On today’s episode of Quarantine Sessions, we check in with Dave Helmer of Iowa City band, Crystal City. We reached Dave at his home by phone. 

You can listen below or find 319 Creates on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and Stitcher. You can also follow on Facebook and Instagram.

Podcast Transcription

Mike Weber: Welcome back to 319 Creates, I’m your host Mike Weber. On today’s episode of Quarantine Sessions, we check in with Dave Helmer of Iowa City band, Crystal City. We reached Dave at his home by phone. 

Dave Helmer, welcome to 319 Creates. 

Dave Helmer: Hi. Thanks for having me. 

Mike Weber: So how are you hanging in there with the quarantine?

Dave Helmer: Oh, I’m doing alright. Practicing a lot of guitar and spending more time kind of cooking than I have been. 

Mike Weber: So how has this affected, I mean, obviously you haven’t been able to play live shows anymore. Have you guys tried doing anything else to fill in the gaps? 

Dave Helmer: Well, we did do a concert, maybe a couple of weeks ago. We did an online concert and that was alright. That was a lot of fun. And that helped. Definitely. Put a little bit of scratch in our pocket. But other than that, not really. Just been laying low. You know, you can save a lot of money by just not going nowhere. 

Mike Weber: That’s very true. 

Dave Helmer: And, I repair guitars. So I still got a few repairs going, but that’s kind of dried up too. 

Mike Weber: So you were mentioning that you’ve been working more on cooking, are you trying to actually learn more stuff or just that’s how you’re spending your time?  

Dave Helmer: You know, we’ve been making veggie tacos, chicken tacos, some soups, you know. Kinda constantly using onions and garlic, the kind of mainstays. But yeah, just getting the time to cook is nice actually.

Mike Weber: So is that not something that you normally did? 

Dave Helmer: Not really, no. I usually work until, you know, go to work at 10 in the morning, come home anywhere from 7 to 10 at night. 

Mike Weber: Oh geez. 

Dave Helmer: Every night, pretty much. You know.

Mike Weber: So then you have a lot more time on your hand. 

Dave Helmer: Yeah. The guitar workshop and playing shows really takes up a lot of your time.

Mike Weber: Wow. 

Dave Helmer: I mean, maintaining tools. It’s been kind of nice, you know, trying to find the silver linings in things. It’s been real nice just to be able to practice guitar. That’s the one thing that I’ve really been enjoying a lot of. 

Mike Weber: Are you writing any new music?

Dave Helmer: Yep. We have a new record we’re working on, of a bunch of old tunes. But, new ideas are always kind of flowing. I record little snippets on my phone. Or if I’m sitting at my recording desk, plug in and try to get a good fidelity document of something, you know? But, yeah. There’s new ideas flowing. 

Mike Weber: So, is there anything else that you’ve started doing in this time period that you didn’t really see yourself doing before? 

Dave Helmer: Oh, we’re working on putting a garden together out in the yard. We live here in West Branch. We’ve got enough yard to have a garden, and that’s something that I can’t imagine we would have time for. But now that we do, we’re gonna go for it. We’d never done a garden or anything. Or I haven’t, but Sam has.

Mike Weber: Yeah, gardening is pretty cool. Nicole and I do that here in Cedar Rapids. What type of vegetables are you thinking about planting out there? 

Dave Helmer: We already got some garlic going and some carrots and some potatoes and some lettuce, onions. I think zucchini and cucumbers too. I kind of imagine I have a lot of back pain in my future. 

Mike Weber: It’s not that bad. 

Dave Helmer: Yeah, it’ll be okay. 

Mike Weber: So what would you say that you’re most looking forward to once this whole thing starts to blow over? 

Dave Helmer: A couple of things I’m looking forward to is, just getting to crank up a tube amp with a band, and playing a show. That’s going to be a lot of fun when we get to do that. And, just being able to get together with people, play music. I mean, with other guitar players and drummers and stuff like that. And, having people come though my workshop is kind of nice. You know, right now, no one’s coming by at all. I like that too. Having people come in and hang out while we talk about their instrument, their guitar. I kind of miss that. 

Mike Weber: Yeah. I feel like everyone’s kind of feeling a certain amount of social isolation right now. 

Dave Helmer: Absolutely.

Mike Weber: A lot of us are used to going out and playing shows or just going to shows. And for a lot of us in the music scene especially, that was the way that we interacted with everyone around us. And now that has been completely removed. I think that’s been a period of adjustment for most of us. 

Dave Helmer: Yeah. Are you missing it too? 

Mike Weber: Oh, absolutely. Yeah. I think we’re at a point here that we’re definitely close to, if not over, the longest that I’ve gone without shooting a live show in five plus years. So. 

Dave Helmer: Yeah, I bet.

Mike Weber: So yeah, it’s a bit of a struggle for me. That’s one of the reasons I started this project. Just trying to keep myself busy and engaged with the community when my normal path of doing that has been removed. And as awesome as the Facebook live concerts are, and as much as I’ve been enjoying watching all the bands do them, my engagement with the music scene has always been behind a camera. Trying to figure out a way that somehow I can do that with a live feed doesn’t exactly work. And I’m not sure if there’s a way to make it work. So yeah, for me personally, I can’t wait for things to calm down and us to all be able to get back together. And actually see you guys play again. See anybody play and be able to get back behind a camera. Because I mean, almost everything that I do in my craft as photographer does kind of revolve being in close proximity to people, and I can’t do that right now. So it has been a period of adjustment for sure. 

Dave Helmer: Yeah, it’s crazy. I agree with everything you said. 

Mike Weber: Yeah. And it’s nice to be able to do this, at least. Working out ways that I can still communicate with musicians and get musicians’ stories out to people. Because I view my photography as I’m telling the story of the music scene. Right. And, by doing stuff like this with 319 Creates, I’m still able to do that to a certain extent. But it’s different. And I think that it’s good for the music scene to hear these stories and get these interviews – as far as how they’re dealing with this crisis right now, but it’s not the same.

Dave Helmer: Sure there’s so many people. But from between Iowa City and Cedar Rapids, there’s so many players and musicians that all their money has just disappeared, you know?

Mike Weber: Yeah. And it’s crazy too, because a lot of the musicians I know, while they do make money from playing music, a lot of them have day jobs that are something in the service sector. And that whole industry, with very few exceptions, is just not there anymore.

So you have a lot of these musicians who not only are they losing their income from playing live shows, but they’ve also been furloughed or laid off. They’re just left kind of holding their hands and going, “What do we do now?”

Dave Helmer: Well, hopefully people have documentation and everything’s in line to show they’ve been working, you know?

Mike Weber: Yeah, I hope so too. But from my understanding, they’re being a lot more flexible as far as the onus of proof that you have to provide to the state to get some help.

Dave Helmer: I hope so. Yeah, I just hope it stays that way. 

Mike Weber: I hope so too. And at the end of the day, my hope – and at this point I feel like maybe I’m just being a bit too optimistic – is that this is going to resolve itself relatively quickly. I know deep down inside that we should probably be prepared for another month, two, maybe even three of this.

(Dave laughing)

Mike Weber: But, there’s definitely part of me that’s being really hopeful that we are towards the peak of that curve and that things are going to start getting better. They’ll figure out a vaccine or something and everything will return to normal by summer. But you know, with every day that goes on. Everyday brings another postponement or cancellation. The other day, I saw that 80/35 was canceled for this year, and that was a big shocker to me. 

Dave Helmer: I mean, that’s big. That’s summer in Des Moines, you know? 

Mike Weber: Yeah. It’s crazy to me. It sounds like Luke over at Flat Black is still like, “I’m preparing for Gray Area, but at this point I’m not holding my breath that it’s still gonna happen.” So. Yeah. I mean, I’m really looking forward to when things get back to normal, but it’s an interesting time right now. 

Dave Helmer: Yeah. I wonder if there’s – it might be till September, October. Or even further than that. It may be a long time, so we get to play and wait and see. I hope not. I hope that it gets resolved soon, but mother nature is going to do what she’s going to do, so we’ll just keep rolling with it, you know? 

Mike Weber: Yeah. Like I said, my hope right now is just that the doctors out there will figure out a solid treatment – or even better, a vaccine for it – and we’ll get that out into the wild and everything will go back to normal. But for right now, yeah, we’re just kinda stuck with this. I also look at it from the standpoint of, the longer that we’re kind of cooped up, I wonder how much pent up creative energy, we’re just kind of bottling up. And once things do return to normal, the explosion that we’re going to see of bands getting back together, new bands forming and just this deluge of new creative content.

I’m really hoping that once everything blows over, we’re going to see this renewed energy in people to do stuff like go out to shows. Because we’ve had conversations in the past – you and I – about attendance at local shows. And I’m really hoping that this situation will make more people appreciate what they have. Especially, in Cedar Rapids, which is not a known for its music scene. I feel like it is always pulling teeth for me to get some of my Cedar Rapids friends to go to Iowa City for a show. And I’m really hoping that – 

Dave Helmer: That’s a long trip though, to be fair. That’s like your whole day driving from Cedar Rapids to Iowa City. 

Mike Weber: I mean, I guess. I’m just used to it. It really doesn’t feel like it’s that big a deal to hop in my car and drive 28 minutes down the road. 

Dave Helmer: I’m just joking. Yeah, I agree. 

Mike Weber: I’m really hoping that this will kind of get people to realize that they can’t take this stuff for granted. You know, we’re sitting here in a time where two months ago, any Friday you could have gone to Iowa City and there was probably at least three different places you could have gone to see live music. And now that’s not an option anymore. I’m hoping that this’ll just remind people that the arts and the music is something that they shouldn’t be taking for granted and they need to get out and experience it while they can.

Dave Helmer: I think it will. I think there’s so  much talent between the two communities, you know. And then you think of the two communities as one. There’s so much in the corridor. There’s so much there. There’s great singers, there’s great songwriters, there’s great bands. I bet there’s going to be a huge creative output. I bet there’s a lot of people practicing their guitars and writing songs. And I think there’s going to be a big boom of quarantine songs after all this is over. 

Mike Weber: I really hope so. 

Well, Dave, thanks for taking some time and talking with us here today and we’ll catch you later.

Dave Helmer: Totally. Thanks for having me. Have a good day. 

Mike Weber: Dave Helmer is the songwriter of Iowa City band, Crystal City. Their new album, Three Dimensionality, is available on vinyl. You can find them online, Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.

You can subscribe to the podcast on most platforms, including Spotify, Apple Podcasts and Google Play. Thanks for listening and we will catch you next time on 319 Creates.

On today’s episode of Quarantine Sessions, we check in with Devin Alexander of Quad Cities band Giallows. We reached Devin at his home studio by phone. 

You can listen below or find 319 Creates on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and Stitcher. You can also follow on Facebook and Instagram.

Podcast Transcription

Mike Weber: Welcome back to 319 Creates, I’m your host, Mike Weber. On today’s episode of Quarantine Sessions, we check in with Devin Alexander of Quad Cities band Giallows. We reached Devin at his home studio by phone. 

Alright. Devin Alexander, welcome back to 319 Creates. 

Devin Alexander: Thank you so much for having me back, man. This is great. 

Mike Weber: So I will say that the episode that you were first on has not gone out yet. It was actually going to go out about two weeks ago when all this started happening, but I’ve put all the other projects on pause for 319 Creates until the world resets back to normal. 

Devin Alexander: Yeah it’ll be a little bit.

Mike Weber: So Devin, how are you holding up in quarantine?

Devin Alexander: Well, I’m working from home and, the band is still jamming for the time being. I know we’re not supposed to be, but the drummer and guitar player are relatively quarantined in their day to day lives as well. And I’m working from home now, so it is not too bad of a deal. 

Mike Weber: Well, it’s good that you’re still able to see your bandmates and do a little bit. I know the other day you guys did a live stream. You want to tell me about what made you decide to do that and getting it set up and how you feel it went? 

Devin Alexander: Well, we’ve been talking about doing live streams since, boy, at least last June when we played at the live from Factory of Fear Haunted House event. And, at that particular time I couldn’t do Facebook streams with high quality audio for some reason. They just said your profile is not updated yet, so you can’t do this. So we were doing YouTube. But just last week I figured out that Facebook now allows you to select a wide variety of input sources now. So we were just like, alright, let’s just start streaming practices because we’re not gigging. And if people throw us a little bit of tips through our PayPal account, then we can at the very least, be slowly working towards, you know, vinyl money or whatever. 

I thought it went pretty well. From a technical standpoint, I’m basically just micing up all the sources in the basement and then mixing them in Logic. And then, Logic by itself won’t be a source for Facebook to look at, but I have another program that sort of like coalesces all sources on your computer into one assignable output source. So that’s the only reason why it works the way it does for us because I already have that piece of software.

Mike Weber: Interesting. And that was actually the question I was going to ask is how that all shakes out with making that work. That’s something that I’ve definitely, I’ve been kind of keeping an eye on all the local bands that have been trying to do livestreams. And some of them sound better than others. But I think it’s really cool that we’re now at a point from a technology perspective, at least, that options like this are available. 

Devin Alexander: Yeah. And I think people who are waiting to jump into it now have a reason to. You know, if you’ve got live gigs, you’re probably like, “Eh, streaming.” But now that we don’t have anything better to do, it’s like, “Hey, I guess I’ll figure out the streaming thing.”

And for us at least, it has worked out really well. I’m very happy with the overall sound quality. And you know, even though it’s basically like a low bit rate MP3 over Facebook, it still sounds relatively listenable. It’s not, you know, a single microphone on a USB camera pointed into a big basement. It’s, individual sources, and I’m giving it some mixing love here. 

Mike Weber: Yeah. I didn’t have a chance to watch your livestream. I was actually on one of the last shoots that I’ve had to do at the time, but Nicole watched it and she said that she was actually really impressed with just the audio quality that you were able to achieve through the stream. Because you’re right, some of the people that we’ve seen doing the livestreams – they don’t have the type of equipment that you do and they’re just throwing up their phone and doing what they can do. Which is still really cool and it’s still a way to be able to experience some local music. But when you’re able to take it to that next level and be able to have the fine tuning that you can do in Logic. I think that’s really cool. I mean, the next step of course, is trying to figure out how to get a better camera attached to it. That’s something that I’ve actually been looking into. Nicole and I were talking talking about –

Devin Alexander: The one that we’re using is just that Logitech C 920, which actually looks really good if I light the basement well enough – which I can, but I’ve been keeping it really dark. I found that in general, an audience will forgive a low video quality if the audio is good. But the other way around it’s not the same. If the quality is gorgeous, but the audio is garbage, people are like, no. 

Mike Weber: Yeah. And that’s one of the reasons, like we were talking a few weeks ago when I invested in this new audio recorder. But that’s like when I do video. You know, I have a higher end camera and I can get really good quality video, but that’s not the end all be all. And people will rather look at a poor video with good audio than a good video.

Devin Alexander: Yup, exactly. Exactly. They’ll forgive video quality a lot, but if they have to listen to garbled stuff or stuff that’s really crushed by like, you know, bit rate compression, or like I said, like a single microphone in a room when people are actually trying to play music and the microphone is not in the right spot. It’s just all symbols. Usually it’s all symbols. 

Mike Weber: So I’m going to bring us back to – you mentioned that you’re working from home now. Was that something that you had ever done prior to this? Is this a whole new experience for you? How has that working out for you? 

Devin Alexander: I have never worked from home. Today was day five of working from home. I started last Thursday. And it’s a fucking nightmare because… For a variety of reasons, it’s a fucking nightmare. I don’t have any kids and I don’t have any dogs or whatever, so there’s nothing in my house that’s distracting to me. But, the place that I’m working wasn’t quite ready for the entire establishment to start working from home all at once. So the only thing that’s a nightmare for me, I should say, is just inability to interact with customers the way that I normally do, you know. Which is quick, efficient, get them what they need and get them on their way. But, that might be resolved tomorrow, we’ll find out. They’re doing some infrastructure upgrades. But anyways, that’s boring. But, I don’t mind working from home. I actually like everything except not being able to do my job. 

Mike Weber: Well you can’t have everything, I guess. 

Devin Alexander: Yeah. Right. 

Mike Weber: Yeah. I’ve found it very interesting that it seems to me like there’s a lot of different opinions on this. Like Nicole works from home on a pretty regular basis. Before this all happened, she was working from home three or four days a week, so this is nothing really new to her. And some weeks she just wouldn’t go into the office at all if there wasn’t a need. And now her company has gone full on. I don’t think that there’s anybody that’s actually in the office at this point.

Devin Alexander: Well, good. 

Mike Weber: And for her it’s like it’s another day. She feels like she’s way more productive when she works from home anyway, so this is all good news for her. But it’s interesting seeing some of the other people, kind of like you were saying, that just they’re not used to that and it’s such a jarring experience. Going from getting up, getting dressed, going to the office, working, coming home – to you just kind of roll out of bed and you sit at your desk.

Devin Alexander: Dude. It’s so good. That is like my favorite part. 

Mike Weber: You and Nicole will agree on that. 

Devin Alexander: Yeah. It’s like set my alarm for five minutes before I have to get on the computer. Done. 

Mike Weber: Yeah. That’s what Nicole does on a pretty regular basis. But I also find it interesting, people complain about losing the trip. Like it’s no longer work. It feels weird. I’m still at home. And I’ve also been really surprised, how there are a lot of people who just don’t have a desk at home. 

Devin Alexander: A what? 

Mike Weber: A desk. Like just a place to sit your laptop down and work. She was telling me how some of her coworkers have had to like go and buy a desk because they had nowhere in the house to set up a laptop. And I’m like, really?

Devin Alexander: That’s so weird. I mean, people like myself who do a lot of audio stuff where like I have already got a desk. It’s got all my stuff on it. 

Mike Weber: Yeah. We were talking to somebody and they were like, “So Nicole, how are you doing working from home?” You say that like this is a new thing.

Devin Alexander: Yeah. There’s no difference there. 

Mike Weber: Yeah. And for me, with the little work that I still have, I mean, I always worked from home anyway because I’m a freelancer, so that’s not really a change on my part. But I think it’s interesting and I really wonder in the longterm if this whole large social experiment, as it were, is really gonna change the way that people and companies think about work habits. Like, are we going to see that most people tend to be more productive working from home than coming into an office? And will that cause a shift in the way that businesses and organizations allocate their resources?

Devin Alexander: My favorite thing about it is that they have no – not a single leg to stand on – now saying that the internet is not a utility.

Mike Weber: We were actually talking about that a little bit earlier today 

Devin Alexander: It’s like, yeah, it’s the real deal. So you either, you know, make it the real deal for people or you better not expect them to work from home because at this point, just about everybody has the internet, I’m sure. And if they don’t, they probably don’t work for, you know, a tech industry or something like that. But I think everybody who sits at a computer is expected to be able to work from home. What about those people who don’t have that? 

Mike Weber: Yeah, and taking it even broader than that – we’re starting to see, not necessarily here in Iowa, but in other states and other bigger cities that some of the school districts are opting to finish out the school year remotely and are actually asking students to do stuff like via Zoom and other types of video conferencing to still finish out the education that they’re supposed to get for the rest of the year. And it seems to me it’s really difficult to put that onus on, especially lower income people when they might not have the internet. And even if they do, I think a lot of people don’t necessarily realize the amount of people who their only access to the internet is via their smartphone. 

Devin Alexander: Yeah.

Mike Weber: Which in a lot of cases is not capable of doing the things necessary to facilitate any type of teleconferencing or video conferencing or anything like that.

Devin Alexander: Yeah, exactly. So we’ll see what happens after this. I hope that what it really does is, you know, helps make the argument that the internet is just like water, is just like electricity is just like plumbing, etc. 

Mike Weber: I feel like a lot of people in the tech sector have vocally been trying to push for a broader understanding of what access to the internet really means in recent years. And I feel like this is just spelling out their case word for word for them. Showing just how important it is to have reliable internet in every home. And moreover – this was something interesting that I was listening to on NPR the other day – beyond just that, we’re also now opening up this conversation to, this job which you as an employer said could not be done by somebody who is disabled. We are now proving that it can be.

Devin Alexander: Eat shit, you fucking idots.

Mike Weber: Yeah. Like if you’re saying that you can’t hire somebody with disabilities because they have to come to the office and you can’t make accommodations and now that same job is being done remotely.

Devin Alexander: By people, at home, on the internet. Yeah, it’s like eat it guys. Start hiring people who can do stuff. Hopefully when it comes back – like I’m exceptionally lucky to still be employed during this, but I have many friends who are now unemployed and collecting unemployment as a result of what’s going on because they work in a very public facing situation. I hope that when they get hired back, it also draws a lot of other people into the workforce who maybe weren’t in there before for exactly the reasons that you were just talking about. 

Mike Weber: Yeah. And talking about people who don’t have the luxury of just shifting over and working from home and have been furloughed, fired, laid off, what have you. I’m hoping that this is creating more of a understanding of the nature of the way large portions of our economy work. I feel like in the past we were very flippant about like the need of service workers and to watch how overnight that entire industry can just be shut off.

Devin Alexander: Yup. And now we’re like thanking our grocery store workers and thanking our fast food workers. Not that I didn’t before, but now it’s like, Jesus, thank God they’re here. Before, you maybe take it for granted because things aren’t about to go down the tubes. But now it’s like I go to Hy-Vee and I’m like, “Hey, thanks for working. I appreciate it.”

Mike Weber: Yeah, I’ll tell you that I went to Hy-Vee earlier today and I was very happy to find toilet paper.

Devin Alexander: Oh, you had some, huh? Interesting. 

Mike Weber: Yeah, I had some to begin with. You know, I usually go to Target.

Devin Alexander: I’ve been wiping my butt. I’m a modern man. 

Mike Weber: But, you know, I usually go to Target and I get the big package. That’ll last me like two months. So I still had a bunch when this thing started. I’m like, “This’ll last like a week or two. People are going to stop losing their minds and the stuff’s going to come back into stock.” And with every day that went on I ended up like, “Okay, I think we need to get some groceries.” And I go to Hy-Vee thinking they’ll totally have toilet paper today. No. Yesterday I ended up going to like three different stores. People are still hoarding this stuff. I just, I don’t get it. 

Devin Alexander: So stupid. And selling it on eBay per roll. I didn’t see this personally, so I could be full of shit, but I heard from a friend who was like, “Have you seen people, they’re selling it by the roll or the selling it by the, you know, by the square?” It’s like, dude, come on guys. 

Mike Weber: Yeah, I mean, I wouldn’t be surprised. I think I read somewhere that, I want to say it was Facebook marketplace was actually proactively looking for people who were trying to sell toilet paper and removing the listings. You can’t do that. 

Devin Alexander: Good. They should get the shit kicked out of them – with no toilet paper to wipe it off, I guess. 

Mike Weber: Yeah, probably one of the funnier things I’ve seen recently – we have a couple of local bars that are still trying to stay open and do like carry out only service. And one of them was doing a giveaway promotion. It was like, the 20th or 30th customer that came in also got a couple of cans of beer and two rolls of good old bar toilet paper. 

Devin Alexander: A couple rolls. That’s awesome. 

Mike Weber: Yeah, it’s interesting. It’ll be interesting to see, as all of this kind of moves forward and passes on, just what things are going to stick around from this period? Like as we go six months down the road, let me say that again. Six months back into normal life. Like once things get back to normal, once this is fully in our rear view mirror, what things that we have learned in this period are we going to look back at and hang on to? And how much of it are we just going to basically instantly forget as we move on?

Devin Alexander: I hope we don’t forget too much of it.

Mike Weber: I hope not too. And I’m seeing a lot of positive things that people are doing. That, you know, they didn’t do previously. For me, I miss my friends a lot. I can’t go see them, or at least I shouldn’t go see them. So we’ve been doing a lot of video hangouts, which is not something that I would have done previous to this. I think that opens up a lot of possibilities for, you know, having closer  connections with your friends. I think it’s really easy on a Friday night when your friends are like, “Oh, we’re having a couple of people over. You want to come over?” to be like I don’t want to leave the house and just not have that interaction. And when it becomes more acceptable to do those types of video based hangouts, I think it’s going to allow more people that access to do that personal interaction that I think we all need.

Devin Alexander: Yeah, for sure. As an example, I was talking to Al’s wife today, by the way, he had a little girl in February. Congratulations to them. 

Mike Weber: Oh, wow. Awesome. 

Devin Alexander: She was saying, they were thinking about reaching out to people this weekend to play that, “You Don’t Know Jack” online trivia game where you can just log into it with your phone. So it’s like exceptionally easy. 

Mike Weber: Yeah. You know, Claire and Larson from Dead Emperors, right? 

Devin Alexander: What’s his name? 

Mike Weber: Matt Larson. 

Devin Alexander: Did he used to play bass in, um… Is he a bass player now? 

Mike Weber: He’s a little bit of everything. He was a bass player. He originally was bass in Dead Emperors. Now he’s guitar in Dead Emperors.

Devin Alexander: Okay. No, I haven’t met those guys yet. I feel like when this is all over, we’re due to have a gig with them here at some point. 

Mike Weber: Yeah. But, so we’ve been trying to do hangouts with them and they found, I think it’s Jackbox Games or whatever. You get a room code you put in and you can just do it all online. That’s been, 

Devin Alexander: And it’s like, you put in your stuff and you can follow along on a TV. Or on your computer or your smart TV or whatever. And it just, you know, it just works. It’s like, “Oh, all right, cool. Very cool.”

Mike Weber: Yeah. And I think if we hang on to that extra layer of social interaction, I think it will be a nice thing for us to take away from the situation. 

Devin Alexander: I think it would be a very… Like I’m perceiving this whole situation, sort of in the analogy of someone pinching the garden hose closed. As soon as we can get back together and start doing stuff, I feel like there’s going to be a pretty awesome explosion that first weekend when they’re like, “Uh, actually I think we’re pretty good.” That first weekend is going to be insane. It’s going to be live music everywhere. It’s going to be live comedy everywhere. It’s going to be live entertainment out in the world, and people are going to be – at least for a little bit – they’re going to be like, “Man, I missed this so much.” I hope, you know, I hope. 

And then I hope, like you said, we retain some of those other avenues of staying close with our friends when we don’t feel like going out to bars and we don’t feel like whatever. We can just be social in the privacy of our own homes. Isn’t that strange? But that’s my hope. That’s my desire is that when all these events that got canceled get rescheduled, I hope that the entire, you know, the entirety of humanity comes out in full force to support those things. Beause that’s the other thing that people were sort of taking for granted is entertainment. It was everywhere. I mean, it’s still technically all over the internet, but as far as like music, art, comedy, performance, movies, all that stuff. It’s like you can’t take that for granted anymore because what would we be doing right now if we didn’t have that stuff?

Mike Weber: This will lead me into my final question. So if you had to pick one thing. Like right now, we’re thinking forward. We’re thinking to when all of this is going to blow over and life is going to reset back to normal. 

Devin Alexander: Sure.

Mike Weber: What are you looking forward to doing again the most?

Devin Alexander: I don’t think you’ll be surprised to hear that I’m just looking forward to playing live again.

It’s going to be, you know, by that point, I bet it will be over a month. If not, you know, six weeks, seven weeks or something of pent up being able to rock out really loud with a bunch of people who are ready to be rocked on. That’s what I’m missing. Second to that will be being able to just have people over and watch a movie or, you know, I got a birthday party coming up that is going to definitely going to be rescheduled. I like to cook ribs and, you know, cook stuff for people.

This year it went from being, you know, sixth annual and no big deal to, “Oh, this party’s going to get f’n real this year.” Because when we finally get to reschedule it, it’s going to be out of control. In a good way. But yeah, I’m looking forward to just being able to play gigs because I think – not to belabor the point – but I think I was taking… I think local bands, you know, bands that play mostly in their home towns, and even bands that tour constantly. I think bands in general maybe start to take live shows a little bit for granted. I don’t mean that in a negative way. But I mean to be able to capture the excitement of those first few live gigs. Like I kind of remember my first couple actual live gigs in front of an audience. I kind of remember them, but after a while it kind of goes away. I don’t really get nervous. It’s a pleasant feeling to jam out live. But to pinch that garden hose shut like that, and then eventually let it fly and just, you know. Just spray it all over the audience is going to be terrific. 

Mike Weber: Yeah, I mean, I’ll piggyback off that real quick at the end here. But I feel the exact same way. I’d have to sit down and figure it out, but we are really close to the longest that I’ve ever gone without shooting a live show since I got real serious about photographing live music.

So it’s going to be a very interesting experience when we’re finally at a point where it is safe for me to grab my cameras and go out to a bar and experience live music again. Like it is going to be something really exciting. And also, you know, by that point it’ll be like, “Oh, do I remember how to do this right?”

Devin Alexander: You miss going out to a bar and having every band look exactly the same because the lights never change?

Mike Weber: Yeah. I mean, I just like getting out of the house.

Devin Alexander: Oh yeah. Totally.

Mike Weber: I like listening to the music and I like experiencing it. So for me, I think that that is… I mean, if you would’ve asked me last week, I probably would’ve said, I just want to go out to a Mexican place and get a margarita and sit down.

Devin Alexander: Dude. Right?

Mike Weber: But as the days go on and the days turned into weeks, it’s becoming more and more like… no, the thing that I miss the most is being able to get out of the house and do the photography that I want to do. 

Devin Alexander: Yeah. Get out and connect with humanity on that level in an artistic and an expressive way. Yeah. 

Mike Weber: Well, all right, Devin, thanks for taking the time and talking with us today. We’ll catch you later. 

Devin Alexander: I appreciate the invite, man. And I look forward to hearing this one. And the other one as soon as you’re ready to put them up. 

Mike Weber: All right, we’ll catch you later. 

Devin Alexander: All right. Thanks. Bye. 

Mike Weber: You can find Devin’s band on Facebook, Instagram, and Bandcamp. You can find more information as well as the transcription in the show notes. 

You can subscribe to the podcast on most platforms, including Spotify, Apple Podcasts and Google Play. Thanks for listening and we will catch you next time on 319 Creates.

On today’s episode of Quarantine Sessions, we talk to Miss Christine about adapting to life as a musician under social distancing. We reached Christine by phone at their home studio.

You can listen below or find 319 Creates on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and Stitcher. You can also follow on Facebook and Instagram.

Podcast Transcription

Quarantine Sessions 2: Miss Christine

Mike Weber: Welcome back to 319 Creates. I’m your host Mike Weber. On today’s episode of Quarantine Sessions, we talk to Miss Christine about adapting to life as a musician under social distancing. We reached Christine by phone at their home studio.

Miss Christine, welcome to 319 Creates. 

Christine Moad: Thank you so much for having me.

Mike Weber: So how are you holding up in the quarantine? 

Christine Moad: Oh, well, that is quite a question. It varies day by day. I’ve definitely been keeping myself busy. The first week I had three live stream concerts. And just kind of dove right into that experience. And I’m a workaholic so I was using that to distract myself from these feelings that I’m feeling because my whole tour has been canceled.

But this week I’m not doing a livestream concert and just really focusing more on my mental health and meditating and tapping into these feelings because they’re real and I shouldn’t try to hide them. 

How are you coping with this? 

Mike Weber: Well, I’m basically doing the same thing, trying to keep myself busy as we can see here, taking on a new project.

Why don’t we talk about the live stream? That’s something that I don’t think you’ve done a whole lot in the past. Obviously that’s one of the few options that we have available at this point. But why don’t you talk to me a little bit about diving into that and learning how to do it and any obstacles you’ve ran into.

Christine Moad: Yeah, so it’s been a new experience. There’s this program called OBS that I’ve been using with the help of my tech guy, and we’ve been just live streaming. We were on KHOI Radio in Ames, and that live stream ended up being broadcast live on the radio. So that was a new experience. 

Then I put together the Musicians 4 Bernie. That’s a group that I founded. Our first live stream concert, and we had six different bands from all over the country play and we had them live streaming in. So there’s definitely a big tech learning curve to this and I am grateful that I have someone that can help me with it. And, yeah, it’s been a new experience.

It’s amazing to be able to perform to anyone. I’ve had friends in Alabama send me videos of them singing along to my songs, friends in Tennessee, around the country. But it’s just doesn’t feel the same as being in a live concert with an audience and that vibe and picking up on that atmosphere. And that’s something that I’m really missing and that I get a lot out of. And you never know how much you miss it until you can’t do it. So that’s kind of where I’m at with all of that. 

Mike Weber: Yeah, I mean, I definitely feel you there. As you know, as well as anybody, I’m usually out at shows a couple times a week, and now… This is the longest that I’ve gone without going to a show probably in five years and it’s only getting worse.

But I find it interesting that we are – as artists and creatives – actively trying to find other ways that we can still do the things that we want to do in this situation that we’re living through. And seeing all these bands quickly adapting and putting on these digital concerts, I think is very endearing.

I think it’s really great to see that we’re all trying to work together and make the best of of a bad situation. Have you started looking into other ways that you can kind of, I don’t want to use the word monopolize, but, you know, try and make the best out of what we’re dealing with right now?

Christine Moad: Not so much. I guess… I think this last week I really proved to myself that live streaming is a viable option and something that after this passes that I’ll probably continue to do in some capacity just because it’s been very successful. And I’ve been able to make money doing it, and I’ve been really grateful for that because of all of my gig cancellations.

I think I’ve had 16 gigs canceled since this has all been going on. But yeah, there’s so many creative outlets and I’m so grateful for the internet during this time. I’ve actually been thinking a lot about you and your photography and, just, you know, for you to do the same thing of taking photographs of people playing, but in the live stream format, would… I just was imagining your photo albums of these live stream concerts and how that would just be such a different vibe. But also it’d be really cool to just document this time in some way. Obviously it’s just a totally different experience. 

Mike Weber: So I’ll give you a little anecdote. So we were watching the first live stream that you did. I guess that would be like last week at this point. And we were sitting watching, and you have that one song that you tend to flip off the audience for. I was waiting for you to do that. I had the screen capture set up. I’m like, “I’m going to catch this and I’m going to post this”, but then you didn’t do it. But yeah, that’s actually an interesting idea that I didn’t even think about. You know, I can’t photograph a live stream because I’m not there, but I could document it in another way.

I can get screen captures of the stream and they’re not me taking a photo, but then we start getting into that whole other discussion of like “What is art?” Am I a photographer because I have a camera in my hand or am I a photographer because I am capturing moments? So that’s an interesting thought and I’ve been trying to – talking about me personally and utilizing 319 Creates right now, I think is a very good outlet for me because right now I can’t really… I’m going to start doing more like city landscape stuff in the interim. But the biggest body of work that I have is live music. And that’s not happening right now. Anything else with photographing people just isn’t happening. So there’s very little that I’m able to do. Especially with my audience who follows me for music stuff, like trying to figure out a way to keep them engaged. Short of just digging through the archive. Nicole and I have been talking about, you know, maybe I should try live streaming a photo editing session or do a gallery critique where I talk about a band and photos that I’ve done of them over the years. But it’s really interesting trying to figure out ways to kind of adapt to this time and not being able to conduct ourselves as we normally would. And all of this just brings on more and more stress. 

So I’ll come back to to that. Have you found new ways of adjusting and coping to the situation? 

Christine Moad: Well, this kind of ties into what I was going to respond to what you just said. I think that it really just shows how we’re all in this together and just how much this affects every single person right now in some capacity. And thinking about you and your photography and taking photographs is often of people, whether it’s at a live concert or wherever that may be, and because people can’t really get together right now that totally changes your line of work. It changes my line work. So many different things, like the ripple effect of this is huge. And so coping with that stress and these feelings is a lot. I’m the type of person that I feel a lot of just how other people are feeling. I have a lot of compassion for the world and wanting people to just speak their truths and whatnot. So this is really hard for me because it’s at a point where – because I just want to help everybody as much as I can – I’m really feeling the weight of the world in some ways. But at the same time, I need to have that compassion back towards myself. And so I think I’m going to learn more about how to be better to myself because, you know, that’s really all I’m going to be able to do during this time because I can’t get together when groups of people or play a live show and pick up on that energy of the crowd or the people that I meet at it.

So it’s very challenging, but it gives me comfort to know that we’re all in this together and we’re all feeling the effects of it. And once we come out of this, we will be stronger and can all relate in some way to this time. That is, I think, a really powerful thing. 

Mike Weber: Yeah, it’s interesting. Nicole and I were actually talking about this yesterday. Talking about the lasting effects of this time and two things came up that we were thinking about is, you know, my son’s nine and a half now, and it occurred to me, this is going to be the biggest, like the first societal event in his memory. Like the way that I think about the death of Princess Diana or 9/11, that’s going to be the first real marker in his life. 20 years down the road he’s going to be talking about, like, “I remember when the Coronavirus pandemic happened.” Well hopefully, as long as we still have a planet in 20 years. 

Christine Moad: Yeah.

Mike Weber: But you get my point. This is an interesting situation. When we have an event that is so widespread and impacts so many different lives, that it becomes something… It is a point. It goes beyond just like, this is “history”, but this is a point of history. This is an event that lasted. Years and decades – again, if we’re still here centuries down the road – we will likely point back. As we’re sitting here, most people who paid attention to history could probably tell you, “Oh yeah, I at least know what the Spanish Flu was.” And for us to be going through that type of period again. I think the interesting thing, with the way the world is now, is we’re kind of packing together the Spanish Flu and parts of the Great Recession and the Great Depression all into one big ugly ball that we’re all kind of dealing with at the same time.

And, the other part of that is that as we figure out how to navigate and traverse this moment of history, we’re all making these adjustments to our day to day lives. Especially us as creatives, doing live streams or like me going back to doing more with the podcast. But the interesting thing that I find is how much of what we’re experiencing right now is going to carry over beyond this point.

You know, right now I’m really missing my friends and we’ve started doing Google Hangouts with them on a regular basis. It’s an interesting thing because if you asked me like two or three months ago, would you ever consider sitting down in front of a computer or a TV or an iPad and doing a video chat with your friends, I would been like, “I’d rather go see them.” The thought of just interacting with your friends in that capacity has never appealed to me and has always seemed kind of silly. Short of having  friends that are across the country – I mean Nicole and I have friends in Chicago and we text them, but we really only interact with them when we go visit.

I feel like this situation has kind of broken down that tech barrier. I think going out the other side of this, I feel like I’m going to be more likely to. You know,it’s winter – we don’t want to drive. Well, why don’t we just hop on a Google Hangout and do a Netflix Party or something.

I feel like I’m going to be far more likely to entertain that as an idea to still interact in a more direct capacity with my friends than I would have before this situation. 

Christine Moad: Yeah, totally. And Netflix Party is awesome. I’ve been doing a lot of that as well. The big thing for me with group chats is… So I worked for the Bernie campaign and we had a lot of group video calls with like 15 to sometimes 60 people in them. And you would like mute your microphone, obviously, so there wasn’t feedback. There’s just people not talking over each other all the time. In January when I worked for the campaign that was kind of my first introduction to video chat and using it in a bigger capacity. And I thought that was really cool for having these meetings and these different things like that. So it’s interesting now having that in this pandemic setting. The big thing for me is I’m an extrovert. I love parties. The cool thing about parties is you get to go off in the corner and talk to someone for a little while, but then you get to jump back into the group of people and then, you know, find someone else and you chat with them for a bit or whatever.

And in the group video chat environment, that is just not something that can be recreated. At all. I mean unless you did your own private video chat, just the two of you or something. So it’s interesting because I think I saw that Facebook Messenger, you can have up to 50 people in a video chat. And I learned that FaceTime has group chat. I do not have an iPhone, but I learned that recently. And you can have 32 people in one of those. And to me that sounds like… I don’t know what capacity you would use that in other than for like a business meeting or something. Because that is just a lot of people.

I love that we have the ability to use the internet to have this shared experience and we can connect in that way. But, you know, it just won’t be able to be a substitute for all things. And I think that’s how it’s supposed to be, but I’m just really missing those big social gatherings, I guess.

Mike Weber: Yeah, I definitely feel the same way. For me, it’s nice that we have this as an alternative. So like, I don’t feel like I’m completely disconnected from everything and everyone, but you’re right, there is a massive difference between hopping on a group video chat and being able to go over to somebody’s house. In the context of a house party and being able to hang out in the group and then move over here, move over there. But to me it’s better than nothing. And I’m hoping that this is broadening a lot of people’s ideas on how socializing can and should happen.

I’ve always felt that there’s a certain amount of us that – we make excuses for not being able to go out and see our friends. And there’s that line of, for whatever reason, I can’t get out of the house tonight to do this. And I feel like some of us put up barriers and that can socially isolate us from our friends. And if this situation teaches us that we don’t necessarily always have to be in the same room to socialize, I think that’s going to open up some roads for people that would otherwise feel more isolated. They now have an option that is more socially acceptable to still see and socialize with their friends.

Christine Moad: Totally.

Mike Weber: So I’m hoping that will be one of the, shall we say, lingering effects of this. 

Christine Moad: Yeah, and one thing with that is some people that have been tuning into my live stream are some introverted folks that I know who haven’t come to my actual live show for a plethora of reasons, but probably because there’s a lot of people there.

So it’s been really cool to see the people that I’ve reached with my livestream that wouldn’t come to a live show necessarily, just because you know, they’re more introverted or have social anxiety or things like that. So that’s been a cool thing to see with that different medium of being able to perform my music.

I can reach people in that way and that’s something that I want to continue to do after this, just because I totally understand that going to a live show with people at a bar or wherever it may be is not everyone’s cup of tea. And I’m glad that this platform allows me to be more accommodating to those folks. So that’s been something that I’ve learned from this. 

Mike Weber: Yeah. And I would like to see even more venues start doing, especially for like smaller shows, offering some type of live streaming option. Because I feel like there are a lot of people who are more socially introverted or even like on the anxiety spectrum that just… I have friends that will not go to shows with me full stop because they just have too much anxiety being around large groups of people. And then I tell them it’s a local music show, you’ll be fine because there’s nobody there. I think it’ll be nice to see more bands and more venues kind of adapt to giving this as an alternative.

And now that we’re kind of, you know, basically being forced to test out some of these concepts, I think we’re going to learn a lot, and I really hope it sticks around. 

So we’re just about out of time and I’ve got one last question I’m going to pose to you. Once everything starts calming down and we go back to normal, what would you say is the number one thing that you want to do once society kind of resets?

Christine Moad: Whew. Wow. That’s a big question. So this has catapulted my whole life timeline, I guess. Because I was planning to move to New York City in June, so that’s going to be pushed back. The biggest thing for me is I just want to be able to travel. And what I love about touring is going to a city and before the show, walking around and people watching and observing what that is like. And I’m curious, once we get through all of that, what my people-watching when I’m on tour is going to be like. Will people be more friendly? Or how is this gonna change how we interact with people on a daily basis? Because I think, at least for me, it’s made it so whenever I’m in a coffee shop or something, it’s cool because you get to be around people, but you don’t really say much to them. But why hadn’t we been saying much to them? And now we’re all in this position where we can’t say things to other people or have that communal ability to get together. So I just can’t wait to travel and just observe how this affects society and my travels and the places that I’ve already been and see if it’s any different when I go back. And I’m looking forward to that. And I never thought I would get to this point. I mean, I’m sure none of us did, where a pandemic would be happening and it would halt our ability to do most of the things that we love to do. And just learning how to cope with that. It’s really powerful. There’s a lot that we can learn from this time. 

One thing I just want to say is if anyone’s listening to this, don’t feel like you have to be productive or you have to create the next big thing or the next piece of art, because it’s okay to just take this time to exist. That’s something that I’ve been having to tell myself every day. The creativity and all that stuff will come. But it’s a matter of just making it through this – and we will, and we’ll persevere as a species together. So it’s cool in the sense that we all have effects or feel the effects of this, and we can all relate in some way to that. But it is not my favorite time of existing for sure.

Mike Weber: I think we can all get behind that. That’s wonderful. All right, Miss Christine, thank you for taking the time to speak with me here on 319 Creates and just keep taking care of yourself. I’m sure we’ll see each other soon. 

Christine Moad: Thank you so much for having me. 

Mike Weber: You can find Miss Christine website or on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter.

Their music is streaming on Spotify and bandcamp. Their next live stream will be April 10th at 7:00 PM on their Facebook page. Miss Christine also founded Musicians 4 Bernie, which you can find more information about here. 

You can subscribe to the podcast on most platforms, including Apple Podcasts and Google Play. Thanks for listening and we will catch you next time on 319 Creates.

It has been a few weeks since I announced that the show would be returning and since then a lot has happened. The coronavirus pandemic has put a hold on most things around the world and here in America we are doing our best to observe social distancing.

For the time being, I’ve decided to alter the format of the show. For the foreseeable future, 319 Creates will be focusing on how the pandemic is affecting artists and creators in Eastern Iowa. These episodes will be much shorter and will focus on how social distancing and isolation are affecting people’s lives. In this first episode, we check in with Matt Larson of Iowa city metal band, Dead Emperors. 

You can listen below or find 319 Creates on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and Stitcher. You can also follow on Facebook and Instagram.

Podcast Transcription

Mike Weber: Welcome back to 319 Creates. I’m your host, Mike Weber. It has been a few weeks since I announced that the show would be returning and since then a lot has happened. The coronavirus pandemic has put a hold on most things around the world and here in America we are doing our best to observe social distancing.

With that, the ability to do in person interviews has all but disappeared. Over the last week, I’ve thought about the best way for me to move forward with this project. For the time being, I’ve decided to alter the format of the show. For the foreseeable future, 319 Creates will be focusing on how the pandemic is affecting artists and creators in Eastern Iowa.

These episodes will be much shorter and will focus on how social distancing and isolation are affecting people’s lives. In this first episode, we check in with Matt Larson of Iowa city metal band, Dead Emperors. 

Matt Larson, welcome to 319 Creates.

Matt Larson: Well, thanks for having me here. 

Mike Weber: So with all of us locked up with the coronavirus, how have you been coping?

Matt Larson: Oh, being in isolation isn’t too much of an issue for me personally. Coping as far as just being a person in isolation. I’ve got a lot of different options at home that have sort of built up over the years. Obviously I’m still stressed out just because of the state of things and the prospects of a future employment and all that stuff.

But as far as keeping myself busy, you know, I try to hit as many different sort of things as possible. Claire and I decided that the first thing was going to be just to start ourselves off with sort of a routine schedule and make sure that we were getting up and not just sort of lazily lounging around all day in bed.

So that helped make sure we get a workout in every day, taking no off days anymore. And making sure we put a specific amount of time to writing is really pretty key. You know, writing and/or art. 

With Claire doing all of her visual arts stuff, it’s good for her to have some time to do some sketching and work on all different manner of projects to sort of get her own store up and running. Designs, making sure she’s digitizing them and getting them put out for t-shirts or stickers or pins and stuff. 

Me personally, I’m working on solo material or duo material depending on how that turns out. Sort of just trying to put together tracks and learn how to use a synthesizer and different things to fill out the arrangement that I’m not as familiar with. Trying to stay away from drums, just because recording and mixing drums is always a little bit of an extra hassle. But still trying to add in percussion and stuff with that. So that’s been kind of an interesting and fun challenge as well. 

Also just making sure I’m writing material for Dead Emperors and keeping up on the heavy stuff since we’ve got recording dates in July right now. So wanting to make sure that we have some fresh material and things that we can work on and refine for a few months ahead of time, and there’s really no better time than now to get a lot of that stuff taken care of. 

Otherwise. Hell, I mean, it’s a good time to get into cooking, right? You’re sitting at home, you got all your supplies, you got an extra hour. You don’t have to worry about prepping for the whole week. So, we’ve kicked things off with fermentation projects that are starting to come to fruition now. Homemade hot sauces and sauerkrauts and things like that. I just keep, you know, looking deeper into the books and trying to find out what other projects I’ve been meaning to do and putting off for too long. And what I feel comfortable with and have access to the materials for.

So that’s been a tasty way to get through the first week of isolation at least. So that’s been brutal. And the hot sauce turned out deliciously sour, pretty damn spicy. Very happy with that. Definitely looking to hopefully find some other peppers and do some other variations on that in the near future.

I’m lucky enough to have an extensive collection of books that I never got around to reading. So this is also a good chance to start digging into those. Besides that, you know, board games, video games, and plenty of movies to rewatch or movies that I have not got around to watching in the first place – besides hanging out with the dog and taking him for extra walks and stuff that we wouldn’t have time to do as well.

So that’s kinda like the beginning. That’s been the initial week. I plan to get some deep listening on these vinyls. Dig out some of these records I haven’t listened to in awhile. Go from front to back. Just lay down, close my eyes and listen to the mix and just sort of see… especially with my own duo and solo project stuff here, I’m looking for more of a classic rock approach, so I’m really digging into the old Floyd stuff. The middle stage Floyd stuff there. Just to see how those sounds are balanced and to see how many layers I can pick out and what I might want to add to my own take on that.

Mike Weber: So, focusing in on the music stuff that you’ve been doing, the writing in particular, do you feel like this extra time has given you an opportunity that you’ve maybe not had recently? You mentioned that you started working on your solo material, and I believe you’ve told me in the past that that’s something that you’ve wanted to do, but never seemed like you’ve had quite the time to work on it. So do you feel like this has given you an opportunity you didn’t have?

Matt Larson: Oh, most definitely. I mean, I had kinda penciled it in for myself when the summer hit and when the school year ended and I had some extra time. But now that I’ve got time now, you know, I’m just trying to make the most of it. You know, while you got it. And you never know… If things go well, if I can figure out what I’m actually wanting to do with it, if I get the material done now, then I could actually get out and do some house shows or do some small shows with Claire and perform the stuff.

It’s been fun. I haven’t given myself too much of a chance to do a sort of classic psychedelic, you know, classic rock, sort of a music project before. So this has been a great time to just sort of mess around with pedals that have been gathering dust, see how many different sound effects and layers and classic vibes I can produce that I wouldn’t normally have a chance to explore because I’m putting in all that time for the main project for Dead Emperors.

Mike Weber: Yeah and it’s a good opportunity. You were saying about going back and listening to some old vinyl… Have you felt like you’ve come across anything recently that you’re like, “You know, listening to this again, I can see how this style could be useful in my personal project.” – either for Dead Emperors or for the solo work?

Matt Larson: Well, I mean with Emps, it’s always helpful for me to dig out the more contemporary stuff and just give it another listen through. Just really digging in to the, you know, Uncle Acid, digging into Whores, digging into Red Fang are always kind of the go tos. High On Fire – though I’m not prone to get as heavy as all that, but it’s always sort of inspirational to hear just how far one can take it. 

With the solo stuff, you know I went through a huge phase a few months back with Manfred Mann’s Earth Band, and listened to the first maybe six albums that group put out. Just listening to and internalizing those synthesizer sounds and seeing how that sort of mixes with some nice guitar playing. Like I said before, Floyd has always been a good go-to for that nice combination of really silky synth tones that have that sort of dark sci-fi vibe to them as well as that nice classic blues-adjacent guitar feel. So definitely, for me as far as mix and stuff goes – The Wall is not my favorite album as far as the music itself, but I feel like just the overall production, it’s kind of verging on that disco era where you get a lot of that kick, snare, and bass out front. And I really like that vibe. A couple of albums before that, clearly “Wish You Were Here” and “Dark Side”, have such a good take on layering and ambient sounds that I love to just go back and close my eyes and listen to the whole surrounding soundscape that gets developed on those tracks.

That stuff is constantly a big inspiration. But I’m just digging stuff back from that time period. You got some things that you just never quite get into or think about that much. Mott the Hoople is a random one. They’ve got like a Stones-adjacent vibe listening to recordings from A Humble Pie, which is something that Frampton did before he did his solo stuff.

There’s a lot of interesting like verging on folk and blues, but still hitting that sort of barroom rock vibe, sort of recordings from that time period. They’re not like my main jam as far as going back to really dig into the tracks themselves. But getting a vibe off of them, just putting them on in the background and feeling like you’re in a different time period. There’s a lot of good stuff that stays a little bit more buried in my collection that I’ve been digging out for sure. 

Mike Weber: So, going back around to – we were talking about having more time to do food projects and cooks of the sort. Anything in  particular that you’ve done that you’ve been kind of putting off or wanting to do that you just haven’t had the time to?

Matt Larson: Oh, no. I mean, I really wish there were some more like full on cooking stuff that I was getting into. For me personally, I like to sit back and watch stuff happen, which is why I think fermentation has been such a big part of my culinary experience. There’s definitely stuff I’d like to get back into. And now that we have a hot sauce, we’ll probably have to look at some sort of slow cooked meats, and make some sort of tacos. Things like that would really play into the fermented toppings that we’ve made. you know with the kraut, I’m also looking for some kind of meat… I mean, sausage is always traditional with that kind of thing to cook, but really any nice fatty piece of meat that I can cook to sort of balance out the bit of sourness and sweetness from the kraut. That’s what I’m looking to do here. Yeah, that’s basically – whatever the grocery store has that’s cheap, that’s kind of how my fermentation craft works out because it’s just so good. It keeps forever. It gives it a nice sort of unique flavor that it wouldn’t have on its own. And that’s why we made a bunch of kraut. It was Saint Patty’s Day and there was a shit ton of cheap cabbage. So we just said, let’s go for it. Throw a little bit of carrots and sweet onions in there to give it a hair of sweetness. A little bit of that to balance out the sourness. And then also we kept it to about a week so it wouldn’t get overly sour. So it’s more steeping in all those sort of vegetable flavors and not really pushing it so far into the acidic realm. Just enough to be sour, but still sort of very versatile. 

Mike Weber: Very, very cool. So with us being caught up in being isolated for probably at least in another week or two. Probably much longer than that. Do you have any other projects that you’re hoping to have time to tackle? Or just trying to hunker down and survive? 

Matt Larson: Oh, I mean, personally, I want to just figure out other ways to connect with my friends and other musicians. It’s hard. I haven’t found a good way to be isolated and play music with other people.

My band mates, my family and my dad and my sister want to jam, but there’s a certain amount of lag that’s really hard to get over. It’s easy to show each other things, but it’s hard to really sync up things and play at the same time. And with friends, even jamming aside, I’d love to find some more games – board game options, card games – and things that would be fun to collaborate on that we could do via video.

Otherwise, really, like I said, I’m trying to keep myself getting a good few hours of writing and recording. I kind of tend to geek out when I do solo recordings of things. And so when I do one of these tracks that maybe I have a demo of from last summer when I was working on duo stuff. Or I just wrote a new one last week and just followed it to its logical conclusion – at least three quarters logical conclusion.

I probably still have another 20 layers I want to add, but I can put a good week in on a track with that. The time flies by pretty quickly and that definitely keeps me engaged in these end days, as it were. 

Mike Weber: Very, very cool. Well Matt Larson, try and take care of yourself.

Stay active, keep your brain engaged.

Matt Larson: I will, You too, man. You too. 

Mike Weber: And we’ll catch you on the other side. 

Matt Larson: Very cool brother. Have a good one. Peace. 

Mike Weber: You can follow Matt Larson and Dead Emperors on Facebook and Instagram. You can find more information in the show notes.

You can subscribe to the podcast on most platforms, including Apple Podcasts and Google Play. Thanks for listening and we will catch you next time on 319 Creates.