Just wrapping up a 12 hour session with Climb The Sky. Our arrangements are evolving to where charts with little black dots are required. Lemmy from Motörhead wouldn’t approve.
It’s exciting how quickly the band’s becoming this beautiful amalgamation of our influences, and the music’s increasingly difficult to categorize.
Our next single’s out on 9/19. Maybe I’ll start posting the demos on my Patreon page?
The last show of the summer tour was only three weeks ago, but it feels like three months.
So much movement, so many dopamine hits, a lifetime’s worth of experiences, packed into a single season. Then, just as earnestly, it’s planting vegetables, and relearning the muscle memory of six out of ten.
Time’s condensed, then stretched, the ebb and flow of a productive day in one universe becoming the antithesis in the other, and I’m writing this while a curser hovers over “Buy Now,” destination anywhere but here.
But for the first time in my touring career, I appreciate the fine line between a youthful sense of adventure and running away.
So, I shut my laptop, pick up an acoustic guitar, and embrace the movement of floating melodies.
The Trevor Larkin Talks and Listens podcast returns! Episode 30!
Annika Bennett is one of my favorite singer/songwriters, and I don’t think she realizes how talented she is. Her song, “Boy Who Has Everything,” is a perfect song. She's an inspiring creative spirit, unstoppable force for good in the world, and I'm grateful she took the time to share her story on my humble show.
The podcast’s now live on Spotify as well, and I’m pretty sure everywhere else podcasts are streamed.
Tool’s “Fear Inoculum” is about to unseat Taylor Swift’s “Lover” as the number one album in the country, and the Twitter feud between sixteen year olds who’ve never heard of Tool (nor should they have - Tool’s last record came out when they were in preschool) and middle-aged video game enthusiasts is more entertaining than it has any business being.
“all the old ass 30+ year old men quoting and replying to this all mad…embarrassing…go take care of ur wife and kids weirdo”
”grandpas discovered iTunes I guess”
”As Taylor Swift fans, I guess youre used to manufactured dog shit and wouldn’t know what good music is if it hit you in the face”
Etc, etc.
Laughing my ass off at a duel between demographics both still living with their parents has chewed up the majority of what was supposed to be a productive afternoon. It’s worth a Google.
(ps, both records are really good)
I’m currently pacing back and forth in my backyard, my melonesque cranium adorned with oversized headphones, listening to basic tracks Climb The Sky recorded yesterday. Sorta Sgt. Peppers prog mashed up with James Taylor and the Black Keys. We’re finding our voice, and it’s exciting.
The key to avoiding burnout in this lunatic business is finding joy in the small things - fun recording sessions, nourishing conversations, exuberant rounds of disc golf with kindred spirits. The tiny wins, the precarious-yet-none-the-less-struck balances, compound exponentially.
Any readers starting new projects, reply to this email with some links, I’d love to hear what you’re working on.
I’ve played music on every continent except Antartica, famous stages, not-so-famous stages, brushed shoulders with household names, and happily strummed away in gainful annonimity.
I’ve kept the fridge full with a guitar in my hands for a long time. It’s a good life - an enviable one, even - and I’m grateful.
But it’s still a day-to-day struggle not to get discouraged.
Jiminy Christmas, is this business ever unrelenting in its poking, prodding, and generally agitating, and today I wish the murky waters I navigate in order to keep making stuff up for a living would evaporate into blissful nothingness.
But it’s 85 degrees, not a cloud in the sky, the vegetables I’ve planted haven’t died (yet), and I have a sneaking suspicion the world won’t cave in on itself in 24 hours. Fingers crossed, anyway.
So, I reluctantly accept that I’m not perfect, and would be more tedious than I already am if I were. I’ll get another shot at this.
…the new Tool record, Fear Inoculum, on repeat since it came out yesterday.
It’s dense, challenging, brutal and beautiful, requiring a whole lotta headphone and incense time. The yin to Old Town Road’s yang.
No edifying review coming your way unfortunately, but visualize gleeful foot tapping in 7/8 as I’m attempting to wrap my feeble brain around everything.
I was chatting with mastering engineer Eric Conn today, a dude far more accomplished than any name dropping could do justice, and he shared his circuitous route in and out of the music business.
A stint in full-80s-mode LA, a sabbatical in Colorado as a carpenter and ski bum, a gig as head audio guru at the freaking Smithsonian, more productive existential crisis (and skiing), culminating in a call from Garth Brooks’ camp in Music City, and Grammys. Many Grammys.
He was outspoken in his belief that taking breaks from music is ok, even necessary, especially if the alternative’s suffocating the joy out of what is, objectively, a remarkable way of making one’s way through the world.
There’s something to be said about laying down the precious thing and, in time, picking it up again, patiently, with more skillful hands.
I texted this to a friend earlier today, and thought I’d share it here:
It’s ok to do whatever you want, because you’re a good human, and by virtue of that you won’t fuck things up, not really anyway, only enough to encourage an element of adventure. And in being confounding to both yourself and others, the present becomes exponentially more intriguing than some boring ol’ future.
I may have shared this interview before - you lose track after 600 or so MoaTs - but I watched it again today and it’s somehow even more fantastic and inspiring.
If you take anything away from my daily meanderings, please let it be this: if you’re down on the music biz, or life in general, look no further than Dave Grohl.
Language not suitable for work, but you should quit that stupid job anyway.
I was back at Independent Mastering today, putting the finishing touches on Climb The Sky’s next single (that’s Chaco, the studio pooch).
A brand new band’s a whacky university in which to chart progress objectively - it’s far more “productive” fortune telling something into oblivion. But it was encouraging listening to how far our production and songwriting’s come in just four months. “Neverland” sounds like a demo.
As unfashionable as it may feel not considering oneself a piece of unremarkable garbage, by simply doing a thing consistently, the growth is exponential.
Getting off the road, it’d be days before socks found their way into drawers.
This time around, I unpack immediately and put everything away.
You’re not on tour anymore, I tell myself. You’re home, and that’s ok.
I used to put off grocery shopping, feigning indigence that I should stoop to such quotidian lows as buying and preparing my own freaking steak.
This time around, I get right to dusting off pots and pans.
You’re not on tour anymore, I tell myself. You’re home, and that’s ok.
I used to look at a calendar without tour dates and break down in a trembly panic. Will we ever be busy again?
This time around, I’m intrigued by the possibilities of a schedule I’m entirely in charge of.
You’re not on tour anymore, I tell myself. You’re home, and that’s ok.
I’m laid over in SeaTac, about a half hour from where I was a blithering idiot 20-something.
Hapless goober though I was, I somehow managed to put some pieces together, and now enjoy a life my niece and nephew dub “cool,” which is, of course, the height of praise.
Seattle’s a different place from when I left. Hipster food, which was always expensive, is now nosebleed expensive, and a weird amalgamation of douche and NPR-based economies vie for Patagonia’d dominance.
Such is the way of things, I suppose, and people with F-you money engaging in whose-dick-is-bigger shenanigans.
But I hope, rather than becoming a playground for artisanal-cheese-addicted tech transplants, that the city I love remains a safe haven for lunatics and weirdos who have a tendency to change the world.
The daily email newsletter universe it populated largely by the 4am wakeup, cold shower whack job contingent, and I get it - “discipline” has become almost porn-like in its perverse, masochistic packaging, and a bunch of weirdos currently make seven figures yelling into their phones while running, telling us how much we suck.
I wake up closer to a gentleman’s noon, bathe at near-scorching temperatures, eat whatever the hell I like, and am disciplined in so far as I tend to do things rather than not. I’m a delicate hippy type with a laptop, about as far removed from David Goggins as it gets.
As artists, we’re encouraged to play to type, be more marketable, or at least easier to understand. But creating for creating’s sake’s the fountain of youth.
Let’s not let the omni-present hustle and peer pressure deter us from exploring untapped potential, and having fun.
What do I miss most about tour? Yes, the comradery and the fans and the music and all that, but mostly spreads like the one pictured below.
Oh, how gleeful I was, packing looney tunes amounts of sickly-sweet bullshit into my rapidly mudslide resembling corpus.
A choir of angels couldn’t produce a hymn praiseworthy enough.
I’ve spent a few days away from the MoaT and technology in general, reintroducing stillness into my life after another summer of high-frequency hearing loss.
I’m in an undisclosed location where the peaches are ripe, the heat’s dry, and the birds are jubilant and melodious. It’s fantastic.
After all these years, I’ve finally kinda got the hang of compartmentalizing - touring’s exciting, the people are legendary, and the food’s free, but you’re not on tour anymore. So, rather than expecting an apple to morph impossibly into an orange, channel the surplus of positive energy into other projects and relationships.
The day-to-day might look different, but it’s still in the service of music and creativity, and the pirate ship will crest the horizon again soon enough.
For me, the hardest part of touring is the come down, the realization that, holy shit, I’m going to have to buy my own food here soon, generally make my own decisions, and decidedly will not be playing in front of thousands of people every night. Real life, I’ll have assured myself, as an inconvenience befalling others.
The key is defining expectations. The fall for me isn’t a landscape woefully bereft of free cake - it’s a chance to be still, focus on my physical health, and nurture creative worlds outside of this one. It’s an opportunity, gratefully, to fold back into a working musician’s life.
And so, after tomorrow, I’ll trade my Superman cape for Clark Kent glasses, buy a thing that’ll die if I don’t water it, and settle in.
I’m standing in Columbus Circle on a perfect NYC day, ie still sweating through my underpants but no one’s yelling, at least not at me.
Whenever I come here, I’m reminded that you can’t cherry pick the good stuff.
You might envy Douchebag McWallstreet’s money, but it’s a package deal with their teeth-grinding vapidity.
You might envy so-and-so’s fame, but you can’t enjoy being comped at Masa without said so-and-so’s crippling-yet-fashionable anxiety.
Everyone has their thing, their baggage, their demons, and, on balance, I’ll take mine.
The music biz is an omni-shifting landscape, and whether it’s Spotify hacking, crowd funding wizardry, or good ol’ fashioned record label tomfoolery, there’s merit to be found everywhere.
But pull back the microscope far enough, and we’re all in the same magnificent, rickety boat. No one knows what the hell’s going on, and anyone who claims proprietorship over the “way you’re supposed to do things” is a douche.
And that’s ok. Provided you’re not an asshole, chances are the inelegant flailing you’re so terrified of is the byproduct of authentically creating and expressing the thing in the service of which you’d happily sacrifice your sex life to get right.
I’m writing this during a break in our band/crew Dungeons and Dragons quest. Oh yes, my friends - a bespectacled weirdo, nerdy enough in the first place to write a daily email newsletter, also plays fantasy role playing games with his more subtlety nerdy compatriots. What a shocker, I know. The definition of debauchery.
Self-care looks like a lot of different things. Today, it’s soft pants, a fresh bag of Goldfish, and magnificent, giggling misfits, all of whom would get on the next plane if I asked them to.
Whatever being kind to yourself looks like today, I encourage you to embrace it.