Field Dispatch
Matt Connarton Unleashed 12-14-24 hour 2
Game Plan
Speaker 1: The class victims of the I A t.
Speaker 2: D A sky a skys cos he foss go.
Speaker 1: See the court montage.
Speaker 2: Enough to starve.
Speaker 3: And what you said?
Speaker 1: So I live in the said.
Speaker 2: In the call blood states, think of the living another
Speaker 2: rebel chase.
Speaker 1: They're not a bad don't pass them about the time.
Speaker 2: Said, I'm as side said.
Speaker 1: To said.
Speaker 3: Times.
Speaker 4: First of all, then the poets are massing.
Speaker 1: Then the response upon.
Speaker 4: The pot desire.
Speaker 2: To that excel still then I said the walk. Now
Speaker 2: I'm not aside the days time, the money gives above the.
Speaker 1: Seas, that the world and just get wet. Anything better
Speaker 1: than this, continue to love. Then I'm a man.
Speaker 4: That's like the worst phone connection ever, Tom, Are you
Speaker 4: there yonder? Okay? For some reason, there's like this, uh
Speaker 4: strange sound in the background. But I think we can
Speaker 4: live with it. Well, at least we can hear each other.
Speaker 5: I don't know what that would be, but yeah, I
Speaker 5: don't know.
Speaker 4: Do you hear that? Do you hear like a buzzing
Speaker 4: in the background.
Speaker 5: Well, that could be h just the airflow, but that's
Speaker 5: down in the basement. I mean, I'm surprised it's traveling
Speaker 5: that far. I'm on the first first floor.
Speaker 6: Yeah, that's all right, though.
Speaker 4: We can hear you. You're you're nice and you're coming
Speaker 4: through nice and clear or so, so that's that's what matters.
Speaker 5: Shut it off. I can shut it off if you
Speaker 5: give me a second.
Speaker 4: Oh okay, okay, no problem, if you are just joining us.
Speaker 4: Tom Modern is calling in because the skype thing did
Speaker 4: not work out. But uh, I actually really like that
Speaker 4: song Toxic Man. What Tom does, if you are listening,
Speaker 4: is unconventional. He's very unique. His music is very unique.
Speaker 4: So I'm quite curious to speak with him. But he's
Speaker 4: going to go and try to shut off whatever is
Speaker 4: causing that sounds like angry bees. O, hey, this should
Speaker 4: be better, all right, Tom? Hey, so how do you
Speaker 4: describe your music? I'm really curious let's start there, because
Speaker 4: what you're doing, and obviously I'm not the only one
Speaker 4: to say this to you, what you're doing is very unique.
Speaker 4: I cannot think of anyone who I mean, there might
Speaker 4: be some influences there that we can talk about, but
Speaker 4: I haven't heard anyone who sounds quite like you. So
Speaker 4: I'm really curious. How do you describe your music to
Speaker 4: someone who's never heard it?
Speaker 7: Uh?
Speaker 5: I would say it's a galectic. It's influenced by a
Speaker 5: lot of different artists, and it's you know, it's organic
Speaker 5: in the sense that i'd I like to play a
Speaker 5: lot of different instruments, but I would probably it's been
Speaker 5: tough to categorize, but I would at times I would
Speaker 5: call it art pop or post wave.
Speaker 4: Yeah, or.
Speaker 5: Uh, prog pop Okay, some prog influences there. It's difficult though.
Speaker 5: They don't have the right categories for artists these days
Speaker 5: that they really need a few more.
Speaker 4: You mentioned you play multiple instruments. Do you play everything
Speaker 4: on these tracks?
Speaker 5: Is that all you on some of the tracks? Yes,
Speaker 5: I've played everything, but there were four or five guest
Speaker 5: musicians on the on the album. I try to use
Speaker 5: as many people as I can. It's just, you know,
Speaker 5: it's sometimes it's tough getting people and because I I
Speaker 5: grew up playing guitar and but I always had a
Speaker 5: piano and a drum machine in my house, so it
Speaker 5: was sort of natural too. Just learn those instruments a
Speaker 5: little bit as well. Sure, sure, yeah, so it's coming handy.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 4: The album is called now this is one of those words.
Speaker 4: I don't know if I can say it correctly on
Speaker 4: the first stride out, I will try performical? Am I
Speaker 4: saying that correctly?
Speaker 5: Yeah, that's correct. Yeah, performical.
Speaker 4: Yeah, performical. Is that a real word or is that
Speaker 4: your word?
Speaker 5: It's a made up word. Just I don't know. It
Speaker 5: came to me one day and it was just that said,
Speaker 5: you know that that's the album, that's the title, performical.
Speaker 4: Well what is it?
Speaker 5: I think it comes go ahead, No, no, I was.
Speaker 4: Just going to ask you what does it mean? I mean,
Speaker 4: obviously it's a made up word, but what does it
Speaker 4: mean to you?
Speaker 5: I think it came from, uh, sort of an aberration, uh,
Speaker 5: from my performing I performed in New York for many
Speaker 5: years and I tended tended to be somewhat theatrical, and
Speaker 5: I would use props and costumes to help interpret the
Speaker 5: music as and that just you know, just I don't know,
Speaker 5: somehow joined into the word. You know, well, I don't
Speaker 5: want word that would be end with cl maybe but
Speaker 5: al festival or you know, so just naturally sort of
Speaker 5: adapted to performicle.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, and you've got this is obviously a full
Speaker 4: length album. What went into the decision to release us
Speaker 4: as a full length and I asked that because and
Speaker 4: this is kind of one of those questions I ask anybody,
Speaker 4: because I'm always curious. We live in a time, as
Speaker 4: you know, where there are so many different ways that
Speaker 4: you can release music, different strategies. Some artists only release singles,
Speaker 4: some release EPs, Some will release a series of singles
Speaker 4: that eventually become an album. But wasn't an important to
Speaker 4: you to release Perfronicle as an album? Is there is
Speaker 4: there some sort of a cohesive theme running throughout these
Speaker 4: songs or is it just or did it just seem
Speaker 4: natural to do it this way?
Speaker 5: No, there was really no cohesive theme. I mean, all
Speaker 5: the songs are very different if you look at it
Speaker 5: from the outside. Yeah, but it became clear to me
Speaker 5: to be taken serious as a serious artist, you really
Speaker 5: have to release an album. I mean I was just
Speaker 5: releasing singles for a while and that just wasn't cutting it.
Speaker 5: And I looked around at all the other artists who
Speaker 5: are working, and they're not doing that, They're releasing albums.
Speaker 5: So I was like, yeah, that's what I have to do.
Speaker 5: And so I pulled back and all the other stuff
Speaker 5: and just sank my energy into this release. And you know,
Speaker 5: hoping for the best. Released in September of this year,
Speaker 5: and I actually tried releasing it once before, but I
Speaker 5: wasn't happy with some of the recordings, and so I
Speaker 5: re recorded some of the tracks because I was just
Speaker 5: learning digital recording years ago. Yeah, so along with a
Speaker 5: lot of other people, and so that's the way I
Speaker 5: did it. Yeah, up till now.
Speaker 4: Yeah, do you where do you record? Do you record
Speaker 4: at home? I mean it sounds like it's it's very
Speaker 4: it sounds like this is very di I wy Do
Speaker 4: you do all of that yourself?
Speaker 7: Oh?
Speaker 5: Yeah, definitely. Part of it was recorded in New York.
Speaker 5: Part of it was recorded it's Sampiper Studio is here
Speaker 5: in Cleveland. And part of it was recorded in Los
Speaker 5: Angeles because a couple of the musicians were out there,
Speaker 5: so they were turning in remote pieces. H gee, I
Speaker 5: think it started all I was recording in a storage
Speaker 5: unit in New York, New York City.
Speaker 4: Oh no kidding, Yeah, it wasn't.
Speaker 5: It wasn't ideal, but yeah, it's part of it was
Speaker 5: a part of it. God done there.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah.
Speaker 4: Yeah. So so now you're so, are you from New
Speaker 4: York originally?
Speaker 5: No, from Cleveland originally, but I'm born and raised, but
Speaker 5: I lived in New York about it was about twenty
Speaker 5: eight years.
Speaker 4: Oh okay, no, it's a long time in terms of
Speaker 4: the music scene. And because again you're doing something that's unusual.
Speaker 4: Like I said, I can't think of anyone who sounds
Speaker 4: quite like you. What was it like to do what
Speaker 4: you do in New York? I assume that that if
Speaker 4: there's anywhere in the country where you can do pretty
Speaker 4: much just about anything you can think of musically, and
Speaker 4: you're going to find some sort of an audience, right,
Speaker 4: people are going to be interested. I would think that
Speaker 4: New York City would be kind of the best place
Speaker 4: to do something that is unusual and still be accepted
Speaker 4: and have people want to participate in it and be
Speaker 4: interested in it. Am I is my instinct correct about that,
Speaker 4: And that's not to suggest that you don't have that
Speaker 4: in Cleveland, but I assume in New York that's where
Speaker 4: you really have that the most, where you can you
Speaker 4: can create whatever you want to and there's going to
Speaker 4: be some sort of audience for it. Am I Am
Speaker 4: I correct in that.
Speaker 5: Oh, yeah, that's that's true. For the most part. You
Speaker 5: can do anything in New York and somebody will relate
Speaker 5: to it. Yeah, but it's tough as well. I mean,
Speaker 5: a lot of the clubs in New York that you play,
Speaker 5: it's you know, it's the lot of them ask you
Speaker 5: how many people you bring in? You know, that kind
Speaker 5: of thing, and it's just like, well, I'm just trying
Speaker 5: to do this thing, man. I mean I'm not I'm
Speaker 5: too busy. I'm not responsible for getting people through the door.
Speaker 5: And a lot of the clubs really have to start
Speaker 5: getting people in the old fashioned way, you know, when
Speaker 5: people went to clubs and bars and stuff and you know,
Speaker 5: whoever was playing was playing.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 5: Now they want you to be the marketer too, and
Speaker 5: it's just like, well, you know, wow, too many things
Speaker 5: to do, you know. So yeah, it can be tough too.
Speaker 5: But you can do whatever you want to New York
Speaker 5: and let's see how it goes, you know.
Speaker 4: Basically, Yeah, do you still perform live? Do you perform
Speaker 4: live in Cleveland?
Speaker 5: My last show was last November. Actually, now I haven't
Speaker 5: really been performing here. It's probably even tougher here because
Speaker 5: Cleveland's it's mostly cover cover bands and tribute bands and
Speaker 5: and ben and if you're original, there's less places and
Speaker 5: they really want bands here right now, I'm more of
Speaker 5: a solo artist or perform as a duo, maybe with
Speaker 5: a percussionist or something. So it's been tough here. So
Speaker 5: I really started focusing on the recording. That's what I'm
Speaker 5: doing now. I'm really laser focused on the recording. Because
Speaker 5: when you at a certain point, if an artist has
Speaker 5: you know, two, three, four albums in his head, I mean,
Speaker 5: you know, he's really got a buckle down and get
Speaker 5: to work. You know, he's this performing is great for
Speaker 5: the ego, But I mean, what what what corporeal thing
Speaker 5: do you have? The whole lot to you, it's really
Speaker 5: the recordings.
Speaker 4: You know, right right? Has your sound changed over the years,
Speaker 4: I assume it has. I assume it's changed and evolved.
Speaker 5: Oh definitely. A few years ago I founded a prog
Speaker 5: band in New York City called Arta, and we were,
Speaker 5: you know, just hard hardcore prague, you know, yeah, performing,
Speaker 5: and uh so I decided to come out of the
Speaker 5: dry ice and the flog a little bit and warm
Speaker 5: up a little bit. And then I got I got
Speaker 5: to worry and now more like you know, the the
Speaker 5: synth pop, the prog pop, art pop, whatever you want
Speaker 5: to call it maybe a little bit avant guarde avant guard,
Speaker 5: a clue, you know, whatever you want to call it.
Speaker 4: Yeah, there's that. There's a term too that people use
Speaker 4: a lot, experimental indie, which is almost kind of a
Speaker 4: catch all for anything that's for anything that's unusual that
Speaker 4: you wouldn't hear on commercial radio. But you don't you
Speaker 4: don't really know what to call it. But but yeah,
Speaker 4: I mean it's always hard to label these things, which
Speaker 4: I think is a good thing when you're when you're
Speaker 4: doing something that is hard to label because it's, like
Speaker 4: I said, it's something that, uh, that is unique. Has
Speaker 4: it has that always been important to you to do
Speaker 4: something that's unusual, or have you ever played in in
Speaker 4: just kind of a standard rock band, or has it
Speaker 4: always been your, uh, your goal to do something that's
Speaker 4: that's outside of the mainstream.
Speaker 5: Consciously? No, I think it maybe comes from, you know,
Speaker 5: listening to all those bands and having an influence, being
Speaker 5: influenced by all those bands, but not really listening to
Speaker 5: a lot of music. I mean, when you're busy with
Speaker 5: your own music all day. Yeah, by five o'clock, you
Speaker 5: don't want to hear anymore news when it hurts to
Speaker 5: hear music. Yeah, realistically. Yeah, And so I think just
Speaker 5: naturally morphs into your own sound that way, rather than
Speaker 5: you know, well I'm gonna I mean, of course, just
Speaker 5: some times it's like I want to do something different here,
Speaker 5: and you know, sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. But
Speaker 5: I think it just naturally evolves, you know, that's the
Speaker 5: best way anyway.
Speaker 4: You mentioned too when you were in New York, so
Speaker 4: you would use a lot of props during your show.
Speaker 5: Oh yeah, Like if you look at the the the
Speaker 5: cover of the album Performical, there's three series of pictures there.
Speaker 5: Rum I'm actually removing a space helmet that I used
Speaker 5: to come out in a space helmet and I would
Speaker 5: stand there and then slowly move my arms in the
Speaker 5: position and slowly remove the hell helmet and just stand
Speaker 5: there for a minute.
Speaker 6: Yep.
Speaker 5: And you know, that was just one of the props
Speaker 5: of the Society's game I think you played before. I'd
Speaker 5: come out in just a little thing, a little accent
Speaker 5: to you know, help interpret the song. I would come
Speaker 5: out in a captain's hat. You know, sometimes it wasn't
Speaker 5: I don't really like full to get into full costume,
Speaker 5: you know. Changes. I think it's a bit much, but
Speaker 5: you can use little things and sometimes you can throw on,
Speaker 5: you know, a little half a costume, you know, to
Speaker 5: help help interpret the piece.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, I'm looking at the I'm looking at the
Speaker 4: cover right now actually for Perfromical, so I can see
Speaker 4: what you're talking about with removing the helmet. And yeah,
Speaker 4: that's cool personally, I love that kind of thing. I love,
Speaker 4: uh seeing theatrics and and uh oh yeah. Yeah. Are
Speaker 4: are there any videos on YouTube of you performing live?
Speaker 5: There's a couple few, they're a little bit scattered, but yeah,
Speaker 5: there's a couple things out there. I think there's one
Speaker 5: from the the old Metropolitan Room. Yeah, it's more of
Speaker 5: a cabaret jazz play. So I think I was one
Speaker 5: of the few rock artists that was allowed to play there.
Speaker 5: Oh no, kidding, Yeah, And there was a couple other
Speaker 5: they're scattered though.
Speaker 4: There are videos though, yeah, oh okay, I'll have to
Speaker 4: look for those. I'm actually very curious to see you
Speaker 4: play live. Would you have you mentioned working with other
Speaker 4: musicians on recording when you when you would play live
Speaker 4: in New York, for example, did you have other musicians
Speaker 4: join you there or because I would imagine this, there's
Speaker 4: probably some a bit of a barrier there, right, because
Speaker 4: it's not like like a singer songwriter who's just getting
Speaker 4: on stage with a guitar. There's a lot of flexibility
Speaker 4: there to have other musicians join him or her and
Speaker 4: it you know, you can make it work. But I
Speaker 4: would imagine for what you do, that's that's probably a
Speaker 4: lot more challenging. Or maybe not.
Speaker 5: It can be challenging because getting people's difficult and people's
Speaker 5: availabilities are different, so there might not be a lot
Speaker 5: of chance for rehearsal time. But I would try to
Speaker 5: use musicians whenever I could. I go out with a
Speaker 5: bass player, I go out with the drummer. A couple
Speaker 5: of times went out with a drummer and a guitar player.
Speaker 5: You know, it just depends, you know. You know, people say, well,
Speaker 5: you know, put a band together and be in a band.
Speaker 5: I mean, you know, I don't know. Sometimes people realize
Speaker 5: how hard it is to have five people together and
Speaker 5: throwing their hat into the ring, you know, being all
Speaker 5: in and going to show up somewhere and here and there,
Speaker 5: and you know it's not gonna last very long with
Speaker 5: people's you know, needs and availabilities and what they have
Speaker 5: to be responsible for and committed to, you know, paying
Speaker 5: the rent and all that. You know, Yeah, very difficult.
Speaker 4: It is challenging, I know from my own experience playing
Speaker 4: in bands. And we had I wish I could remember
Speaker 4: who said it. We had a guest on the show
Speaker 4: once who said, being in a band, if you're in
Speaker 4: a five piece band, it's like being in a relationship
Speaker 4: with four other people at once who are all in
Speaker 4: a relationship with four other people at the same time,
Speaker 4: And it's it can be very, very challenging. And there
Speaker 4: is a certain freedom that I've never experienced myself. I
Speaker 4: only ever played in bands. I never did a solo thing.
Speaker 4: But there is a certain freedom that comes with sort
Speaker 4: of being the captain of your own ship, where you
Speaker 4: don't have to depend on anybody else. You know, you
Speaker 4: can do it all yourself. And and uh so that's
Speaker 4: you know, that must be nice and and so I
Speaker 4: I understand, I understand why you feel that way about
Speaker 4: you know, the challenges of playing in a band, and
Speaker 4: you know, maybe it's not necessarily worth it. But again
Speaker 4: also too, what you're doing is is so unusual and unique.
Speaker 4: What is that by the way. That's that tracks society's
Speaker 4: game that we opened with. Is there is there a meaning?
Speaker 4: Is there a specific message with the lyrics to that?
Speaker 8: Uh?
Speaker 5: A meaning? Well, it didn't Bob Dylan say once I
Speaker 5: just wrote it. I don't know what it's about. H
Speaker 5: I guess it's just about society. I mean, I think
Speaker 5: the late the late two thousands, I was going to
Speaker 5: a lot of society parties in New York City and yeah,
Speaker 5: and then when the economies we had the different economy crashes,
Speaker 5: the real estate and then the stock the tech bubble crash,
Speaker 5: and then that that all kind of died out. So
Speaker 5: it was kind of thinking about it, like, hmm, you know,
Speaker 5: that was that was interesting. It was an interesting time
Speaker 5: in the city. It's probably all come back now now,
Speaker 5: but now I was thinking, you know, me, you know,
Speaker 5: rubbing elbows with a lot of like movers and shakers
Speaker 5: and royalty, celebrities, artists, uh, you know, everybody. And in
Speaker 5: a way it was kind of cool. It was kind
Speaker 5: of like a mini Studio fifty four in a way,
Speaker 5: because I mean, here I was, I was just a
Speaker 5: broke artist, you know, but everybody sort of accepted you.
Speaker 5: But I did see lines and limitations, I mean, uh,
Speaker 5: you know, and privilege, a lot of privilege and talking
Speaker 5: about the kind of privilege that this uh comes with
Speaker 5: something that's green, you know, and uh there's you know,
Speaker 5: society uh boundaries and I want, I want to say rules,
Speaker 5: but that's probably the wrong word. But you know, so
Speaker 5: it you know, it has it has sort of a
Speaker 5: meaning that uh uh loosely defines the the upper echelon
Speaker 5: uh society in the East Coast there. Yeah, I would say, yeah,
Speaker 5: And then part of it's kind of interpretive.
Speaker 4: Well, ultimately, I mean that really is the point, right,
Speaker 4: you know, music or any kind of art, it's it's
Speaker 4: really about what it means to the individual who is
Speaker 4: enjoying that that art, and up to their interpretation. It's
Speaker 4: it's all subjective, and I've always found it a little
Speaker 4: disappointing when you know, if I listen to a and
Speaker 4: it means something specific to me, and then I talk
Speaker 4: to somebody or I read an interview or an article
Speaker 4: where the musician who wrote it talks about what it's
Speaker 4: about and it turns out to be something completely different
Speaker 4: than what I interpreted it. As you know, I almost
Speaker 4: don't want to know in that case, you know what
Speaker 4: I mean, because I wanted to mean what it's supposed
Speaker 4: to mean to me, and that's entirely subjective. So I
Speaker 4: think there's value in creating art that can ultimately be
Speaker 4: interpreted anyway, or in this case, anyway the listener wants
Speaker 4: to interpret it. So I get what you're saying. I definitely,
Speaker 4: I definitely get that.
Speaker 8: Well.
Speaker 5: I'm actually a big fan of that leaving room for
Speaker 5: interpretation because yeah, like, for example, right now, I'm working
Speaker 5: on an opus or a piece that I wrote a
Speaker 5: lot of it back in the nineteen eighties and never
Speaker 5: did anything with it, and that's going to probably be
Speaker 5: my next project forwards, and where you could call it
Speaker 5: like almost like a rock opera or a something or
Speaker 5: a concept album, okay, And but the storylines is going
Speaker 5: to be somewhat interpretive, because you know, the last thing
Speaker 5: you want is people rolling their eyes. Where there's a
Speaker 5: tight knit storyline or rock opera or something, it's just
Speaker 5: ridiculous story I don't even know if the author knows
Speaker 5: what it means anymore by the end of it. Right,
Speaker 5: it's just like, oh, brother, you know I don't want
Speaker 5: to be like that, right right? Want you want some
Speaker 5: sort of structure there, but you don't want to be
Speaker 5: go overboard.
Speaker 4: Right understood? Understood? Are you Are you already working on
Speaker 4: new material actively because you strike me as someone who
Speaker 4: probably has a lot of ideas.
Speaker 5: Well. That that's the thing. I mean. I still have
Speaker 5: a couple of albums in my head, my solo stuff,
Speaker 5: and then I got this project that I just talked about,
Speaker 5: the Cuyahoga Project. So it's like I don't sit around
Speaker 5: beating myself up about if I'm I'm not being creative
Speaker 5: enough when you have a backlog of so much material
Speaker 5: that you haven't even recorded, you know. So that's actually
Speaker 5: a good place to be for an artist too.
Speaker 4: Well, I was going to say, it's actually a good
Speaker 4: problem to have, right.
Speaker 5: It kind of is, because if without it, I think
Speaker 5: I would be sitting around beating myself up over lack
Speaker 5: of ideas and not being creative enough and just racking
Speaker 5: my head.
Speaker 9: For ideas, right right, Yeah, no doubt I'd.
Speaker 5: Be My advice to any artists, you know, just build
Speaker 5: up a backlog and you know, save your sanity, right Exactly?
Speaker 4: Do these songs, by the way, do they end up
Speaker 4: at the end of the process, Do they ever end
Speaker 4: up drastically different from what your initial idea was because
Speaker 4: you're again with your music. It's it's unique, and there
Speaker 4: seems to be a lot of I assume there's a
Speaker 4: lot of room for experimentation as you're recording them. I mean,
Speaker 4: do they ever end up? Do you ever end up
Speaker 4: with a finished product where you go, Wow, that's completely
Speaker 4: different than what I originally envisioned this particular piece to
Speaker 4: sound like, Oh yeah, very much so.
Speaker 5: A lot of it A lot of times not not
Speaker 5: not not conceptually or not lyrically because the lyrics, you know,
Speaker 5: stay the same and they say the same thing. But
Speaker 5: I'm all often surprised how songs change stylistically and sonically
Speaker 5: and audio ly, if that was the word, mostly from
Speaker 5: the instruments that happens to me. It was like the
Speaker 5: other day I was recording a song for a future
Speaker 5: album called Japantown, and it's about it a place in
Speaker 5: San Francisco when I lived out there, and when I
Speaker 5: want to add the guitar parts, I started getting all
Speaker 5: these new ideas and I couldn't believe how drastically a change,
Speaker 5: especially the ending of the song. Yeah, you know, but
Speaker 5: that was a good thing though, but you never know,
Speaker 5: and really until it's like a painting, you really never
Speaker 5: know until they're done and you stand back and you
Speaker 5: look at it say oh wow, I'm seeing all this
Speaker 5: now and this and I didn't know come out like that.
Speaker 5: And so yeah, it's a process.
Speaker 4: Absolutely.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 4: I've heard Jenny say that, you know, she's a painter,
Speaker 4: and I've heard her say, you know, when a painting
Speaker 4: is done, or she feels it's done, she'll say, this
Speaker 4: isn't what I This isn't what I intended it to
Speaker 4: be when I started it, or I didn't think this
Speaker 4: is what it was going to look like. But it's done.
Speaker 4: Here it is, you know. But that's kind of the
Speaker 4: adventure of it, right, creating, whether it's painting or music,
Speaker 4: any kind of art. When it when it ends up,
Speaker 4: there is something kind of cool about that, when it
Speaker 4: ends up being something different than what you had originally intended.
Speaker 4: As long as it is in a good way, as
Speaker 4: long as it's something that you're happy with, that's kind
Speaker 4: of the adventure of creating.
Speaker 5: I think, well, yeah, as long as you're happy with that, sure,
Speaker 5: that's the key. There's there's some times who have recorded
Speaker 5: stuff that I was. I didn't think it would come
Speaker 5: out sounding like that. I want to hear what I
Speaker 5: heard in my head.
Speaker 9: You know, right, this is a this is a disaster,
Speaker 9: you know right, Yeah that that happens too, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 9: oh yeah, And that's that's not such a great feeling
Speaker 9: when you get to the end of it and you go, oh,
Speaker 9: I wish i'd been able to actually.
Speaker 4: Play you know, what I had imagined or you know, yeah,
Speaker 4: And I've certainly had that happen where it's like, geez,
Speaker 4: I had this great idea, but I can't seem to
Speaker 4: figure out how to translate it into actual, actual music.
Speaker 5: And there were there were two cover songs on the
Speaker 5: album also, I wanted to mention that they came out
Speaker 5: as some of the best songs on the album.
Speaker 10: Really well, So I have one song, oh yeah, go ahead,
Speaker 10: go ahead, Oh no, go ahead, Tom finish her. I thought,
Speaker 10: I'm curious, Well, this could be a long thought.
Speaker 5: That's why I asked you, Well, the one song I
Speaker 5: want to be with You Tonight. That was a song
Speaker 5: by a Cleveland band called Lipstick. Back in the day,
Speaker 5: back in the nineteen eighties. I mean, you couldn't go
Speaker 5: out to a club and not see that group. You know,
Speaker 5: they were playing everywhere, and that song always kind of
Speaker 5: stuck in my head. It was a good song, and
Speaker 5: I think they released it. I think it charted a
Speaker 5: little bit on Billboard. I'm not sure. I think it did.
Speaker 5: But now I was sitting there on the studio one
Speaker 5: day just playing some stuff and wondering how certain things
Speaker 5: would sound. And I was like, I wonder if I could,
Speaker 5: you know, learn a little part of that song, and
Speaker 5: and and I when I played it back, and it
Speaker 5: sounded really good, and I was like, wow, you don't
Speaker 5: mentioned consider doing a cover version of this? And so
Speaker 5: I did, and I thought it came out pretty decent. Yeah,
Speaker 5: really groove. That had a groove to it. And I
Speaker 5: think that was played that featured on George Norri Coast
Speaker 5: to Coast.
Speaker 4: I am really George played that on that's I didn't know,
Speaker 4: oh like his bumper music or the whole song? Did
Speaker 4: did he actually play the whole thing?
Speaker 5: Oh? No, not the whole thing. Yeah, it was a
Speaker 5: bumper piece, uh, one of the on one of the
Speaker 5: Sunday night thingies that they do. But that was cool
Speaker 5: and and and the other cover song things fall apart
Speaker 5: that was a song by a Cleveland band called the Generators,
Speaker 5: and there were late seventies, early eighties, and I had
Speaker 5: a live recording that I found somewhere or something, was
Speaker 5: a real tape of them, and the version of that
Speaker 5: song on the tape was just lights out. It was
Speaker 5: just fabulous. It was great, and it was I think
Speaker 5: it was slower than the version that they released as
Speaker 5: a single, which I didn't really care for that much.
Speaker 5: But this version of the song really made it groove
Speaker 5: and come out. And and so I was like, you know,
Speaker 5: I want to do that. I want to I want
Speaker 5: to do a cover of that song. And it's going
Speaker 5: to be at that speed too. And I studied all
Speaker 5: the parts that that one. I played all the instruments
Speaker 5: on also, and studied all the parts. I kept them
Speaker 5: to well what you then, their natural form, how they
Speaker 5: were played by the various musicians. I tried to keep
Speaker 5: it as true as as possible to the original performances
Speaker 5: and studied all the parts and actually played the drums
Speaker 5: on that too.
Speaker 4: Oh okay, very cool. Well we're going to in a moment,
Speaker 4: we're gonna play I want to be with You tonight.
Speaker 4: That's how we will end the segment. But Tom, I
Speaker 4: really appreciate you joining us this morning. This has been interesting.
Speaker 4: Like I said, your music is quite fascinating to me
Speaker 4: before we let you go, and like I said, we'll
Speaker 4: end with that track. I want to be with you
Speaker 4: tonight since you were just talking about it a moment ago.
Speaker 4: But anything we should know about, where's the best place
Speaker 4: to go to find you online for people who want
Speaker 4: to keep up with everything that you're doing. Uh, check
Speaker 4: out your music. I don't know if you have any
Speaker 4: live shows coming up, but where should people go online
Speaker 4: to keep up with Tom Modern?
Speaker 5: All I can say about that is the different streaming
Speaker 5: and download platforms. You know, we all we all know
Speaker 5: what those are. And because I don't have much of
Speaker 5: an online presence right now because recently I was thrown
Speaker 5: off of Facebook for promoting my album to radio stations
Speaker 5: and and so I'm not on Facebook anymore. Oh so
Speaker 5: I don't have a tommodern dot com yet. Yeah, maybe
Speaker 5: in the future. Yeah, So you know, the best way
Speaker 5: is streaming and download because these other social platforms, you know,
Speaker 5: I don't get them, man, And you're.
Speaker 4: You're very easy to google. You're very googleable. As I
Speaker 4: like to say, if you just google Tom Modern music,
Speaker 4: everything comes right up. So I encourage people to find
Speaker 4: you that way too. But uh we will uh yeah,
Speaker 4: we will close out the segment with this track I
Speaker 4: want to be with you tonight. But Tom Modern, I
Speaker 4: appreciate you calling in. Uh it was a it was
Speaker 4: a little rough with Skype, but we figured it out
Speaker 4: and the phone connection got a lot better. So so
Speaker 4: it's wonderful to talk with you. And we will have
Speaker 4: to do this again in the future.
Speaker 5: All right, Matt's fun talking man.
Speaker 4: All Right, Tom, thank you. We'll let you go, and
Speaker 4: I'm gonna hit this track all right, take care by
Speaker 4: bye bye. All right, everybody, that was Tom Modern. If
Speaker 4: you are listening live on Saturday morning, we have Willie
Speaker 4: Chase coming up next for the third hour. In fact,
Speaker 4: he has already arrived. I gotta go let him in.
Speaker 4: But check this out. This is called I Want to
Speaker 4: be with you tonight. This is Tom Modern.
Speaker 1: I don't know if I tot it.
Speaker 6: I don't didn't trust him, bid.
Speaker 8: I can't believe that.
Speaker 1: I hear myself saying I believe in magic side and
Speaker 1: I don't want you that rather bout me.
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Speaker 6: Remember the first time I saw.
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Speaker 3: The making us.
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Speaker 11: And we waited outside the streets and oh my head
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Speaker 1: So he said, advising one, you want me on the
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Speaker 8: Its funny open. So these days I'll do.
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Speaker 5: Let's talk about the pictures actors.
Speaker 3: But then it tames them all back then.
Speaker 12: That you a lot of going out.
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Speaker 4: Oh my god, that is great. That's brand new.
Speaker 20: Huh thanks man, Yeah, brand new.
Speaker 4: Wow, that is fantastic. If you're just joining us, Willie
Speaker 4: Chases here with us live in studio on this Saturday morning.
Speaker 4: That's very cold Saturday morning. But yeah, that's how new
Speaker 4: was that? You said you just wrote that with a
Speaker 4: friend who didn't know you were going to play it tonight.
Speaker 6: Is that that's pretty accurate.
Speaker 20: We just had our last co writing session maybe a
Speaker 20: week ago, and I had written the song thread probably
Speaker 20: five or six months ago. It sat for a while
Speaker 20: in my in my voice notes, yeah, on iPhone, as
Speaker 20: a lot of them do. And then I threw it
Speaker 20: over to my friend Ian Gallipo, who's from the Keen area,
Speaker 20: and he liked it, kind of wrote a chorus to it,
Speaker 20: maybe some verse parts I think, and then we just
Speaker 20: put our heads together over a video chat and kind
Speaker 20: of hammered it out. I had written that bridge, and yeah,
Speaker 20: it kind of came together and then I was kind
Speaker 20: of like, holy cow, we have a song, you know
Speaker 20: what I mean, which is a really cool moment as
Speaker 20: a songwriter.
Speaker 4: I feel like Ian Gallipo is a name that's come
Speaker 4: up on the show. I don't think he's ever been on.
Speaker 4: I would say I don't think he's ever been on,
Speaker 4: because it does become I've been doing this a long time.
Speaker 4: It does become a little bit of a blurk, of course,
Speaker 4: But I don't think he's been on the show. But
Speaker 4: I feel like his name comes up a lot on
Speaker 4: the show.
Speaker 20: Yeah, he's awesome. So I work a lot with the
Speaker 20: New Hampshire Music Collective.
Speaker 4: That might be how i've well, I've heard his name, yeah, yeah, so.
Speaker 20: He's he's you know, a member of the collective as well,
Speaker 20: does all sorts of stuff with that and other things.
Speaker 20: But that's how I met him. And he's great man.
Speaker 20: If you've never heard his song little Things, check it out.
Speaker 20: It's a gut wrencher be ready to cry. Yeah, But
Speaker 20: he's just an incredible lyricist. He's an incredible musician and
Speaker 20: down to earth guy. You know, he's really enjoyable to
Speaker 20: be around. So I had a really good experience writing
Speaker 20: with him, you know, in the level that I'm at
Speaker 20: right now, there's no skin in the game really, you
Speaker 20: know what I mean. I'm kind of just starting out
Speaker 20: on the songwriting journey over the last few years really.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 20: And I've been a musician my whole life. I can
Speaker 20: fill you in on in the backstore if you want.
Speaker 20: But but with the end, it's just great because we
Speaker 20: it's just pure creativity, you know what I mean, two
Speaker 20: musicians hanging out writing a song. There's no pressure to
Speaker 20: do anything. And for whatever reason, I was just kind
Speaker 20: of had that feeling when we were doing that together
Speaker 20: and and and that's what it's all about for me. Yeah,
Speaker 20: those kind of experiences and writing music and being just
Speaker 20: purely creative.
Speaker 4: No doubt. So you you've been a musician for a
Speaker 4: long time, as you said, but you only started writing
Speaker 4: songs a few years ago.
Speaker 20: Yeah, I mean, I quote quote have written other stuff.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 20: I was a horn player in high school. I was
Speaker 20: our class instrumentalist. I was in like every music group,
Speaker 20: did all of it, show choir, I did a lot
Speaker 20: of theater.
Speaker 14: I was.
Speaker 20: I started in high school musical when I was in
Speaker 20: high school, all sorts of you know of stuff to
Speaker 20: lead me on my musical journey. And then I kind
Speaker 20: of I kind of went a totally different direction for
Speaker 20: the last decade. I got a degree in resort management
Speaker 20: and have worked at ski resorts and done all men
Speaker 20: of other things. But I never put down the guitar.
Speaker 20: That's kind of what kept it alive for me. And
Speaker 20: then yeah, like three years ago, I had a really
Speaker 20: good friend who was living around here, and she convinced
Speaker 20: me to go to an open mic up at Patrick's
Speaker 20: Pub in Guildford, New Hampshire. That's where I met John MacArthur,
Speaker 20: who's one of the owners of the New Hampshire Music Collective.
Speaker 4: Yeah, we had him on the show. He's great.
Speaker 20: Yeah, he's awesome. Can't say enough good things about him.
Speaker 20: And you know, especially in this context with the opportunities
Speaker 20: he's given me playing a lot of these bar gigs
Speaker 20: and stuff around here, which is just it's like with anything, right,
Speaker 20: if you want to be really good, you got to
Speaker 20: just put in time and hard work. It's kind of
Speaker 20: the grind that I've been on these last few years
Speaker 20: since doing that. And then you know, I've, like I said,
Speaker 20: I've been a musician my whole life, and I have
Speaker 20: a really I lean really heavily on my ear, Yeah,
Speaker 20: and I can be judgmental in that way. So I think,
Speaker 20: as most musicians will probably tell you, there's a lot
Speaker 20: of stuff that goes on with songwriting in terms of
Speaker 20: being hyper critical of yourself and self confidence, releasing tracks
Speaker 20: and everything. So you know, it's a slow process. But
Speaker 20: I'm in early production of making a record hopefully, and
Speaker 20: you know that might be one of the songs that's
Speaker 20: going to be on it.
Speaker 4: Oh, I hope.
Speaker 20: So yeah, it deserves That's totally good. Yeah, that's very
Speaker 20: kind of youat to say. I Yeah, it's it's something
Speaker 20: I'm really interested in. But like I said, it's it's
Speaker 20: just tough not to be able to overly critical. But
Speaker 20: at this point in my life, on my early thirties,
Speaker 20: I I feel like it's a really good place to
Speaker 20: be doing what I'm doing with music. I think that
Speaker 20: if I had gone right into music school like I
Speaker 20: kind of wanted to after high school, after doing all
Speaker 20: that stuff, I don't think it would have gone well.
Speaker 20: I think I was on the edge of burnt out
Speaker 20: really because yeah, I mean we had as been practices
Speaker 20: every morning before school. At six point forty, it was
Speaker 20: taking trumpet lessons. It's just completely saturated in music. Yeah,
Speaker 20: and not really knowing, you know, at that point in
Speaker 20: my life, you know, late teens, early twenties, you're just
Speaker 20: figuring out who you are, right. So all the experiences
Speaker 20: I've had over the last ten years of not being
Speaker 20: involved in music, I think have just fueled this crazy
Speaker 20: fire that I have now to write and collaborate with
Speaker 20: people and just really like I just started taking guitar
Speaker 20: lessons a couple, you know, maybe a month or two ago,
Speaker 20: with a really great guy. So I'm actually putting some
Speaker 20: of the old theory, knowledge that I have to use
Speaker 20: with like the fifteen years of guitar playing, just playing
Speaker 20: songs that I like to hear and play. Yeah, So
Speaker 20: it just feels really, really awesome, and I'm really grateful
Speaker 20: to be here doing what I'm doing now.
Speaker 4: You know, during the span of time where you you know,
Speaker 4: you had kind of gotten away from it all, did
Speaker 4: you always kind of know that you would come back
Speaker 4: to it, or did you really at the time kind
Speaker 4: of feel like you know that was you know, I'm
Speaker 4: sort of done with that. I'm sort of burnt out
Speaker 4: on it.
Speaker 20: If you asked me that question years ago, I probably
Speaker 20: would have told you the latter. I probably would have
Speaker 20: told you now, you know, And I think that comes
Speaker 20: from being jaded and my no, through no fault of
Speaker 20: his own, My trumpet teacher was one of the ones
Speaker 20: who convinced me not to go to school for like
Speaker 20: performance really yeah, which how much of that was actually
Speaker 20: him and how much of it was in my head?
Speaker 20: I can't really tell you, but you know, and his
Speaker 20: point was very valid. You know, forty years ago, there
Speaker 20: was just so many horn players working in places like
Speaker 20: New York, Boston, you know, all these clubs and theaters
Speaker 20: had live orchestras, and now it's just a percentage of
Speaker 20: what that was. So yeah, the statistics just make it
Speaker 20: pretty daunting. Yeah, but I think subconsciously, very deep down there,
Speaker 20: to answer your question, I think it was inevitable of
Speaker 20: coming back to music. I mean, it's just such a
Speaker 20: part of me. It's part of who I am, been
Speaker 20: part of who I am since a very young age.
Speaker 20: And like I said, you know, I rely heavily on
Speaker 20: my ear. I don't like to say I have a
Speaker 20: good ear because it's like, what does that mean.
Speaker 17: But
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