Ep. 90: Hunter James and the Titanic
Hunter James of Hunter James and the Titanic and I had a wonderful conversation of his musical journey, along with his band that is creating some of the best indie music today. The band has captured the sound and soul of Laural Canyon where arguably the richest music in American music history was created. Not only do we dig into song discussion and writing, we listen to some of the great music Hunter and his band is making.
A big thank you to Hunter for granting permission to include some music!
To keep up with tour dates, buy merch, and get the latest news, CLICK HERE
Follow them on FB here: https://www.facebook.com/HunterJamesandtheTitanic/
Follow them on Instagram here: http://instagram.com/hunterjamesandthetitanic
Listen to the band on Spotify here: https://open.spotify.com/artist/6iYsi7aijW4OrRErCLvIR6?si=TqK7a76dTCSjfyfN6MYEqQ
Listen to the band on Apple Music here: https://itunes.apple.com/us/artist/hunter-james-and-the-titanic/1447925090
See the bands awesome videos here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AqsuOw_nm6Q
COPYWRITE INFORMATION
"Oh, My" written by Hunter James. Used by permission.
"Weekend Holds" written by Hunter James and Lizzy Gogolowski. Clip used by permission.
I hope you enjoy this conversation. If you do, please consider helping me by giving a rating or kind review, and sharing this episode with your friends or on your socials. I do not make money podcasting, nor is it my goal. My purpose is to capture and share the stories of artists. Your ratings, reviews, and shares help that dream become a reality.
Thank you from my heart for listening.
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Omnis Gloria Christo
00:00 - Intro & Host Welcome
00:18 - Host & Show Overview (anniversary, musical tastes)
01:28 - Guest Intro — Hunter James and the Titanic
02:30 - Interview Starts — Life in Colorado
03:00 - Colorado landscape’s influence on songwriting
06:05 - Musical Upbringing & Early Influences
10:58 - Discussing ’Weekend Holds’ and Songwriting
14:54 - Recording Techniques & Using Analog Tape
20:46 - Song Feature: ’Oh My!’ (from Four)
24:53 - Band Collaboration, Evolution & Live Sound
27:25 - Staying in Colorado vs. Moving to Nashville
31:38 - Future Plans & Meaning of ’Radio Atlantic’
37:25 - Wrap-up, Call-to-Action & Outro
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From the fruited plains of central California, a very warm welcome to Journey to the Stage
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with Brian Fraser.
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We are rapidly approaching the five year anniversary of the release of my first episode on March
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12th, 2021.
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The vast majority of podcasts don't last five years, and I'm grateful to be able to do what
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I love to do.
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I'm so glad that you've tuned in today, and I have a great artist and band to share with
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you.
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This podcast really reflects my broad musical tastes, and I love to hear the stories of musical
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legends and multi-Grammy winners from across genres and generations, but I also love chatting
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with indie artists and bands that I come across.
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If you've listened to Journey to the Stage for a while now, you'll know how important
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melody is to me, and how much I love the Laurel Canyon sound of the 60s and 70s, music
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that was a blend of folk and rock with a splash of country.
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Bands like the Byrds, Crosby, Stills, and Nash, Mamas and the Papas, and the singer-songwriter
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movement with artists like James Taylor and Joni Mitchell.
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Every once in a while, a band or an artist catches that musical spirit and writes songs
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that carry that beautiful Laurel Canyon sound, such as my guest today.
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Today we are going to be chatting with Hunter James of Hunter James and the Titanic.
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This Colorado-based artist and band has a love for the sound of the canyon, and often
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writes songs that sound like they were born in that era.
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His songwriting is organic, and the band's recording methods are analog, which helps
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to really capture that warmth that is so often missing in modern recording.
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But Hunter James isn't a modern relic.
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While his music has the sounds of what I consider to be one of the greatest periods of American
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music history, James and his talented band are making music that is forward-reaching,
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while still allowing the echoes of Laurel Canyon to fill their music.
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And we're going to be playing a great song by the band, a song that I think everybody
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will love.
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Don't forget to like or follow wherever you're catching this, so you can make sure you get
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notification when new episodes are released.
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All right, here is my chat with the very talented Hunter James.
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All right, so I am here with Hunter James.
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Hunter, how are you doing?
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You're in Colorado.
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Tell me how life's going and what's going on in your world.
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It's good.
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I'm sitting here in my recording studio, podcast studio today.
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Things are good.
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Living out in beautiful Colorado in the summer, heading up to the mountains quite a bit for
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different things.
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Play music and recording a lot of songs these days here, playing with the band a lot.
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Things are good.
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Right on.
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How much do you think that rugged beauty, and before we started recording, I was just
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telling you that my family and I, we took a nice road trip, about nine, 10 days, just
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did a huge loop through the state.
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It's incredibly beautiful, spacious, rugged, beautiful, beautiful, beautiful.
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How much do you think that beauty just has seeped into your music and maybe fed your
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creativity?
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Do you think that kind of seeps into what you're doing creativity-wise?
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Yeah, I mean, I think it would be hard for it not to, and maybe I don't really register
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it when I'm writing songs or recording, but I mean, I think that so much of what we are
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is kind of our subconscious experiences, and so I think it has a big effect, and there's
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something about just wanting to mirror the landscape and mirror the energy of a place
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you're in with the art you're making, with the songs that you're writing, and there's
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something very mystical about just kind of some of the smaller mining towns, even right
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outside in the foothills near Boulder, Nederland, or Jamestown, these places that have still
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kind of remained pretty much the same, I mean, there's been updates, but a lot of the structures
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and the architecture and the buildings are from the late 1800s, early 1900s, so there's
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something that feels static and unchanged, like kind of the history has been preserved
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in these little towns, and sort of Buena Vista all around Colorado, and so I feel like there's
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an even more intimate connection with those times and those places just because they haven't
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been bulldozed over and gentrified and modernized, it's like it's still sort of the original
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architecture and a lot of the original buildings up there.
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We have a song called One Way Track that my bandmate Lizzie and I wrote, and that's a
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mining disaster song, so yeah, I think we really relate to kind of the sprawling Great
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West and both the beauty but sort of the loneliness, because there's a certain like
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loneliness I feel like, especially because we're in Denver and then you get out and you
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kind of think, well, we're metropolitan, we're in the city here, and then you get out and
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you're like, oh, we're in the middle of nowhere, we're really like, this is really just such
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a spacious and disconnected area in many ways, so yeah, I mean, I think it affects us greatly.
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Well, it's interesting, a lot of the words you used, Hunter, are words that I think definitely
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elements that I hear in your music, not only thematically, but to describe the soundscape
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that you guys create, which I think is pretty fascinating.
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I'm curious, if you were to, you know, take us back into the home you grew up in and the
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music you were hearing, and the reason I ask that, I've had the pleasure of talking
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to a lot of really, really neat creative people, a lot of neat songwriters, some from the 60s,
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like Noel Falk Dukie from Peter, Paul and Mary, one of my favorite songwriters, and
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a lot of them talk about the music that they grew up with and how that even though they
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didn't write in that style, some of them did, but how impactful that music was in creating
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their own palette that they were able to draw from as they became the painter of their own
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music. What was that for you when you were first getting turned on to music as a kid?
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Well, that's a great question. My dad, he's really into the singer songwriters of the 70s,
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so that being like Jackson Brown, I would say primarily for him, folk rock of the early 70s,
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Joni Mitchell, Crosby, Stills, Natch, even a little bit more into the soft rock like Bread
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or like Seals and Crofts. What's his name? What was one of my favorite? His name's escaping me.
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The Edmund Fitzgerald. Oh, Gordon Lightfoot, of course. There we go. Yeah, a lot of, you know,
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a lot of those, a lot of those like 60s, 70s troubadours. Paul Simon. I mean, I wouldn't
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really know him. I just saw him at a concert two Saturdays ago. Wow. We can have a whole hour on
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Paul Simon and me. Yes, we could. He's my favorite. My mom listened to a lot of like Motown, R&B,
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a lot of that kind of music, like Michael Jackson, Jackson 5, Aretha Franklin. So although
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we're doing this like folk rock thing, I think there's a lot of soul to it, you know, and
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sometimes we want to even go a little further into that and, you know, do something that's
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even more soulful, which might be, you know, coming next. Who knows? But yeah, so kind of
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that mixture of of like the emphasis on lyricism on my on my dad's side. And then my mom was was
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really about that groove and about that that Motown sound and that 60s soul sound. Otis Redding,
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Sam Cooke. So, you know, and what fascinates me most is sort of the where those things link up,
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like where where the and you some might call that rock and roll. You know, it's a very essence,
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like the bluegrass tradition and the blues tradition, or even like, you know, those two
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sensibilities coming together and creating a new style of music, which is rock and roll.
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So I think like that, that to me is one of the most interesting intersections in in the history
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of music or American music is is where those things kind of start meeting up. And that's why
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I like a lot of like 60s records to me are so cool is because you start to have that intersection
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happening like Glenn Campbell records. Yeah, I mean, that's like some of my, you know, that's
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some of my favorite music, even though I'm not I'm not from that era at all. But it's just there's a
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there's a magic magic to that time and in that way of recording and those those people. So
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yeah, speaking of Glenn Campbell, I just a few months ago got to
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meet and hang out with with Jimmy Webb for quite a while. What a legend. Yeah, that's that's a flex.
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Like that's something a lot of people don't get to take up to hang out with him for quite a while.
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And yeah, he was ready to come on my podcast. Like, absolutely. Let's do this. I'm ready to
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work with you. And let's just say the gatekeeper has put the block on that, which is such a bummer.
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Oh, yeah, it's such a huge bummer. He knew my so my step uncle rather was Hank Cochran,
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a huge was a huge country music songwriter. He was a good friend of Glenn Campbell's as well.
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So to go back to what you said, I really like what you said, because so you have these really
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two very, very interesting bookends, so to speak, that you were raised in musically.
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Because if you look at the folk music, the singer or singer songwriter music from the 70s,
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melody was everything. Those guys could write melody all day long. And then you have the field,
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the Sam Cooke. My goodness. So here's the thing that I think is is is really cool. The first song
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of yours that I heard was Weekend Holds. That song has all of those elements in it. It just
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starts off with this acoustic guitar. I'm telling you something, you know, this is your song.
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The verse, you know, and then when the second verse comes in, it comes in, you know, it's got
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the grit guitar and it's got the feel to it. And then, boom, when these ooze come in,
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to me, when the ooze come in, it's like Laurel Canyon and Rumors by Fleetwood Mac had a love
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child. And here it comes with all this melodic madness. I'm like, what in the world? So to me,
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that song, which I don't know, it has all of those elements in it. Sort of a lot of your
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other songs, by the way. It has the feel to it, has the the grit and the uh uh uh from the Sam
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Cooke stuff. It has all of them. Like it has that song embodied, like a lot of that stuff that
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you're talking about, which I think is really cool. So that's I think that's really interesting.
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And I love that song. I think I don't know how many plays you have on it. I'm probably
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half of those plays. Yeah. And I got to give, you know, big credit to my collaborator and bandmate
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Lizzy Gogolowski. We wrote that song together. Yeah. You know, so that this band is I started
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this band, but I've got three other people who are or owners in it and who write the songs and
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are part of the group. Yeah. She and I like to write together. Obviously, that's it's not me
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singing. That's a that's a girl singing. Yeah, it's a Lizzy. She had the kind of the initial
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idea of wanting to do a little bit more of a bluesier track. So I came up with that riff. And
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then the Laurel Canyon thing you're getting is it's it's like a different triad over that base
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over the base. So it's a it's like a B flat over C. So it gives it that real Crosby, Stills,
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Nash, suspended sound. And that was something that didn't exist initially when we wrote it
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was just kind of the root notes in the base. But yeah, changing. I mean, here I'm in my recording
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studio. So yeah, let's hear it. That's okay. That's okay. Okay. Approach the base right there.
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I think with that one. Sure. So I mean, just like, initially, you just have a flat major seven,
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F and then C. And so that's fine. But then we did is we put this
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So putting the C in the base and keeping it there.
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And then it finally resolves. So I think I think there's something that was, you know,
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that was that was thought out. It was like, okay, let's, let's put this C. And I mean,
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that just kind of occurred to me when I was playing the bass on it, like, oh, let's put
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the C in the bass, and it makes everything feel really suspended. And it's like, it's suspended
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until it finally comes home to that one chord. So
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it's just so rich and the harmony, my goodness, I think
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the harmony is so rich. I would love to talk about the way you record.
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I can't give away all my secrets, but I'll tell you some.
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Because obviously, you can have a really good song that can sound good, stripped down. And
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that song could sound really good stripped down. But that song can sound great, produced really
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well. And it does, because the production of that song, the way it's harmonized, the way you
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arrange the arrangement, really takes that song to another level. That takes a musical ability
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to be able to do that, to take those chords, and change them in a way that really kind of
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fills that out the way you did the way that you explained that. How much time do you spend kind
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of playing with that and kind of tinkering just to find the magic that you want to get the feel
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that you want without overcooking it? How do you strike that balance?
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It's so much just experimentation in the house of madness, my studio.
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That's not the official name, but I might change it to that.
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Yeah, that'd be great.
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It's so much time of just... I always feel like the next thing in the arrangement kind of appears
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in the thing that's already happening. And I know that sounds strange, but...
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Yeah, what do you mean by that?
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It's like there's overtones in the music that's already been recorded. So if there's a
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acoustic guitar, and there's an electric guitar, and there's a keyboard,
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but maybe there's some other secret overdub that wants to reveal itself.
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Okay.
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And when I'm listening back through my speakers to what we've recorded so far,
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many times I will hear something in the mix that doesn't exist, like a part.
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And I swear to God that I'm hearing this line. It's usually like a single melody or...
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It's not something harmonic. It's usually like a single note kind of a thing, like a melody line
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that overlays over top of what's going on already. Like George Harrison would call it a counter
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melody. Or if you go back to Bach, it's not the melody, but it's another melody that is...
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And it could be in the bass, like we're talking about karaoke, like the good vibrations.
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That bass line is like a counter melody in the bass. And so I'll just be sitting here and usually
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if I just kind of let myself relax and go into almost like a state of trance, I will start to
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hear the thing that should happen next. And it's not always like that. Sometimes it's more of a
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forceful, like I'm going to assert myself on this and this needs another part and I'll kind
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of mess with it till I find something right. But many times it's just this thing that you hear
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that's not there that then you can put there. And a lot of that too is... I've switched to recording
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to a tape machine along with Pro Tools. I'm not going to get too into that because I don't want
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to sound like too much of a nerd, but I might a little bit. But we highly utilize analog tape
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machines and I use my tape machine a lot in my workflow. And the cool thing about using tape
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versus... Because I started just like anyone else in my age group was using only digital recording.
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Tape was something that was of the past. And I just always felt like there was something missing.
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There was some kind of saturation or overtones or something that I just wasn't
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getting with the purely digital recording. And I'd always reference back to,
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God, why can't I make this sound really like a Beatles record? I want it to sound like a
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Beatles record, but it doesn't. It sounds like shit. So the tape, I feel like really
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reveals more in the music. It has more soul. It has more soul and those overtones. Those
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overtones like I was talking about, I didn't really have that experience until I started
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using the tape machine of being able to hear the next part. And I think more so than a lot of the
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music that is put out today, I think the music you guys are making is best heard through headphones.
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Because there's a lot of subtlety. Because whoever's doing your mixing is doing an incredible
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job. There is so much nuance. There's a lot of discovery in your music. And I'm like,
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oh, I hadn't really noticed that subtle movement of like, oh, there's a little bit of a, I don't
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know, a banjo or something back there or a mandolin or something. I'm like, oh, that's kind of cool.
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Steve Martin's old banjo.
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Really?
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A couple of banjos on these records belong to Steve Martin at one point.
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Oh, that's cool. Actually, I met Steve at a Simon and Garfunkel concert in
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92 or something like that. It was so random. He signed my program. He wasn't actually super nice,
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but he was cool enough to sign my program for me. That's why I really encourage people when
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they listen to you guys to listen with headphones, good pair of headphones, because the mixing is
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done really, really well. You or whoever's doing your mixing, man. Nice job.
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Chris Beeble has done many, many of the last songs, probably the last 15 to 20
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songs we recorded. So all of our third record, Signals, and then our fourth record, Four,
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and then just like the singles that we've released this year.
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OK, so let's hear a tune now. This is Oh My! from the album Four, the Roman numerals IV,
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by Hunter James and the Titanic, available on all the streaming services.
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Now, you guys have been making music for a while and just kind of looking back over the last
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several years, several albums. How would you say that you've progressed in terms of
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collaboration? You talked about having Lizzy. What a voice. Your guys' voices really complement
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each other really, really well. Thank you. But in terms of like writing, sharing vocals,
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which I think honestly says a lot about you. A lot of people don't like to share the spotlight,
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don't want to share songwriting credits, don't want to share a vocal. I think it's really cool
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that you do, because to me, that just says that it's not about your ego and stuff like that. I
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think that's pretty cool. It seems to me like you become more collaborative over time. What's it
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like, you know, that progression over time as you guys have been together over the years? What's
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that journey been like as a band in terms of collaboration and that type of thing?
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Yeah, it's beautiful. It's great. Well, I mean, and someone else to talk about too is
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another really important part of this band is a guy named Taylor Marvin, who's the lead guitar
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player. And you might not know who's playing what part on a record, because we all kind of meld into
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each other. But he's been a real formative force in the group as well. And I mean, anything that's
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kind of, I mean, some of it's me, but any slide stuff that's really involved, like slide guitar
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harmonies, most of that's him or a guy named Jason Brazel, who's also I'll talk about him as
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well. But yeah, it started as me writing all the songs. But musically, it's always been all of us
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contributing to the records. So I think that's just grown more in the songwriting vein, like
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Taylor writes more songs now. And Lizzie, you know, writes more songs now. And I like to think
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that like, just my kind of obsession with like writing and recording and making it like a daily,
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you know, sometimes I'll be focusing on a different aspect of what we're doing, like the
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business aspect or booking or whatever. I mean, we have someone that books for us now. But I'd like
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to think that we all just inspire each other. And maybe my kind of like real like single vision of
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making art and making as much music and recording as many songs as possible. It's like
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kind of rubbed off on them. And then like some of their sensibilities have rubbed off on me.
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It's been a cool experience growing with these people and making music with them, creating a
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sound. Well, that's really neat. And I've watched a lot of your guys' live videos. And you know,
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on stage, you really are recreating your studio sound very well. And part of it, you've got,
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you know, four or five people on vocals, you've got four people on guitar, you know, yourself,
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or three people on guitar, and, you know, somebody on organ, and like, it's a very full sound,
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which you need. But the cool thing is like, you could strip that down to the songs would carry
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very well. What I really like is you haven't given into the pressure to move to Nashville,
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which a lot of bands do have you? Have you felt that pressure? And what's that been like? Because
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you know, you're still in Colorado. And you know, that's not that's not the music capital of the
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world. But it's home for you guys. And you're making beautiful music there. Oh, yeah, no.
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We're not moving to Nashville. I feel like a lot of that is...
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I've always been into that quote. It was one of the naturalists who said the journey is not in
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seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes. In this day and age, the reason to go to Nashville
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is so much like just shrinks so much every year, I think with technology, with being able to be
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your own publisher, being able to be your own record company, I think you can make incredible
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music from anywhere. I don't think that we would thrive, or I would thrive really in an environment
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like that, where it's just feel like it's so oversaturated. You know, one of the things I was
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in plastic, yeah, I know hates in Nashville. I have lots of friends that are down there,
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and they're doing great. And that lots of artists who I know who do great. And I know it can be
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no hate to Nashville, if you're all listening down there. But I think that it's, I think one
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of the beautiful things about making music or doing anything in life is the cross germination
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of people surrounding you who, and I even feel like this here, who do different things. Like,
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I think that's why high school was a cool time. Because you have all these different people who
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are excelling in these different ways. And you can all kind of look across the hallway and go,
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look at the debate people over there. And look at the tennis team over there. And look at the
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theater kids over there. And look at these people doing that over there. And there's this great
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cross breeding that happens, where you're appreciating people doing things within
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different disciplines. And all of a sudden happens like in your 20s, I think in adult life, where
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everything becomes so specialized, and you just start being surrounded,
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if you're not careful with people who do the exact thing that you do. And I don't,
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I think you need people outside of that to really see what you're doing with like a child's eyes.
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To go, wow, that's amazing. Like, I don't play any music. It's amazing what you're doing. Because,
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I have no reference for this. And that's magic to me. Whereas if you're just surrounded by all
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musicians all the time, it's like, oh, that's nothing. They're kind of burned out on it. And
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it's like, eh, that's nothing. They don't really maybe see as much of the magic in it. So I think
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it's so critically important to surround yourself with people who are diverse and excel at different
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things in life. And don't just hyper specialize in what you hyper specialize in. Because that can
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just be, you know, energetically, that can not be that great of a thing.
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I think what you said, Hunter, especially in our day and age, where everything is hyper divided,
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is really profound. Yeah, that's awesome. So I want to talk about where do you see you guys
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going? I know you've got, you've played a lot of dates, he is going to be
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hitting the road anytime soon. And what's coming up. I also want to talk about Radio
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Atlantic. That song, I don't even know what it's about. Okay, don't explain it to me. But I want
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to know what it's about. Like, I want to know what it's about. But I don't want to know. I
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love that song. I don't know how many times I've played it. But there is something there's like a,
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I don't even know how to explain how that song makes me feel like it stirs something in me that
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is I don't even know how to explain it. There's like a little something. I don't know. There's
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like the little angst or loneliness or echo. And it just brings something in me that I think is
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really, really neat. And sometimes I try too hard to label things. But I really, really love that
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song. But maybe talk about that song a little bit about where does that where does that song come
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that song? I mean, almost more so than any of the other songs are is like, is a real just
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a real just word painting. And it's really just yeah, yeah, just based based on different images
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and sounds more so than like a fight of finite narrative. I think when you do get to the chorus,
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like the lyrics are I'm living at the door. And I think that it was initially I'm waiting at the
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door. And I thought, well, waiting at the door. That's boring. Like so many people said that.
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And I thought, oh, living at the door. That's like, I've never heard anyone say I'm living
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at the door. Like, what does that? That's interesting. I think you could distill it
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to down to that lyric in the chorus. I mean, there's all these there's all these imaginative
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things happening in the in the verses, the rhythm of the voices of the girls down south,
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which kind of creates a vibe and an image. But great lyric. Thanks. I am a proponent of that
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lyrics don't have to have a definable narrative. One of my favorite songwriters is is Gary Louris
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from the Jayhawks. And he's like, his lyrics are very obtuse. And they're not always well defined
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and have a very clear narrative. So I, I am not of the, you know, of the belief has to have a
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very clear story that we can kind of read in and out of it. So what I'll tell you, it has a clear
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story if you want me to. You know what I mean? Like some people, some people, some people will
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have some people have, you know, they'll hear that song and they'll put it all together in
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their minds and they'll go, oh, this is exactly what he's talking about and exactly what this
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means, because this is what it means to me. And that's the beautiful thing about songwriting and
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music is that it means I mean, and it's a trope, you know, that's just like it just it means
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whatever it means to you. And there's some and I like to just be evasive in that as far as
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or just kind of like wrote it like there's certain songs that I've written that are very finite and
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there's a finite narrative. And you could point to exactly what this song is about. Every lyric
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makes exact sense. And this is this story. And this thing happens to this character. And then
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this thing happens to this character. And then other songs are just are more of like a word
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painting, you know, like where you're just going from like more of a dream where you're just going
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from scene to scene. And it's just creating some kind of like ineffable feeling. And that's and I
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just I rotate between the two because I enjoy both kinds of songwriting. Like there's a song
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on our third record, Okinawa 1945, Say Goodbye to Emmylou. That is a song about the invasion
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of Okinawa in 1945, being a soldier coming up onto the beach, thinking that this is going to be it,
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you know, we're done thinking about your sweetheart at home, Emmylou, you know, light
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that last cigarette and say goodbye to Emmylou or smoked out. Oh, I can't remember the exact lyric,
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but, you know, it's also funny, like what kinds of people gravitate towards what songs like,
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because you can really sort of tell what kind of a person they are, because they like all the
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really literal songs. You're like, oh, this person really needs like a finite narrative. And then
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there's other people who are like, oh, I really like this song where it's, you know, the what
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are these lyrics mean? I don't know. I mean, what do they mean to you? Who knows? And so you can
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almost it's kind of fun because you can almost get a read on people by which true
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probably very true. Yeah, I remember I when I interviewed Glenn Phillips from Toe the Wet
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Sprocket, they have a song called All Right. I'll be honest, I thought the song was about
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getting up to go to the bathroom at night. And I remember like back in the 90s, telling my friend
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Ryan, like, dude, I was going over the lyrics with him. And he's like, dude, what are you smoking?
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I'm like, no, I really think it's about this. I when I was interviewing Glenn, I'm like, hey,
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this is what I think the song is about. And I explained it to him. And he goes, I don't think
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so. So I got out of the interview. I didn't put that. OK, OK, OK. But I mean, I made my case,
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but I was dead wrong. And that's the fun part, too. I would never. That's why I try not to go
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too much into it. Even songs that do mean something specific to me. It's like, well, but
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I don't want to, you know, it's like, you know, when they make a movie out of a book, it's you
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kind of in a way that's limiting to the imagination. So I feel the same way about about songwriting.
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It's like I there are certain songs that are very obvious and you'd have to be pretty,
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you know, daft not to know exactly what they mean. But other songs that, yeah, people can just they
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will think what they think of them and they will have their own narrative to them.
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So, you know, as we just get close to wrapping up our time, I I am as we talked about earlier,
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I'm a new fan. I don't have as many indie artists on as I as I used to. And I'm sure, man, the first
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time I heard Weekend Holds, I was like, what in the world? I love the Laurel Canyon sound. The
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music that was coming out of the canyon was beautiful. And what every single song I have
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heard after that, and I'm still working my way back through your catalog, I have just absolutely
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loved. You have an incredible body of work, the writing, the production, the arrangement,
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instrumentation, everything you guys are doing, you're doing with your band, incredible musicians
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is just really, really good. And I love the fact that it's not, it's not just nostalgic,
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because it's the quality of writing is there. It's just really good. And I think it's something
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that we need. It's it's attached to the earth, if that makes sense. And I think we need that now
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there's so much plastic being put out. And I don't I don't I don't I don't degrade people's art.
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Everybody's doing what is true to themselves, I'm sure. But I just am very, very appreciative
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of what you guys are doing. And I just love it. And so, you know, even Radio Atlanta, I think,
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man, I just I'm just so in love with the music you guys are putting out. And I can't wait to
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see you guys live. I hope you guys come to California at some point. Yeah, you know,
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this this music. It's and it's also the whole Colorado thing. It's it's been amazing. Like,
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seeing some like these acts that I mentioned, who were, you know, quote, unquote, indie bands,
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who had just, you know, sort of expanded into these into these huge, these huge touring groups.
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And that's, that's our intention, as well as it's just, you know, the more and more that these songs
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kind of they seem to found, just I don't know how it happens, you know, the light of day, people
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like them. And that's, you know, the direction that we're going to move into is just continuing
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to write songs and let the shows get bigger and bigger, hopefully, you know, transition to where
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this could be. No music is my full time job, but let this band itself be, be, be the full time,
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be the full time thing. So hopefully, you're talking to us at the beginning of the journey.
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Well, Hunter, I can tell you why I really think your guys's journey will just continue to to blow
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up and get bigger. Because the music you guys are making is timeless. You have I look at, you know,
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people in my parents generation who were who listened to music that was made in Laurel Canyon,
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they will love they love the music you guys are making because it reminds them of what they have.
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It's the music I grew up with. It sounds good. It's timeless. Good music that is not trendy
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is timeless. So that's just my humble opinion. But if it's so for everybody listening, I'll put
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links to your guys's website so they can catch tour dates and keep an eye on all your socials and
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all that kind of good stuff and links so they can hear songs. I'll put
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links to your guys's Spotify and all that good stuff so they can hear what you guys sound like
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and hear why I just love what you guys are doing so much. So Hunter, it's been such a blast talking
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to you and just getting to hear just a little bit of your story. Man, I think we could talk for hours.
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I've kept you a long time. I'm very grateful for your time. Thank you for for sticking with me and
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making this happen. And yeah, just it's been great talking to you and get to know you a bit. And
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thanks for thanks for hanging out with me for an hour. Thanks, Brian. It's been awesome.
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I hope you enjoyed my chat with Hunter. Make sure to swing by the band's website and buy
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something catch them live when they've got some dates. If you could take a few seconds to leave
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a kind review or rating, it's such a big help to an indie podcaster like myself. And those things
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help this podcast get suggested to others. Big thanks to Hunter James. Thanks for that great
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chat. I'm approaching my hundredth episode and I'm working on a special guest for that.
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So stay tuned. Thank you again for joining us. And we'll see you next time when we walk a stretch
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of road with another artist. And until then,
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keep your bags packed and join us on our next journey to the stage. And that's a wrap.