.
	Oh, dad.
	Ghost ship.
	I'd be gone in the first scene.
	And then also, I'm, you know, like a, we call them daddy long legs, but they're like mayflies or whatever.
	Those, those little insects that have like those really long legs and they just sort of like bumble around, like not knocking into stuff.
	That's me at like a rave or, you know, something.
	So I, I just, I like, I'm, I always feel slightly uncomfortable.
	Like never, I'm always knocking into people like, oh shit, did I knock it?
	And then, you know, back to, you know, losing myself.
	I can never quite lose myself in the moment sometimes.
	Yeah, I can never lose myself completely, man.
	Right.
	I find that something.
	So I find that DJing is like an amazing way of like not having to, just not having to contend with any of that stuff.
	And instead, I can just stand there and be worshiped like a god.
	No, no, no.
	I can be just Present the music that everyone just gets, you know, gets to do that to, yeah.
	And then I'm, then at least my excuse can be that, well, I can't be down there at the same time, right?
	So, yeah, at least then you have an excuse.
	Yeah.
	Oh, that's interesting.
	And no one can come up to me and make some small talk that I can't hear because it's too loud.
	And then I don't have, there's no chance of me like saying something dumb to someone or like not, you know, not having a cool social interaction.
	I can just stand up there and people can assume that I'm cool because I'm D, because I'm a DJ, but I'm actually not.
	And I never have to reveal that.
	Dude, that's, yeah, it's like, if you're in that space, it kind of keeps you safe from everything.
	Complete bubble.
	Yeah.
	It's amazing.
	It's such a control.
	And people give DJs such a, you know, it's like a mythology.
	It's crazy.
	I mean.
	You must think even that's crazy.
	100%.
	And they pay them way more than they should.
	I don't know what's happening.
	DJing is like the...
	It's honestly.
	Yeah, it feels exorbitant.
	Have you been to festivals and stuff where it's just like DJ festivals and stuff?
	Yeah.
	Oh, wow.
	Yeah.
	So sometimes do you just DJ and sometimes you play your music?
	I DJ.
	I actually love DJing.
	It's like for me, I mean, there's such a craft to it and it's so deep.
	Like it's great.
	A great DJ is like, you know, controlling the vibe of the entire place and like can be in tune with, genuinely in tune with the crowd.
	And like it's a, it's a real, you know, you can go into a set not knowing at all what you're going to play and just and just watch the crowd and figure out how you're going to, like you're, you're coming on after the next, the DJ before you and you're watching how they're playing to the crowd and you're seeing what works.
	And then you're going, okay, what's in my record bag that I can, you know, back in the day, I'd play vinyl.
	Yeah.
	And so I'd be, you know, just kind of acting on real in the moment decisions.
	Like this tune is in the right key or it's in the right tempo.
	It's in the right, it's the right vibe to come on to follow on from the last thing.
	And like, oh, this one will get them, like, this one will get them dancing or this one.
	So that feeling is like you're kind of living through them vicariously.
	You're like experiencing that hype and that fun with them and through them.
	And then you can kind of like kind of pretend you're at your own show at the same time.
	And it's, it's like psychological and it's, it's also you're getting to hear all your favorite music and like it's just, it's brilliant.
	Yeah, my friend Satchfield's a DJ down in New Orleans and he's one of my best friends from growing up and I get to watch him like, you know, how he looks at a group of people and like, you know, you can see the wheels start turning in his head and like, and he knows so much music's here.
	You just start to think, like, you start to see him grin and kind of like, all right, what's going to happen?
	The cogs are turning.
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	What else?
	What else happened in the news, Zach?
	Anything else interesting out there?
	Yeah, we were talking about this.
	It's a pretty American story.
	A Philadelphia man just ate a rotisserie chicken every day for 40 days.
	Ooh.
	Oh, wow.
	He doesn't recommend it.
	He's on the Jordan Peterson diet.
	Yeah.
	Oh, I went to dinner with Jordan Peterson, man, and during the pandemic with him and his daughter and her boyfriend, and they ordered all meat.
	All meat.
	And brother, at the end of the meal, there's literally a plate of bones in the middle of the table.
	It very much had like this Game of Thrones type of vibe.
	And no asparagus, no vegetables.
	Nothing.
	Meat, I think somebody had sparkling water and they even frowned at him a little, whoever it was.
	Other people had flat water, but somebody bubbled up and everybody was like, you whore.
	Yeah.
	They just went.
	But in the end, it looked like a plate, like a batch of, looked like a batch of dogs had been there.
	Just a plate.
	I was to put some pictures in.
	I have that.
	Have you ever go birded out?
	Have you done anything like that?
	I've never done 40 days of eating whole chickens, but I've I mean, I'm vegetarian, so it's not something it's not a sport I can really participate in.
	He didn't really have a reason, which is my criticism.
	He just said he's doing it to bring people together.
	So I don't.
	I mean, judging by that picture, it did bring a lot of people together.
	I wonder what...
	Yeah, he's like the high priest of chicken eating.
	Yeah, it has a very renaissance.
	This looks like a pre-party for a renaissance fair.
	I feel like it has...
	Yes, it does, huh?
	It actually would be really cool if somebody made like a nice painting of that, you know?
	The Rotisserie.
	I mean, there's a lot of great bits of art in here.
	I think you should challenge your listeners to paint this because it's a wonderful scene.
	Oh, it's remarkable.
	to the 40th day of rotisserie chicken.
	I wonder how many of those...
	I imagine it didn't start this way.
	His girlfriend probably left him, I'm sure, after day eight or something of her being lonely.
	Well, I imagine the smell probably got quite overwhelming.
	And there he is, and it seems very perverse, I think.
	There's something Oedipal or something going on.
	Yeah, something like that.
	I don't even really know what that means.
	Did you ever work at a food place, James?
	I never worked at a food place, no.
	Did you have a job?
	Although I did one time do a job at a festival where I was part of catering staff.
	Oh, yeah.
	And they gave us one baked potato for lunch, for lunch and dinner.
	That was what we had.
	It was one baked toe, which I thought was unreasonable, to say the least.
	I mean, they didn't give you any butter or anything.
	It was just you queued up for a baked potato and that was your sustenance for the day.
	Every British story I feel like has like some mild starvation somewhere in it.
	I feel like there's like such a.
	Some self punishment or like some kind of.
	It was like four.
	Have you ever seen the Four Yorkshireman sketch?
	Uh-oh.
	I'll have to play that to you.
	Basically, it's a bunch of people sitting around being like, you know, where you know, when we grew up, we didn't have a pot to piss in, you know, we didn't blah blah blah.
	And then the other guy's like, yeah, well, I mean, we didn't even have a house, we lived in a ditch, blah, blah, blah.
	You know, and when our dad came home, he'd beat us around the head.
	It's like, oh, you were lucky.
	The other guy's like, you were lucky.
	We had a, you know, our dad would come home and stab us and we'd live in a pond.
	You know, anyway, so that's, that's like, but it's like a classic, I mean, I've really missed it.
	But it's, but it's a classic English sketch, and that's kind of what the baked potato thing sort of like conjures really is this like stark just you know scarcity mentality situation where but but it but but then it's at a festival where everyone's having loads of fun um yeah everybody's all geeked up on uh molly eating baked potatoes well i mean they were all eating you know from food trucks and like oh yeah so we were just but
	anyway so i i worked there and and um but that was only for two days and then i got fired i think because i just wasn't i wasn't i just i felt away about the potatoes i just felt like it wasn't enough and i'm obviously very tall i was always i was always tall i was tall then oh so it's hard being that tall guy i feel like the remember like one kid that would come back from summer tall and everybody like what in the look with this motherfucker yeah you know people like oh look at this show off you
	know that was me what does he think he's doing huh look at this guy with his pussy ass little cervical spine yeah yeah yeah you know and they start saying all that kind of shit they did say that kind of shit and i just i just took it and then i learned to love my height over time but it started yeah i hated being tall really hated it oh it would i think it would be such an adventure but it would be very interesting when you put your arm out of the bed and it just touches the floor it pets the cat if it's down there yeah
	what about hitting your head on stuff oh and then you hate your head i i did that a number of times i mean it probably accounts for some of my personality now what about love a lot of your song there's definitely a lot of loss a lot of like jesus huh some girl some gal some gal left this guy at the day old bread store you know yes um where does some of that come from like where does where do you think some of that comes from well my first record
	i'd never been in love and well if i had it would be unrequited so i was i lost my virginity very late i was a very late bloomer and uh so i was just like 20 years old 20 22 23 pretty late i mean in this country that's probably not as uncommon because maybe because of religious reasons um but the exchange rate on virginity is really i think it's probably about one
	to one 0.6 to 1 when it comes to like british to american yeah um so like what the dollar to the pound used to be oh yeah um and i just didn't i was always very ashamed of that at the time that you hadn't lost it yet but i hadn't yeah and i and i was also wasn't like i wasn't in the game oh so you were really on the sidelines i was
	really on the sidelines just kind of being like people will be talking about sex and i'd be like yeah i mean yeah i mean totally like vaginas for sure for sure like i get it man yeah like it must it's man you'd be wearing like a man city jersey just talking about it like this yeah for sure yeah like of course yeah sex always i know what you're talking about um wow so you were really on the sidelines just of like kind of like a lot of social stuff kind of or yeah i think so i was the thing i was just a i was an outsider
	in a lot of ways and uh because that gives you a lot of time to observe stuff and see it yeah but i was also like i was kind of semi-popular in other ways like i was i was always like a bit of a i was always a bit of a class clown and i was i i got in trouble a lot and i was always very kind of insolent and like not i don't know if i was acting out because i thought it was cool or because i thought it was i genuinely had a lot of like uh like i was um anti-establishment
	yeah in general like i just felt i just felt i sort of felt like i wasn't supposed to be at school as well i always felt like i was supposed to be you know um in music somewhere doing something else or doing something else just i just knew that i wasn't supposed to i knew i didn't need science school probably always felt very novice to you i knew i didn't need to learn french right it probably felt novice to you um in a in a strange way it didn't feel it didn't feel like beneath me or
	it didn't feel it didn't feel like i i didn't feel like i was too smart for it or i didn't feel like that i just thought i just thought i don't need these skills i don't because i know where i'm going and i don't need any of this stuff oh yeah what i need is to get older yeah i just need to be 10 years older and then i'll have what i want interest and also there was this thing i can't remember what it's like alpha personality basically where you have this thing where you're like in the future i'm going to get
	everything i always wanted so it's okay that i'm suffering now you know so it's this delusional kind of thing of like i've got my eyes on the prize and so you can all like you can all laugh right but i'm gonna be this i'm gonna you know be a 23 year old virgin uh and so i um move this mic down just a touch oh yeah sorry you good or just down a little yeah
	there you go there we go um sorry it's my it's my first time on a on a podcast oh yeah i'm happy to have you man oh no i did i did jamila's but i could you know i mean you have to i mean what are you gonna ask i thought i had a chance with her damn i didn't even know i dropped her up at your house too you thought there was a long career in podcasting with her ahead of you um what uh What else do we have?
	What else is in the news?
	Oh, wait.
	So, did you first time you fell in love then?
	So, what was that like?
	It was really amazing.
	I mean, I did wait.
	I waited and it wasn't, I didn't do it in a kind of like a religious sense, but I think there was a spiritual component to it.
	I think I was waiting for someone I trusted.
	I think I was waiting for someone I had a spiritual connection with.
	But actually in the end, I lost my virginity to someone kind of random who I had no connection with at all.
	But the relationship I ended up in was one that was great.
	Yeah, someone really wonderful.
	And then I only had one more relationship after that, and that's the one I'm in.
	So that brings us up to now.
	Yeah, and you guys have been in love for a long time.
	Eight years?
	Wow.
	It's about eight years.
	That's cool.
	That's rare.
	Yeah, it is.
	She's incredible.
	And, you know, I guess it does feel like we've...
	That's kind of a cool lyric or something like that, you know?
	Yeah, it is.
	Although, you know, people are strange about listening to love songs about someone you're actually with.
	I don't know why that is.
	Oh, that's true.
	If that's the case, it almost becomes a little bit...
	A little bit?
	I should become a country artist.
	And then people would accept.
	That it's the love songs you're actually with.
	Yeah, because there's something about your songs.
	I want you to not be with the person.
	You want me to be completely fucking heartbroken.
	I want the person to be as lonely as I probably am feeling.
	Or it's like, you know, you want there to be some of that.
	And look, James'music isn't all lonely music.
	If you haven't heard it, it's all types of stuff, but it's a nice way to watch –
	a bit like with radiohead for example there's certain bands who through time have have got the criticism of sad or as if that's a criticism i don't know why but you know sad or doub or depressing or whatever and i think that's just a reflection of whoever is listening most of the time i mean something can sound dreary and on some day be dreary and on another day be completely uplifting it just depends what your mood is and how it's and
	also i would never want to like i'd never want to uh discourage and i hate language that discourages people from listening to music that gives them emotional release like that's why i had such a problem with the sad boy term and like when i would i'd get written about in in like publications like you know certain publications basically who would who would write you know like one of the things was like he needs to maybe should get out more or like i was just like
	you don't get it like you don't get that there are people who feel the same thing as i feel right who are listening to this processing stuff right and by this language what you're saying is like don't do that oh yeah and you might be you might actually be taking away someone's emotional comfort blanket that makes their life way harder you know it's funny i think that's an honest too about like sometimes on this podcast i'll talk about feelings and things that i've had over the years and
	sometimes i feel like it gets it's tough because i have to i have to walk this line i don't want to get too melancholy yeah i don't want to get actually i don't care if i get melancholy but i don't want to get where i am in self-pity like self-indulgent right where and it can happen it's really tough it's tough because you don't notice it happening you think you're just exploring it more right and and it can and it can certainly um it can certainly happen i think with with music though it's interesting because it's like music and
	musicians they let us feel something that we can't say it's like man this you'll see somebody who won't even talk probably to their wife or something but then they'll they'll both get there and sing a song together yeah yeah or dance to us it's like or that video of everyone singing i can't remember what those are the yeah the people trapped in the mental hospital singing katy perry you know or whatever i want it that way backstreet boys backstreet boys yeah yeah yeah i mean you know and it to some extent there is some truth in you know like the parent our parents generation
	would just be like no don't talk about it like just come on man you don't need to go to therapy just crack on carry on yeah you'll be you'll be all right just you know just like pick up that pail walk up the hill yeah just just just um you know to some extent like talk about it to a friend but other than that just get on with it and you know you'll you'll be uh you can push through it and and even the british are cracking now patty pimblet had a freaking outspoken speech remember a couple fights
	ago what was that oh no oh yeah yeah you know it's like yeah even see the brit you know that was really moving yeah it was just you know it's like yeah i think we're also like there's just an inner human humanity is this energy of nature it's this path of nature yeah we don't really know what it is yet yeah that's true and i think we've you know when you look at how much feeling and stuff is in there at a certain point it's got to come out it is it has and then but
	then i think what you're touching on is quite interesting because it's like we're not there is a certain point at which it's not productive anymore and you know i think that coming to an under a balance between our generation, maybe, and the generation before us,
	or couple before us, a balance between those two mentalities of like, you know, maybe self-victimization on our account, or kind of going over the same things over and over again, yeah, and not realizing you're in a cycle or a pattern,
	or just kind of like focusing so much on the trauma that you're not actually kind of paying attention to like actual real life practices that can help you, or like forward motion, forward momentum, like the fact that achievement actually genuinely does,
	you know, can be a good motivation or, you know, like general kind of, yeah, like positive thinking, like lots of, you know, it's like you can just dwell on things.
	And we have a, you know, there is a school of thought that says being in constant kind of term, kind of digging up of things is a good, is, is like important.
	I think there's a balance to be struck.
	Yeah.
	And the kind of wisdom in the older generations sometimes is that we there is a lot of commonality to be found between people and that our differences sometimes are not always worth dwelling on and that we are we are strong,
	capable people who can fucking get it done.
	Get it done.
	Yeah.
	Basically.
	Persevere, take care of ourselves.
	Yeah, sometimes we have to come to our own rescue.
	You start to realize that too.
	It's like this self-help stuff, it starts to create sometimes too much of a world where you're always trying to help yourself.
	Yeah.
	And you're reading up and taking in so much stuff about, you know, inspirational, but you're not actional.
	And also that's an industry.
	That's a people are profiting off your constant engagement with self-help, your constant engagement.
	It's like at a certain point, it's like, are you okay?
	You know, if you're not, you know, I think that I always encourage being aware of your emotions and trying to delve into them and like figure them out.
	But I think there is a certain point where it's time to rejoin the world and try and float.
	Yeah, I mean, you, yeah, I find you will, if you sit there in that feeling long enough, looking around inside of it and looking at the, reading the graffiti and shit, you will, then that's where you're going to live.
	You know, I start to realize it's like, you know, they always say you can act your way into positive thinking, but you can't think your way into positive action, you know?
	And that's something I have to come back to because I like to dwell.
	I like to wander around in the, in the, um, in the art museum of my childhood and of my, like, things that meant something to me and like my first kiss and the first like mistakes I made.
	And like, I like to wander around and look at all the artifacts and think of things.
	You can't live in the museum.
	You can't.
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	There's a time to shut it off and leave the museum.
	Yeah.
	There's a, I can't remember, I think it was my government just talking about like, you know, being in this hole and just like painting the walls.
	And it's just, now it's just a beautiful hole.
	It's like, which now sounds semi-sexual in a way that I didn't want it to.
	But that's, you know, that is to some extent, it like sums up where you can get to where you can draw the map perfectly of how your emotions, how of your emotional state.
	You can become so obsessed with like understanding your emotional state that actually you've kind of taken focus off actual forward momentum and living.
	And yeah.
	So yeah, it is.
	And I think a lot of people who are in that place, they, they, you know, a lot of people who you have you noticed this when someone's just for the first time discovering like shit that they've done wrong or the things that they're like not happy about within themselves, they're just constantly talking about it.
	And they want to talk about it to everyone and every, you know, and, and they're going into such detail and you're just like, but that's someone who is at the start.
	They just got there.
	They just started.
	That's always the way.
	And yeah, eventually I wanted to get to a place where I just didn't have to talk about it.
	Yeah.
	You know, and I could just talk about other shit.
	Yeah, or at least look back on it with a sense of power and not be standing in it as much.
	Yeah, because I did all that.
	I've gone through all of those phases.
	This is not coming from a judgmental place.
	This is saying to like, this is saying like you have to kind of like become that like evangelizing kind of just to just to you know, you got to destabilize first, I think.
	That's why it's so hard sometimes to imagine looking inwards because initially you're going to have to go through a period of complete destabilization.
	And that's why a lot of people never do it, which I think is amazing that you have because and been public about it and talked about on your podcast.
	And a lot of people have probably done it through you and with you.
	Yeah, I think, you know, we just try and we will, we wonder sometimes, what is our instrument?
	Why does God have us here to share whatever, you know, it's like you don't even know.
	It's like, what is the little piece of the universe that's supposed to fly out of you?
	Yeah.
	So do you, do you, out of side of like podcasting, is there like a hobby that you have?
	Do you play anything?
	I just got a piano at home.
	Oh, really?
	Yeah.
	So I'm excited about it.
	Did you talk to me about that at one point?
	Yeah.
	I used to play, and then I just got a new piano at home.
	Nice.
	It's a new used piano.
	Nice.
	Yep.
	It's a baby grand, I think a Baldwin.
	Nice.
	Got a baby grand.
	I grew up around this place called Baldwin Motors.
	They used to do tire care, I think.
	Yeah, Baldwin.
	You looked it up, Baldwin Motors, Covington, Louisiana.
	So I don't know if they make, I don't know if they also do pianos or this is a family.
	I don't know.
	It could be joint family, but.
	I mean, it'd be amazing if there was cars and pianos.
	Yeah, well, I think they did some good cars.
	That's Baldwin Motors right there.
	I suspect it's not the same, but I...
	They used to just do mostly tires.
	Although Yamaha make pianos and they also make 4,000.
	Yeah, they make a lot of things.
	What about...
	What else is in the news, Zach?
	Anything else neat out there?
	That man ate those chickens, but I didn't really.
	We didn't really talk about it.
	Well, it didn't do it for me.
	Did it?
	Is there something about it?
	It seems grotesque a little bit, I guess.
	Is it not?
	I don't like those chickens.
	Yeah.
	I don't like those rotisserie chickens.
	It just.
	Have you ever seen 40 chickens either?
	No.
	It seems like a number of chickens that shouldn't exist all at the same time.
	Well, and it just like what, you know, I just see some manus pulling.
	And the chicken always feels like it's just barely chicken.
	It just, it feels like they've been through it all, you know?
	Also, if you just put it down, like to, you know, if we were really to analyze that situation, it's like, it's not that hard to eat 40 chickens every day.
	You know, it's like one chicken every day.
	Yeah.
	Could you imagine?
	I mean, I could do it.
	You could do that.
	I could do that.
	I'm not a vegetarian, but I couldn't do it.
	By 28 days, I would not be, I'd be like this.
	I'd be bored.
	Yeah.
	But it's like just watching a man get bored for 40 days isn't that.
	Yeah, you can do that anywhere.
	I could really get bored anywhere with 40 days.
	Someone could, I could watch a man getting bored.
	I could just talk to the person I my Dom, my producer, co-co-producer friend, ask him what it's like to work with me.
	I don't think being bored for 40 days is entertainment.
	Yeah.
	As much as those people thought it was.
	Unless it is now.
	Like that's what entertainment also is becoming.
	It's interesting how it's getting strange.
	Like I would watch a woman, like a small woman, eat like maybe a hot dog or a piece of cake or something online.
	I would watch it.
	To me, that would be very entertaining.
	I'm now imagining watching you watch her.
	That's why I laughed.
	Well, there's a Japanese show where they have little children go run to the market for their mom or something.
	And it's just like voice, it's like a little bit of voiceover.
	And you just watch them go on the little journey.
	The show has to be for two to four-year-olds.
	It is captivating.
	But all of those shows are, I feel like they're universal ages, really.
	Well, this one is just captivating.
	There's something to learn from things like that.
	What's that show?
	Can you look it up, brother?
	Japanese Children Go to Market.
	It's captive.
	This show, you just watch, you're like, oh, is he going to, you know, is Kim Chi going to make the lemonade or whatever, you know, and he does it and you're just damn blown away.
	Kimchi called old enough?
	Old enough, yes.
	God, it's good, man.
	Kimchi's Korean, isn't it?
	Yeah, Kim Chi is Korean, too.
	But is that, is that, yeah, they probably changed it.
	There she is right there.
	Wow.
	Since children as young as two out into the world alone, it's an absolute roller coaster of.
	It's a Japanese TV show that abandons toddlers on public transport.
	It's one way to look at it, man.
	But it's pretty great.
	You see them go out there and they're just, who is that right there?
	Does it say?
	Doesn't give a name.
	Oh, yeah.
	Just beautiful.
	It just says forced to fend for themselves.
	That's one way to look at it.
	Look.
	It's tough times everywhere.
	I think there's something pandemic-y about that, isn't there?
	Oh, no, it came out before the...
	When did this come out?
	This is a YouTube video.
	Japanese kids go shopping alone.
	Did you, dude, you remember that time when I came and saw you and saw you do music and make music with Andre 3000?
	Yeah.
	Fuck.
	dude, I remember you inviting me out to this place and it was in Malibu.
	It was like this cool kind of little Yeah.
	It was like a studio kind of.
	It looked like a rehab.
	Yeah, it looked like a little rehab.
	So I pulled up and you and I didn't know that it was him there.
	You didn't tell me that you were working, you know, you just said you were working in a studio.
	Yeah, yeah, yeah.
	And I came up and you guys were working on something.
	That was pretty cool.
	Wow.
	That was such an amazing time in my life.
	We made a lot of music together.
	Did you guys?
	Yeah.
	Yeah, we did.
	Is it interesting with celebrity how you kind of pat, like, you'll become, like, you know, together for a while with certain...
	Yeah.
	But also, you know, we stayed in touch.
	Like, I talked to him fairly regularly.
	And he's just, I mean, he's like the goat.
	Yeah.
	As they say.
	So, you know, I'll always be honoured.
	just, I find him always inspiring.
	Probably still...
	Although he did go on the Rick Rubin podcast and say he's never going to release any of the music.
	But you guys made?
	Well, I mean, he's just generally talking about music, you know, full stop.
	Why is he not?
	Doesn't he keep it?
	I don't know.
	He just felt like I think he was saying something along the lines of, you know, he just feels sort of out of the game or like not really part of that.
	And he's just expressing himself in all these different ways.
	And we actually did put something out.
	We did make, we did a thing where he was playing clarinet and I was playing piano.
	I don't, I think for me, it's like, I don't, I just want to help as a producer, like, because I was in a producer role.
	I just want to help someone express the thing they want to express.
	And if Andre 3000 isn't in a time of his life where he wants to make rap music, then I'll help him express clarinet music.
	Yeah, or help him express, maybe even just realize that, hey, this isn't a time where you want to put something out.
	Yeah, which may change or may not.
	Who knows?
	Does a lot of music get put out?
	No, a lot of music doesn't get put out.
	What?
	Vast majority of music doesn't get put out.
	Are there some amazing songs out there that you think have been made that have not been put out?
	There's a lot of songs out there that I think shouldn't have been put out.
	Um...
	Thank you.
	There's a lot of amazing songs I've heard in studios that never came out for sure.
	Yeah, like hundreds.
	Hundreds.
	And they're honestly, it feels like a crime.
	Honestly, it feels like a crime.
	It's terrible when you hear them and you're like, oh, I can't wait.
	I can't wait for that to come out and people to hear it.
	And something happens, like promo doesn't work out.
	Like someone, some like an ANR says, oh, I'm not really sure about that one.
	Or someone says to the artist, like, what a friend of theirs says oh I don't like that one and it just turns them off it or they develop negative association with that song.
	It's happened with me plenty of times.
	I mean I've got songs and my hard drive has thousands thousands of songs that haven't made the cut or they miss their moment.
	You know some songs just feel like a moment and it's like if you don't put them out soon yeah you're not you just you're not gonna you're never gonna feel like that again.
	Or maybe sometimes like I didn't nail the vocal take.
	I didn't fully, so I don't like the way I'm singing.
	So I can't be bothered going back in and singing again.
	So there's all these songs that the actual DNA of the song is good, but you can't be bothered doing it again, going back into that place.
	Yeah, and you can't get back there.
	It's kind of the value of a moment.
	It's like sometimes, you know, it's like, man, we were so close right there for that moment.
	Yeah.
	And it's like sometimes those things are batches of songs.
	So like there'll be a batch of songs that sounded like retrograde or there'll be a batch of songs that sounded like say what you will.
	But say what you will was the best of that batch and retrograde was the best of that batch.
	So I put that out instead of lots of kind of cop kind of similar tone, songs in a similar tone that like one is good.
	Did you ever get to work with like Willie Nelson or John Mayer?
	I've never worked with either of those.
	No, I never have.
	But, you know, never say never.
	I mean, it's Willie Nel Willie Nelson is.
	Willie Nelson is still alive, yeah.
	No, is he making, is he making music?
	Yeah, I think he is.
	He has a daughter, I think, a granddaughter, Ray Lynn Nelson, I think, who also does music.
	All right.
	Yeah, is there an artist that you feel like?
	I guess do you get pitched to artists?
	How does that work?
	Do you pitch your, does your agent kind of pitch you to artists?
	How does that kind of work?
	That usually doesn't work out, I've found.
	If there's an A ⁇ R connection or some kind of industry connection, it doesn't really, you know, it's usually from me just getting in touch on Instagram and saying, like, I love your music or something like that.
	Kind of like how we met.
	I mean, obviously we're not collaborating, although this, you could call it a collaboration.
	That's true.
	But, you know, we just like Jam's quite good at just reaching out.
	I sort of learned that from her.
	She was like, you know, you can just reach out to people directly.
	And I was like, she's great at connecting with people.
	Yeah.
	She's great.
	And she was Simon Rex, and he's great at connecting with people.
	Yes.
	So that's like two great connectors is your.
	He's so good in that movie.
	Oh, yeah.
	Red Rocket.
	Yeah.
	He's so good in that.
	So ridiculous how they can make it.
	Yeah.
	At the beginning, you're like, oh, this is my buddy Simon by the end.
	You're like, oh, this is this guy.
	And I'm like, he was brilliant.
	He was so brilliant.
	And he's been staying busy since then.
	It's such a wild.
	What an amazing comeback.
	I know.
	Fantastic to watch.
	I was so fucking happy to see that.
	Yeah.
	Hollywood's so interesting like that, you know?
	I mean, maybe comeback's maybe the right word.
	Sort of just like a re-entry into the world.
	He feels like that.
	He'd moved out to the national park.
	He was living in a national park.
	And so that's really.
	Yeah, you're at the end of the line.
	You're basically a bear.
	When you're living in a national park, you're really, you're trying to, you know, you're thinking probably about suicide.
	You're not going to do it.
	But there's enough hikes around to keep you safe.
	I'm just joking.
	Simon knows that.
	But he moved out to like Joshua Tree and he was just kind of living his life.
	And then this producer saw him on Instagram and said, you are perfect.
	Yeah, because he's like an incredible looking, hilarious person.
	Yeah, and he's long and, you know, has some goofy elements and like, but just the biggest heart.
	And so it was really awesome to get to see him.
	Like, and just to see his pride that he felt like you want to, everybody wants to feel like they are capable, maybe, or they matter.
	Yeah.
	Or that they, we all just want to feel a little bit of that.
	Well, like, we can just do the thing that we're good at in the limelight for just a moment.
	Yeah.
	And just be like, I did that.
	And, you know, there's definitely a thing inside a lot of people that's just sort of screaming for that occasionally, every so often.
	And if you can, if you matt, if you happen to be in a position where you can like satisfy that voice, it's a nice place to be because otherwise that can eat you up, can't it?
	Like if you just can't ever vocalize it or you can't ever satisfy it.
	And it can be satisfied even just in a relationship.
	It could be satisfied by that one person that you're with.
	It could be satisfied by a parent or a child.
	It could be satisfied by a million people.
	You know, it could, it could need to be, it's interesting.
	It just has to land in that place that it said that you feel seen.
	Yeah, totally.
	Yes.
	And some people, it only takes one person, you know, it takes a wife or a girlfriend or boyfriend or a parent.
	That's all it takes.
	Or to be the biggest thing in someone's life.
	Yeah.
	To be the center of somebody's kind of universe.
	Are you with anyone at the moment?
	Nope.
	I started doing, I've been doing a little bit of just.
	Me time?
	Yeah.
	I took 30 days off of dating so I could get an idea of what I was kind of doing.
	Nice.
	Because you can get so sporadic.
	Yeah.
	You know, you're just here and there.
	You go on a date.
	You're like, do I even care about this?
	What's going on?
	How's dating in Los Angeles?
	Is that difficult?
	It's been a little rocky.
	Nashville's been even tougher, kind of really.
	Really?
	Yeah, because I don't go out that much.
	And so it's been kind of a tough place to go, you know, to meet folks.
	Do your interests line up with people in LA or Nashville more?
	I think they're kind of the same.
	I think it sort of depends.
	I think you can kind of find the same type of people anywhere.
	You know, I'm not like, I'm just kind of middle of the road.
	You know, I think I'm trying to think of something that really turns me off about somebody doing this in a restaurant.
	Oh, yeah, they're done.
	Done.
	Probably.
	You're out.
	But if they- I'd probably still order dessert with them, you know?
	So I'd mill around a bit.
	So if they did that through starter main course and dessert and they're just cleaning the way it over like that.
	Unless they were like setting a pentameter for some dope-ass meat that I didn't know was coming, you know, or it was like a flash mob or something that never started.
	They're just like, hey guys, they think it's going to happen as long as they just keep.
	So have you gotten invited to go play at like some weird private events or something that was really interesting?
	You're like, okay, this seems strange or not strange.
	I've done a couple corporate things that I ended up not doing anymore after that because I just felt a couple of fashion events and things were very Zoolander type stuff.
	Yeah.
	You know.
	But no.
	I don't think, you know, I haven't had the like, I haven't had the sort of surreal experience.
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	I haven't really had that in music.
	Like some crazy thing where they invite you to like a big bean conference or something and everybody's losing their mind or something.
	No.
	Yeah.
	But and if and the things I have done that were a bit weird, I think I'm under contract to not talk about the thing.
	When I say a bit weird, I mean like maybe it's not the kind of gig that like it was a shit gig.
	Oh, yeah.
	It's like a really shit gig.
	Yeah.
	And there's, and I was like, okay, let's not have any videos of that one.
	Well, thanks for all your contributions, man.
	I'm glad that we get to spend some time together, you know?
	Yeah.
	I mean, and I'd love to, you know, this is, I've never done this sort of, I've never been part of the podcasting universe, particularly.
	Yeah, it's cool.
	I'm really great.
	I'm glad we got to, that, I'm really glad that you, that you, that you came on.
	Well, it felt like walking through the screen in a way, walking into this.
	Oh, interesting.
	It was like just jumping through YouTube.
	Because I've watched your podcast so many times.
	Yeah.
	Do a lot of people say that?
	What?
	That you've watched it?
	No, that, well, they've just, they've been of, you know, they've watched your shit for so long, and then they're just like in the seat where other people are sitting.
	Oh, yeah.
	I think it's kind of fascinating to people.
	I think people don't know what to think sometimes.
	I think they're a little bit shocked at just how the production works.
	And then suddenly you're there.
	It is interesting how it goes from just us sitting here talking into like a conversation that people could listen to or segments of a conversation.
	Yeah.
	You know?
	I mean, we probably like, I feel like our conversations are pretty wide-reaching anyway.
	Yeah, I think so.
	This reminded me, I think, a lot of like why I always have enjoyed chatting with you, you know.
	Yeah, me too.
	Yeah.
	What would you say, like, you think to like, I know this is kind of a general thing, but it's like if there's somebody who's having trouble expressing themselves or figuring out how to do that, what suggestion do you think you would give to somebody like that?
	Well, I'd say try a few different things.
	And if you express yourself to someone and they kind of like lightly punish you for doing it, whether that's rejecting you or whatever it is, then maybe they're just not the right person to do that with.
	But there will be someone who will like your music.
	Take you, yeah, either.
	Yeah, like your music or they'll like they'll take you as you are, basically, as a person.
	Yeah, it's so much.
	We spend so much of our time trying to adjust our song to fit the audience instead of finding the person that hears it, you know?
	Yeah, and to be, I think true confidence is, is just being confident that, sorry, using it twice, but true confidence is being in a situation and just knowing that you'd be okay if that person didn't like what you said or didn't like, you know, kind of rejected you or whatever.
	And that's hard to get to.
	Even now, I find that pretty difficult.
	And in so many ways, I've edited myself to death, like to be okay for everyone else's consumption.
	But I think to some extent, it's like kind of saying what's on your mind anyway.
	And come what may.
	Because ultimately, the fastest way to find out if you're in the right situation is to be yourself.
	And you can spend many years doing the opposite, not being yourself and hoping that people will accept you.
	And ultimately, you're just treading water.
	You're never going to fully swim.
	You'll never scratch the full itch of you and friendship and love and real connection because you've never been your true self.
	And being willing to let things go by.
	It's hard.
	Relationships, friends, like all sorts of things.
	Things that may not, yeah.
	Being willing to say, this isn't it right now.
	This isn't.
	Yeah.
	You know, I've struggled with that with dating and stuff to be like, I'm just afraid to let go because what it, you know, it's just such a reaction, you know?
	What if some part of me, there's a subconscious part of me that's, what if there's nothing else?
	You know?
	Yeah.
	Is there like, have you met people where you've, you've kind of felt like now the idea of them not being there is too scary to actually leave the situation, even though it's probably not right.
	Oh, I think that's happened to me before in the past for sure.
	You know, I think taking some time from dating and stuff helps me get a better view of that and see it, you know?
	What are the apps?
	I mean, I've been in a relationship for eight years.
	What are the apps now?
	Yeah, what do you do?
	I just got on, I just created a profile on Raya, but I haven't opened it up.
	I haven't started it.
	Oh, right.
	So I'm not sure if I want to.
	I've kind of like, it's been like a month now that I've had it, and I just don't know if I, I just don't know How much I want to be spending my time trying to manage that, and then how much do I want to just kind of let it happen?
	But totally, and also when your job-I mean, I guess you meet a lot of people in your job, yeah.
	You meet a decent amount, a lot of them is men.
	That's that's true.
	Although you could change that, I guess.
	You could just start inviting more people.
	You might find more like-minds in the female space.
	Yeah, I might have to get out and get a couple more dames around, you know.
	Wouldn't be a bad idea.
	But I remember being on in my in my year, I think, between two relationships, being single and having a Ryo account.
	And one of the, I was like scrolling, and one of the interests someone had put was coconut oil.
	And I just closed the app and deleted it, and then there's no one back.
	It just seems too surface level.
	James Blake, man, thank you so much for spending time, brother.
	Yeah, man, my pleasure.
	It's so nice to be here, and thanks for having me.
	You know, I'm a fan as well as a friend, but I just I love what you do, and it's great to actually see the place.
	Yeah, welcome to Inside of the Internet, man.
	Yeah, thank you, man.
	Thank you for all your wonderful music.
	And is there music that people can like, you know, it's such a generic question, but yo, is there, you're going to keep making music.
	That's the plan.
	Okay, good.
	I'm going to keep making it.
	The next thing, I think, is going to be more of a dance-orientated slash more electronic-y type thing, which I've just in the process of finishing.
	But who knows how long that kind of thing takes.
	But I'm also, I've got a club night that I'm doing at the moment called CMYK in partnership with Rhonda, a club named Ronda.
	Rhonda presents CMYK, and that's my club night that I've been doing around the country.
	And so if anyone wants to come and see me, DJ, and I'm playing a lot of my new music there, then they can come and see that.
	Groovy, man.
	We'll put the link in the description.
	Thanks so much, man.
	Great to see you.
	Yeah, man.
	Loads of love.
	Thanks, brother.
	Now I'm just floating on the breeze And I feel I'm falling like these leaves I must be cornerstone Oh, but when I reach that ground I'll share this peace of mind I found I can feel it in my bones But it's gonna take a little bit
	Ladies and gentlemen, I'm Jonathan Kite, and welcome to Kite Club, a podcast where I'll be sharing thoughts on things like current events, stand-up stories, and seven ways to pleasure your partner.
	The answer may shock you.
	Sometimes I'll interview my friends.
	Sometimes I won't.
	And as always, I'll be joined by the voices in my head.
	You have three new voice messages.
	A lot of people are talking about Kite Club.
	I've been talking about Kite Club for so long, longer than anybody else.
	So great.
	Hi, Suiar.
	Easy to you.
	Anyone who doesn't listen to Kite Club is a dodgy bloody wanker.
	Jamain.
	Hi, I'll take a quarter powder with cheese and a McFlurry.
	Sorry, sir, but our ice cream machine is broken.
	I think Tom Hanks just butt-dialed me.
	Anyway, first rule of Kite Club is tell everyone about Kite Club.
	Second rule of Kite Club is tell everyone about Kite Club.
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