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MC Taylor of Hiss Golden Messenger, thank you for being on Shaped by Sound.

I'm glad to be here.

Thank you for having me.

Yeah, we're excited.

So to start off the show, I kind of want to just have a little fun and ask you a question that I've been thinking about lately.

Okay.

If you were to sit down and think about your favorite or maybe one of the most iconic or whatever, American rock bands, American being the key term, rock bands or musicians, who would you list at the top of that list?

I've had this discussion with my friends over and over again, and I feel like the list continues to get cold with new people.

Sure.

Rock bands.

Is that what you said?

Rock bands?

Yeah, that's a general term.

You can go anywhere with it.

I mean, if you want to say musicians.

This is tricky because, yeah, a lot of American history plays into this.

But I would say Creedence Clearwater would be one.

Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers, they kind of synthesized a lot of American music.

But then if we start defining more broadly, I might look at Sly and the Family Stone maybe.

Sly and the Family Stone feels a little bit like an outlier among the other two that I listed, sort of points to the complexity of the question.

I've had this debate with music friends many times over the years.

Musicians that are black and white and it's-- yeah.

The answer is different for everyone.

I just always think it's an interesting barometer for people.

Yeah.

I mean, it also speaks to how old I am and stuff I'm familiar with.

Right.

Yeah, exactly.

I think for me, it would be The Grateful Dead.

The Dead.

Interesting.

And I think about that from more of a historical lens too, about sort of when I think like "American," quote unquote.

This idea that they sort of embodied the beatnik culture.

And that was a massive part of American life, at least for half of the country.

A culture definitely developed around them that is unlike any other type of musical act.

I mean, there were bands after that-- around which a culture developed that was similar to what The Grateful Dead had.

But I don't know that there was anything before The Dead where there were-- yeah, there were just like large groups of people following them around.

Right.

It kind of didn't matter how good or bad The Dead played.

People were stoked to be there.

People were just-- it was the event.

Yeah.

There's something I love about them too.

There's a documentary-- there's many documentaries about them, but one that I watched called Long Strange Trip, where they talk about The Dead being sort of the originators of music sharing and how they let people come in and tape the shows for free and didn't charge people or sue them.

And how that has become such a massive part of how we consume music.

For better or for worse.

Yeah.

I mean, they were at the forefront of a lot of sort of musical cultural movements.

Although I feel like it might be giving them a little bit more credit than-- Probably.

--than they deserve to say they invented it.

I think it has more to do with the fact that they couldn't stop it.

You know?

Or maybe didn't want to stop it?

Well, they were trying to stop the tapers.

Were they?

And eventually, they couldn't.

Right.

They couldn't.

So I think it was sort of like, if you can't beat them, join them situation.

I mean, they did stick to their whatever cultural politics-- I mean, whatever their politics were, it sort of doesn't matter.

And it's also a little unclear.

But whatever their cultural politics were, it feels like they stuck to their guns in terms of creating this universe.

They were always consistent about wanting to create a universe where anyone could do whatever they wanted.

Right.

It's easier for people with a lot of money to do that.

But they did that.

And they did that even when they had no money.

And I've always loved that about them.

I mean, I love that band.

It's a special band.

Yeah.

I know you were a part of that Day of the Dead live-- I guess Day of the Dead compilation.

Years ago.

That was a sick record, by the way.

Yeah.

Thanks.

I know it was.

That was beautiful.

I was honored to be a part of that.

And later I sang in Phil Lesh's band for a few shows.

And that was mind blowing.

I bet.

And he passed away recently this year, right?

Yeah.

And his son, Graham, is a friend.

I mean, I'm a huge fan of what those guys were about and their music.

I think their songwriting is great.

Yeah.

It's going to hopefully live on forever, I think.

Yeah.

All right.

So outside of that, let's get into more things about you.

Yeah.

Now that we've covered the Grateful Dead.

Yeah.

It's funny.

This comes back in many interviews I do here.

But MC, you come to us in North Carolina by way of California.

Can you talk to us a little bit about growing up in California and your early experiences with music in California?

Sure.

I grew up in Southern California, which really feels like ground zero for American-- I don't know what we think of as American popular culture, sort of writ large.

I was a skateboarder.

I was a very dedicated skateboarder and surfer.

And I thought that one of those two things would be my life.

As a kid, I hoped.

My dad is a guitar player and singer.

And he played in bands in high school and a little bit after.

And he had great groups.

It was like-- it would have been the mid '60s, so during the folk music revival.

So Kingston Trio and the Chad Mitchell Singers and Peter, Paul and Mary.

That was like his repertoire.

It was that stuff.

Did he kind of bleed into some of that, I guess later on in the '60s, that Laurel Canyon sort of vibe?

A little bit.

I mean, he was really into The Byrds and he was really into the Beatles.

And he claims-- I have no reason to disbelieve him-- he claims that he saw The Byrds and the Beatles on the same night.

I think he would have seen the Beatles maybe at the Hollywood Bowl.

Wow.

And then The Byrds were playing at a club called Ciro's on the Sunset Strip.

Just thinking about the Beatles at the Hollywood Bowl kind of blows my mind.

I know.

And then to put The Byrds on top of that.

I know.

I might be recounting the venues incorrectly, but I still love The Byrds.

I mean, I love the Beatles too.

I love The Byrds.

They're really formative for me.

So I grew up hearing him play and sing and just understanding that a guitar was something that you could have in the house and sing around the house, and that it could be sort of homemade.

I was really into music when I was a kid, starting really young.

That's all I would spend my allowance on.

So I would skateboard up to either the local skate shop or there was a place called Pier Records that was not that long of a skateboard ride for me.

But I liked stuff that seemed to exist on the fringes, which was also stuff that was easy to find at a skate shop, which was like at that time just a subculture way off to the side.

So it's sort of a chicken and egg thing.

Did I like stuff that was on the margins and coincidentally find it?

Or did I like it because that's what they had at the place, at the skate shop that I was going to?

By the time I was like maybe 10 or something, I was buying tapes of like punk bands.

Like at the time it would have been like TSOL, JFA, Bad Brains, Dead Kennedys, that kind of stuff.

But I was also really into early rap music that was happening then.

And it seemed like all part of the same thing, which is music that was way on the fringes that your parents really were not feeling.

So, you know, like the big ones then would have been like early Beastie Boys and Run DMC.

But like very quickly I was into Eric B. and Rakim, Stetsasonic, X-Klan, Public Enemy.

It's so interesting.

You were living in California.

One of the first things you gravitate toward is, or just that you've mentioned, is just like East Coast hip hop, though.

Yeah.

I mean, a little bit later we had things like Ice-T, NWA, Eazy-E.

There were a lot of California... The Chronic, Dr.

Dre's The Chronic.

That was later.

I mean, that was like in my timeline, that was way later.

Interesting.

But I mean, there was just such a... In the world of rap, hip hop, there was so much East Coast music.

Right.

And there was hip hop then on the fringes, right?

Yeah.

I mean, hip hop, just like skate culture, was totally on the fringes.

Like people were like, "This isn't gonna last."

Or this is even like dangerous, right?

Well, that too.

But they still say that.

Right.

Yeah.

But back then it was like, I guess... Yeah, they didn't know what to do with it.

People didn't know what to do with it.

They didn't understand that it functioned in the same way that any narrative art form functions.

Yeah.

It's invented.

I still really credit that music, early hip hop, which was built on such nasty drum breaks.

Right.

And that's where we hear the original incredible funky drummer, people weren't thinking about sampling copyright laws.

So they were just taking the absolute funkiest bars and looping them.

And that's still inside me.

When Hiss Golden Messenger plays the stuff that is so 16th note.

I'm not nodding to the Allman Brothers.

I'm nodding to the hip hop that I grew up on, which is so... I mean, I just like funky American music.

That's sort of what it is.

But the way that I was exposed to what I would think of as pocket in music is that stuff.

And I've always loved that music.

And as I've gone into so many other areas with music, places, discovered so many other genres and sub genres, I've always loved hip hop.

That's like a, I don't know.

Even when I'm not really paying attention to it, it hits for me.

Is there anything that you're listening to right now?

Any hip hop that you're like, "Wow, this is sort of incredible"?

I don't know that I could say anything that a deep head would be like, "Oh, I haven't heard of that."

But I mean, I think that Tyler, the creator, does amazing stuff.

I think The Alchemist makes amazing stuff.

I was really and continue to be really enamored with the whole drum concept of rhythm that like Dilla sort of uncovered.

And everybody is still dealing with the concept of like swung but not swung.

It feels kind of broken.

It's such a new drum language in terms of pocket that I've never met anybody that heard Dilla's grooves for the first time that said like, "This makes sense."

Everybody always said their first reaction is like, "This sounds broken."

Like something the drummer is not playing right.

But like, it's just, it's, you know, his the way he dealt with drums and rhythm just like challenges our notions of straight versus swung.

That stuff continues to like, his sort of third way continues to be this like gift that he bestowed on humanity.

Totally.

I think.

Yeah, I totally agree.

We can go even further down that rabbit hole.

But I don't want to distract sort of from your story here.

Oh, right, right.

To your ask.

So, I was really into punk rock and really into hip hop.

And as I was getting older, I was meeting people that were going to punk rock shows.

This was in Southern California, it's just like, you know, the landscape is really big.

Like once I could drive.

And I could drive up to LA or down to San Diego.

There were so many different scenes of music, like hardcore music.

Like I guess what I would describe now, although it bears no musical resemblance, but like, it was the earliest glimmerings of like, what we were referring to sort of pejoratively as emo music, which like, had its roots in like, DC hardcore, like Fugazi, Rites of Spring, all the Discord record stuff that was happening, which was like, not like burly, masculine, tough guy, but some weird, artsy strain.

It still was all dudes.

That's the thing that's so funny is that it was so like, male dominated.

But at least there was like a discussion about it and trying to set ourselves apart from like these, I don't know.

There was a ton of music of that sort being made in San Diego, which is funny because that's such a conservative place.

I mean, sort of like a conservative stronghold.

But there was a ton of music happening there.

And then there was tons of music happening in and around LA.

And what kind of music were you starting to make at that point in time?

I had really sunk into like the hardcore scene.

So like, very noisy, kind of like the noisiest parts of like Sonic Youth, that kind of art noise or whatever.

And I was just around that music a lot.

I was seeing a lot of that music.

I remember like the first warehouse show I ever went to, I was 16.

And I saw this band that just became my favorite band.

They had a different name then, but they eventually were called Evergreen.

This is like, this is kind of an aside.

But I was just so enamored with what this band did.

Like I was in love with this band.

I mean, I thought they were the coolest.

And I later met all the members of that band sort of individually.

And I think I just like freaked them out with how... How much you liked them?

How effusive.

But the drummer of that band, Evergreen, is named JasonBoesel.

He's the drummer of Rilo Kylie.

Wow.

Okay.

And he plays... He's played with a whole bunch of people, and he's a buddy of mine now.

But the first time I met him, I just took him and was like, "Dude."

It was decades later and was just like, "I need to talk to you."

Let's talk about Evergreen.

Yeah.

But he was like, "Oh, yeah.

I meet people like you sometimes.

I'm not the only one."

That opened up a whole world to me, this notion that if you wanted to make music, you could do it yourself.

You could not only teach yourself how to play, but you could write your own songs, and you could put your own shows on, and you could put your own records out, and you could book your own tours, and you could build a whole community around yourself that depended in no way, shape, or form on whatever the music business might be.

And there was no gatekeeping.

Right.

I mean, there was a lot of gatekeeping.

There was a lot of aesthetic gatekeeping, but we could do whatever we wanted, and we didn't need anyone's permission.

There were no managers.

There were no record labels other than the record labels that we all owned or ran by ourselves, just kids.

We booked our own tours.

This was pre-cell phone, so everybody had these devices called dialers.

I don't know if anyone's ever heard of it.

Dialers?

Yeah.

You take this device, and you go into a payphone, and you hit the button on this device, and it emits a sound that basically tricks the felt telephone into allowing you to make long-distance phone call for free.

Whoa.

That couldn't be legal.

Oh, no.

Totally illegal.

Yeah, okay.

No, no, no.

No, completely illegal, but so much of what we were doing was not legal.

Yeah, it was punk, man.

So yeah, we'd just go into a payphone for a couple hours with a dialer and book tours and write letters and make zines.

That was like- Sounds like a ton of fun.

I mean, it was the greatest, most instructive time in my life that is still so deep in me.

And it has guided me through everything, including Hiss.

In fact, there is a venue in Los Angeles.

Forget the neighborhood, it was called the Jabberjaw.

And it was maybe a hundred person venue, all ages.

And they booked the most incredible shows.

And at this point, my tastes were evolving out of purely hardcore into all kinds of other stuff.

So the K-Records stuff, really artsy stuff.

This was a place that Beck would play super early for a hundred people.

Or I would see a band like Jawbreaker was one of my favorite bands.

But anyway, way later, 30 years later, they did, I couldn't believe when I saw it, but they did an art book about the Jabberjaw because there were so many kids that were taking photos of the shows and it was such a legendary community space.

So this art book came out about the Jabberjaw with all these incredible pictures of Rocket from the Crypt, Jawbreaker, Unwound, Beck.

And I'm in the book, as a kid, just little Mike in the crowd with these crazy big glasses and my hair is dyed black.

And when I saw it, I just almost started crying.

I was so moved because that time was so... It just was everything.

You know what I mean?

Just my whole universe was just that.

I'm wondering now, because I want to know how you got from California to North Carolina.

Sure.

Because that seems like a pretty massive jump and I'd love to know more about the big move for you.

Yeah.

I a little bit aged out of hardcore or I don't know, I just was... How did you do... When was the moment you're like, "You know what?

This music is maybe not what I'm trying to do right now."

Yeah, like forever.

It was when the first... It was musically, it was when the first Tortoise record came out.

Really?

Huh.

Which was, do you know that band?

I've heard of that band.

They've been at Hopscotch and I've seen them at Hopscotch.

Yeah.

The first Tortoise record came out and it just... Me and all the musicians that I was working with around, including some people that I still work with to this day, heard that record and in short, basically realized... Like, "Wow, these guys are not a whole lot older than us and they've spent so much time, they can really play and they're doing something that has all this nuance and silence and swing."

So we were just like, "All right, let's not... Maybe not grow up is the word, but we just... I wanted to evolve.

I was hearing all kinds of music at this point that was being made that I was like, "That's the kind of stuff I like."

I heard Low for the first time around then and just people that were dealing with dynamics in a different way.

Yeah.

A bunch of time passed, I was kept on playing, I was starting to write my own songs and I maybe started to look back towards some of the stuff I heard as a kid, like The Byrds and stuff like that.

And just, I was thinking like, "What is the most aggressive thing that I could do right now?"

Maybe at that time, for whatever reason, it was like, "What if I started making music that's felt or sounded like country music?"

Not totally understanding what that would be, but there were enough examples in the independent music world, like Palace Music, Will Oldham was making records then, early like Bill Callahan records.

I was just interested in exploring that palette of sound, which is what I did.

For a really long time, I formed a band, lived in San Francisco, toured and made a bunch of records with this band for a decade.

But I was just kind of like, by the end of that, I was like, "I'm just like kind of..." Like a plateau?

Yeah, I kind of just had flatlined.

I needed something new and I decided to go back to school.

But I was in my early 30s at this point.

And I was interested in folklore programs, of which there were not that many.

I knew what I knew about North Carolina, I liked, because I'd been through here on tour a few times.

I didn't understand the geography of it at all.

I didn't look at any map or anything.

It's just unthinkable now.

So my wife and I decided to move here.

We didn't know anybody.

And I got into the folklore program at UNC, and we moved to Chapel Hill.

And at this point, music, I wasn't really playing shows.

I was kind of writing.

I had started Hiss Golden Messenger in the last year of my time in San Francisco.

It was like a different band.

And just really trying to find my way.

And music kind of was sort of off to the side a little bit.

Yeah.

What brought you to folklore?

Was there an element of storytelling that you were maybe interested in?

It wasn't really storytelling.

It was more just like, in the last couple of years of living in San Francisco, just as an example of what I was thinking folklore might be.

I didn't totally know.

This was the time when all of us were discovering the music of Michael Hurley, who also just passed in the past year, an amazing songwriter that made a million records, and just like a true off-the-beaten-path guy.

But a lot of us in the music community there were discovering his old records.

And I was like, I'm going to find him, and we're going to put on-- if he's still alive, I'm going to find him, and we're going to put on a show, which I did.

I mean, I was so stupid.

Like, he had always been playing shows.

He had a rich and busy musical life.

I just thought that as a young person, he couldn't possibly still be-- you know what I mean?

So it was like that kind of stuff.

Like I didn't know exactly, other than just being in touch with older forms.

Was it a songwriting thing that you were seeing there, too?

At UNC?

Yeah.

Were you gravitating towards folklore because of the way that you could maybe incorporate that into your music, the way that people were writing?

I don't know that I was thinking about it as a path to further my music.

I think I was so frustrated with music at that point that I was maybe seeking something that could take me far away from music.

Pretty quickly, I wasn't doing a whole lot of music-based academic work, except for when they asked-- when someone might ask me to, because they knew that I was a musician or I knew about music.

I didn't really actively seek out musical projects by the time I was in grad school.

In fact, I did a lot of-- my thesis was about lowriders, lowrider cars.

It's a long story.

We don't have to go down to-- it was amazing work that I was able to do with these guys.

Also a culture that is on the fringes.

Yeah, that's right.

It was on the fringes, but it was also this-- if you think about Latinx culture in North Carolina-- California or North Carolina?

No, no, no.

When I moved here, I was coming from San Francisco, I was like, "Are there Taquerias in Durham?

Are there Latino people in Durham?"

And people were telling me, "No, there's not any of that stuff."

And I was like, "That can't possibly be true."

And then you just drive up and down Roxboro Street, and it's like incredible Taquerias that have been there since then.

Superior Supermarket is there.

I've been going there since I moved here.

There was a vibrant Latino culture that existed then, but it existed in plain sight because I feel like-- and I suspect there are people that could way more eloquently develop this argument, but it just felt like it was because we were in the South, it was a really black and white thing, and people didn't know how to incorporate Latinx people into the conversation.

I don't really know.

So part of that at that time was I was looking just-- and I was reading research, like North Carolina has the fastest growing Latino population in the country, which was true.

It may still be true, but this was in 2008, '07, '08.

So then I was like, "Well, I mean, I wonder if there are any lowrider car clubs."

And of course there were.

There was one based around a place called Charlie's.

It's no longer there, but on Avondale, a place called Charlie's Transmissions that all these dudes would hang at.

Multi-racial car club, insane cars, so cool.

So that was a place that I hung a lot as a way to discuss this vernacular, everyday language that is sort of lifted into art through ritual and aesthetic, sort of an agreement of aesthetic value among the dudes that were in this club.

And I guess for them, I don't know, I keep on going back to storytelling here, but it seems like within that kind of culture, within that kind of tight knit community, it seems like you're going to be able to be exposed to things that may be generational.

Yeah.

I mean, for sure, as far as I can recall, everybody was all these guys who were like, I'm way older than these guys were when I was with them then.

But I think everybody had come to cars and car culture through their parents.

And through that as like oral tradition.

Yeah, yeah.

I mean, there was a, I would say like the role that language played is that there was a language, a shared language that everybody in the club understood as how you talk about cars.

Like folklore, in terms of like, as I understand it, in the academic sense, and just, I've been out of the Academy for a really long time.

So this is like a long time since I've dealt with this.

But I would say that folklore is less about storytelling and more about everyday culture and the way that we imbue it, the way that we can make like sort of organized communities around certain things and talk about those things, whether it be lowrider cars, record collecting, I mean, anything, microphones.

It's like where a community develops around activities or things, there also develops language to talk about it and aesthetics and value.

Now, I am curious though, how you're embedded in your work, in this folklore work.

When did the music sort of start to really come back for you?

Right around the same time we had, my wife and I had our first child, Elijah, who's now 16.

And I was still like deeply passionate about music and about playing and writing, but I just, I never felt like I needed or wanted to like reinvent the wheel, but I needed to write songs that like were immediately identifiable as mine.

So I was writing a lot still, but it was just for me.

And I think that sort of like that looking inwards, never playing shows, not having to think about any sort of audience for this stuff, but just writing and yeah, to see what resonated with me, occasionally sharing something with a friend.

I was a new father at this point, so like my emotional life was kind of like broken open in a way that it hadn't been.

I started writing these songs that eventually became the record Bad Debt.

And that really is like a very, yeah, like inward record.

That was really just, there was no audience.

But once I finished enough songs, and at that point I was playing those songs for enough people, like the recordings, and people were going like, "Man, this is really cool.

This is not like, I've not heard you do anything like this.

This is very compelling."

Then I was like, "Well, maybe I could just like put this onto a record."

And again, that's where the sort of hardcore do-it-yourself stuff came from.

I just assembled that record, sent the master off to a place, to a pressing plant in Nashville, and had them make 200 copies of it, and put it up for sale somewhere online.

And then they sold immediately, and I made another 200, and you know what I mean?

Then it was kind of like off to the races.

Were you surprised by that?

Yeah.

That you just put this thing out there, and all of a sudden it just sell out immediately?

Yeah.

I was stoked.

Yeah, I bet.

It was affirming, because I thought that that record had a really deep vibe.

And it was helpful to have the cosmos confirm that to me in some way.

Yeah.

There's a quote that you have.

I'm sure you love hearing quotes of yours being read back to you.

But you said, "I realized I was making songs that felt very visceral, which is the most important thing about making music."

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Let me think about what I meant by visceral.

I think how I would talk about visceral now, it still sort of feels like the right word, is maybe like an existential wrestling with what it means to be a human that is in process.

You know what I mean?

That is happening.

In real time.

Is happening in real time, and continues happening as the record is playing.

When I hear "Bad Debt," and probably all of my music that is the favorite stuff that I've made, I hear something emotional that is in process, that is processing.

But then I think the other part of the word visceral to me is vulnerable.

So just like an openness that can be hard to get at, but I think is super important.

And I think that that's really across mediums.

If you can sense a vulnerability and exploration and openness in a piece, that's usually a pretty sure sign for me personally that it's going to be something that I'm at the very least going to want to come back to, to check myself against.

It seems like what you're saying really is that at that time you were going through self-discovery.

That act of going through self-discovery is what makes a beautiful record sometimes.

I think so.

I mean, there's so much on that "Bad Debt" record that really is about discovery.

It marks a very specific time in my life, just speaking personally.

It's such a marker of time for me.

I really love that record still.

But it's almost like once I got the door open a crack, just in terms of like, okay, there are people that might be into this stuff, and through that, starting to play shows.

And also, importantly, having sort of figured out a way to write that felt genuine to me.

I had already been making records for a long time as the songwriter and singer in bands.

But all during that time, I didn't understand.

I was still searching for my voice, literally and figuratively.

And once I found it, which feels like around the time of "Bad Debt," I was kind of like, oh, there it is.

Now it's like fully wide open, and I'm just going to write and write and write and write and write, and just made a ton of records around that time.

I want to go back to, again, sort of what we were talking about earlier.

You've also said that you've always been a rhythm guy.

What were you trying to find as far as rhythms throughout from record to record?

Do you find that as sort of a continual process for you, or something that you come back to?

My sort of brief for drummers is generally the same.

I mean, just technically speaking, I need a drummer to be able to play an insane 16th note on the hat.

So that person always needs to be able to play the-- [HUMMING] And it could be straight or swung, but any time I audition a drummer, I'm like, let's just get this out of the way first so that no one's wasting anyone's time, because I'm going to be asking to play this groove a lot.

And some people can do it, and some people can't.

And if they can't, it doesn't mean they're a bad drummer.

It's a thing.

It's just a groove.

I've also found some drummers that can play it amazingly.

So Matt McCann, who has played on most Hiss records-- not all of them, but many-- he can play that groove in his sleep.

And he can play it swung.

He can play it straight.

He can dillify it.

Dillify, I love that.

He just can do every version of the 16th note hat.

Yeah, I don't know.

It's still a groove that I love.

Every time I hear it on a record, and I'm not expecting it-- not a Hiss record, but just something I'm listening to-- I'm like, oh, there it is.

Yeah.

That's so cool.

Outside of maybe that consistency, how has this Hiss Gold Messenger project evolved?

I have been thinking a lot about song form in the past, I would say, five years.

When I started with something like Bad Debt or Poor Moon or Ha-- those are all records that came one after another-- those were full of songs that were very concise.

And the longer I went, oftentimes with a group of people that would be consistent for a few years for a couple records, there started to be more and more improvisation.

And we got to a place, probably in '20, '22, '23, when if you came to a Hiss show, you could see an improvisation-- just improv-- that took up a lot of real estate in the set, which I love.

But I feel like I have come back to this place where I'm really looking for concision in songs.

And it's my decision entirely.

If we were going way out on jams, it was because I was telling everyone, let's go out.

Go as far out as you can.

But I feel like I've just come back to this place, especially with this record, I'm People, where my mission for myself was, I'm going to write songs with beginnings and ends.

And the songs need to have-- I'm looking to write as strong choruses as I possibly can.

It's choruses that on the page are simple to sing.

And not simple technically, but direct.

Sure.

Concise.

Direct.

Yeah.

Concise and direct, like something that someone could hear once and sing along with.

That was my mission.

And that's really hard to do.

That's why I've had Creedence Clearwater on the brain, because he did that so well.

Right.

Very concise, beautiful choruses.

Yeah.

Yeah, so I want to talk a little bit more about I'm People, your latest record, which we're getting to hear.

What are some of the themes in this record that you're trying to put forward to listeners?

I feel like something that I come back to in multiple songs is that things are hard.

The world is chaos.

We better find a way to hold on to our joy despite it, because that's one thing that we do have some sort of control over.

Right.

And this is something that I think about a lot for myself.

So this is not a prescription for anybody, but it's more me saying to myself, "Mike, is this going to be the moment that you get pulled under the water?

Or are you going to somehow remind yourself that they, whoever they might be, the agents of whatever chaos, and this could be people in the headlines, but also just existential stuff that has been in my life forever.

They don't get to have the joy too.

You know what I mean?

Despite how crazy the universe seems, and how dark it can seem, I'm going to have a good time.

And not letting, I don't know, somehow avoiding the guilt of that decision and just, you know, it's complicated.

Well, even the title sort of itself suggests community in a shared experience.

We're not going to be able to tough it out alone.

The only way out is with other people.

That feels really present to me right now.

And for me personally, and this is something that I think about a lot and continue to make, revert back to old ways of thinking all the time.

I've always been like a real lone wolf.

The truth is, there's a lot of stuff in my life now that I'm not going to be able to lone wolf out of.

The only way out is with allowing in the love that people are trying to give me.

So it seems like another act of self-discovery is coming through within this record.

Totally.

Yeah.

It's one of those things too where I've been trying to remind myself that maybe it's a little bit harder now, but you still need to go seek joy, find joy.

That's right.

Keep it close.

And it could be anything.

But it's important to do that.

Totally important.

Yeah.

The first verse of the song "Who You Gonna Run To," which is the second song on the record, we played it here, says, "Tuesday night at the by and by and the fiddles and the sawdust, as hard as it's been for everyone, I've never felt so perfect."

Which is a lot of things that are in tension with each other.

It's hard for everybody and I feel good.

That's something that feels vulnerable to say even.

You know what I mean?

Oh, totally.

But that's life.

We're not living in either it's good or it's bad.

It's like we're living in between.

And it's always been that way.

To me, this is my perspective.

I want to talk a little bit too, within the set that we have with you all, we were able to use the album art as the background.

And I'd love for you to talk to us a little bit about the album art that you selected.

Yeah.

Well, the cover of the album is this photo of me taken by Graham Tolbert.

The interior gatefold is by an artist, a painter named Bill Traylor.

He was working in the early part of the 20th century.

He was born into slavery in Alabama or Mississippi and didn't become an artist until much later in his life.

And his work was collected by various people and now resides in a bunch of different museums and institutions.

And his work is beautiful.

It's very highly regarded.

And for me, it's easy to see why.

It's like, again, it's very vulnerable and kind of like visceral.

To like come back to these words.

So the painting that I licensed from his family is like basically takes up the whole gatefold spread of when you open the cover, it's the whole painting.

And it's a picture of a blue house.

The blue is this like really beautiful shade of blue.

And there are all these people and dogs and crows and there's a snake that like seem like they're trying to get into the house.

And they're all painted in like black and white.

At the moment that I saw it, I think I just felt like I recognized the energy that was happening in the painting, like the house being the place of solace.

And all of these forces trying to get into it.

There's like a man on the roof with like almost like an ax or a hammer that is trying to get in.

And like when I see that painting, the first thing I think is that's a really beautiful painting.

And I've been a fan of his work for a really long time.

And I have this book of his and I sort of opened it to that spread one day.

And I was like, God, I wonder if there's any way that I could like license this.

It seems crazy to like fantasize in that way, but like, I don't know, maybe.

Yeah.

So it worked out.

Yeah, it worked out.

It took a while.

Yeah.

It's really cool to hear you explain that and why you gravitate toward it based solely off of what we were just talking about.

It's how we're protecting moments of us finding joy, seeking joy, why it's important.

And like, I feel like there's something really cool about the fact that like the house is this beautiful shade of blue.

And it's really the only thing in the painting other than another part of the house that's in color like that.

Right.

You know, so that's the house is this like vibrant location on this painting that's otherwise surrounded by figures that are sort of dingy.

You know, and like that was intentional the whole time.

Like I was kind of aware of what I thought the themes of this record were, some of which we've talked about today.

And like, I was aware of what I thought as the viewer, the theme of the painting might be or could possibly be.

Sure.

It's your interpretation of- Yeah.

So like they seemed like the music and the painting, I don't know, it seemed like they were speaking to each other.

Yeah.

One question that I like to ask everybody on the show, and sort of one of the reasons why we came up with the concept for the show, Shaped by Sound, is we were thinking about how music really affects us as people, how it affects us as communities.

And I'd like to ask everyone, how do you think that you are as a person are shaped by sound?

I mean, music has like directed and saved my life in a million ways that it would be hard to like parse it all.

I've been a music obsessive human since I was a little kid.

I don't know why.

But it's sort of like the engine of my life.

And you speak to like, you could talk to my family, my kids would be like, I mean, dad has music playing all day, every day, in every room.

There are three record players in the house, all playing different records all day long.

It's just like, it's a language for me, it's a pressure valve.

It's a way to articulate emotions when I might not have the exact words.

And it's a safe place to, it's a safe way to communicate things that feel hard.

Yeah.

You know, and I feel so fortunate to have that kind of language in my life, because I think a lot of people don't.

Yeah.

Don't have that way to like, communicate, let off steam, yeah, be in touch with things that are so deep and sensitive.

Music has always been that for me.

Yeah.

So we'd like to just kind of go through what you're going to be playing for us.

I'll start off with the first one, which is In The Middle Of It, from the new record.

Yeah.

In The Middle Of It is the first song on I'm People.

And I feel like, you know, maybe there is a loose, I'm hesitant to say narrative, but In The Middle Of It drops us into the middle of maybe the emotional landscape that I was writing around.

You know, and then like from there, I kind of move backwards and forwards.

Yeah, I don't know.

I like that song.

Well, you said it kind of, it literally puts you into the middle of the concept and themes of this record.

Yeah.

Yeah, I think so.

And it's just about, in part, maybe that song is about how relationships can start and end unexpectedly maybe.

Like without understanding what they're about, they can come into your life and out of your life and a lot of times you don't have a lot of control over the way that that happens, the way they enter and leave.

Right.

Also, another song from the record, Who You Gonna Run To?

Yeah.

Who You Gonna Run To, we were talking about that one a little bit ago.

That song, the album version of that song, there's something almost carnivalesque about the way that it feels or like when Josh Kaufman, who produced the record with me and played a ton of stuff, he's an incredible musician, played all these guitars and other instruments.

When he sent me everything that he had done on that record, I was like, "This sounds like a Fellini film to me."

You know what I mean?

Yeah.

And if you know his movies, I just think of them as just like this, I don't know, just like colorful and yeah, tragic and a party.

It's like a tragic party.

Yeah.

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah.

So that's kind of like the vibe of that tune.

Yeah.

I love the way that that song turned out on the record.

Yeah.

And then Last Orders, also on the new record.

Yes.

Last Orders is... It started out as kind of like a Stonesy or Faces sort of groove, like open tuned guitars with just a big, big chorus.

Yeah.

A big simple chorus.

And I had my buddy Marcus King sing on that one, who's like a... Oh, wow.

Yeah.

He's like a ripping guitar, I don't know.

I just was like, "Marcus, I have a song I need you to sing on."

He was like, "Okay, man."

Yeah.

He has a very bold voice.

Yeah, his voice is so incredible.

I mean, people, I don't know, I think he's just like, he's got it all.

He's like an insane guitar player.

Right.

And that uses the idiom of the blues, which in the wrong hands can really be hackneyed, but Marcus does something special.

But man, his singing voice is just so raspy and I don't know, there's something that's like so sexy about it.

Yeah.

That's like, I guess.

Yeah.

It feels like a very classic sort of voice.

That's right.

Yeah.

I'm a big fan.

Yeah.

And we've also got Highland Grace, which is from Heart Like a Levee.

Yeah.

Highland Grace is an older tune and it's one that people always wanna hear.

I guess I sort of understand why, although I couldn't really put it into words, but it's always made sense.

But we decided to play that one here because I had the full band, including Matt Douglas playing saxophone, who played the original sax arrangement on the original recording that is like, every time we play it, if there's not a sax in my head, I just hear it.

Yeah.

That's really cool.

Yeah.

And he's incredible.

Yeah, he's so, so amazing.

Gosh, I feel like he just silky smooth flows in and out of that.

He's so good.

All of these songs.

Yeah.

"Shaky Eyes," which is on I'm People as well.

Yeah, "Shaky Eyes."

Yeah.

Again, it's like a song about maybe the wagers, the gambles that we make in life about what's going to bring us happiness.

That tune was written in a motel room in Santa Fe, where I had gone with my wife for a few days to do some... She was kind of out doing her thing and I was staying in writing for... I knew that we were going to be making the record and I was looking for a few more things.

And then the last song I've got here, which you played for us was "Sanctuary" off of "Quietly Blowing It."

"Sanctuary."

Yeah.

That's another sort of song that people feel connected to.

It seems to me that people are connected to that song.

Well, it seems like, especially now, just given the state of the world that we're in, it's pretty obvious why people gravitate toward it.

Yeah.

That's a song that was written a few days after John Prine passed away, who was a songwriting hero to me.

And I didn't know him well, but he was a friend and as beautiful of human as you would hope that he would be as someone that wrote those songs and he absolutely lived up to that.

So his songs are sort of a sanctuary for you in a way?

Yeah, sort of.

He's also mentioned in the song, when I say, "Handsome Johnny had to go a child," that was his nickname for himself, Handsome Johnny.

Heck yeah.

Yeah.

Well, that's all the questions that I have for you, MC.

Thank you so much for being on the show.

I do want to just give you the space if there's anything else that I didn't cover that you'd like to speak to.

Oh, no, I don't think so.

We covered more than anybody could possibly want to hear.

You'd be surprised.

Thank you again for doing this show.

Oh, thank you.

We really, really appreciate it.

And yeah.

Thank you so much.

Take care.

Thanks for joining us on the Shaped by Sound podcast.

If you'd like to hear some of the songs we discussed today, you can find them on our website, pbsnc.org/shapedbysound.