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#3-Bass player Garrett Sayers Illuminates Health, Music and Life on the Road
12 Plays7 years ago
Virtuoso bass player Garrett Sayers has been laying down killer bass lines for his band the Motet for over a decade. As the band continues to tour nonstop, he has been a consistent example of how living healthy on the road is possible. Throughout his great career, Garrett has performed alongside a host of amazing artists and leads his own trio as well.
In this conversation:
- Garrett's path and why/how he went plant-based and how that decision has affected his ability to thrive on the road, overall wellbeing and happiness.
- The point in which Garrett had reached his limit with physical pain and discomfort and cured his ailments through the process of an Elimination Diet.
- The revelation of living a gluten free, plant-based vegan diet and the benefits that brought for him.
- Connections between the discipline of health and music and how there is really no difference in his approach to both of these essential aspects of his life
Please take a moment to rate and review the podcast in iTunes and visit www.tourganic.com for more info on this episode and living healthy on the road!
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Transcript
Introduction and the Art of Mastery
00:00:00
Speaker
Welcome to the Torganic Podcast. Playing any instrument requires a lot of practice to be good.
00:00:09
Speaker
And I put in a lot of time early on. Similar to eating, I find that I got as much knowledge as I could about food right when I began this vegan journey about 10 years ago. And from that point on, I'm trying to focus on what feels right. And I find that that's
00:00:36
Speaker
how music works too. Before I play, I work on dexterity, make sure that my hands are doing what I want them to do, and then I try to forget everything I've ever learned.
00:00:49
Speaker
This
Musician's Lifestyle: Health and Diet
00:00:50
Speaker
is the Torganic Podcast, and I am your host, David Bayless. In the podcast, I speak with touring musicians about how they live a healthy lifestyle on the road. While many of these conversations are about how and why my guests live a plant-based vegan diet, the content of these conversations has a diverse and holistic approach to focus on health of body, mind, and spirit.
Guest Introduction: Garrett Sayers
00:01:12
Speaker
I'm happy to be joined by Garrett Sayers in this week's episode. Garrett is an unbelievable bassist who lives outside Boulder, Colorado and is a member of the band The Motet. Garrett's high level of musicality on his instrument is instantly evident to anyone who is fortunate enough to see him play live.
00:01:27
Speaker
Alongside his ability on the base, Garrett is serious about his health and diet. His commitment to leading a gluten-free, soy-free, vegan lifestyle on the road has been an inspiration to many. In
Diet Choices and Their Impact
00:01:39
Speaker
this conversation we get into Garrett's path and what led him to make changes in his diet and how that has affected his playing and touring life. I really appreciate Garrett's thoughtful approach and I think that thoughtful awareness transcends into many aspects of his life.
00:01:53
Speaker
We get into Garrett's elimination diet, books and sources that have been transformational for him, how he prepares for shows, thoughts on playing music as a whole and how he feels about his band, the Motet success and popularity in the jam band scene specifically. One important link me and Garrett have is his younger brother Drew. Besides being an unbelievable saxophone player and great overall musician, Drew is a good friend of mine and musical collaborator for many years. We've played
Musical Bond: Playing with Family
00:02:21
Speaker
in bands together since our days back in Boston.
00:02:24
Speaker
Drew joined Garrett's longtime band, The Motet, in 2016, and me and Garrett start this episode talking about what it has been like playing with his brother in the band. It's almost like a comfort level when you have
00:02:39
Speaker
relationship with someone, especially a sibling, just don't have to talk as much, you know, to understand where each other's at, you know. And so that really does directly translate to playing music together, where maybe it's partially because we have similar influences from growing up in a household where there was music playing all the time, but it's
00:03:07
Speaker
especially improvising, which we do quite a bit of. That's when we kind of can dig into sort of the spaces in between the music that where it becomes more like a language, like a conversation, especially when Drew's taking solos, which he gets to do quite a bit. In those moments, we can interact in really fun and creative ways.
00:03:35
Speaker
And the connection is a lot easier and almost more focused because he's my brother than with any other musician.
00:03:46
Speaker
there's the level of trust with other musicians that you're playing with and you've been through so many life experiences together, that level of trust must be so heightened. It's true, you know, I really do believe that this is a language and the things we say to each other while they're not as tangible as a spoken language, they still contain
00:04:11
Speaker
a lot of information, a lot of emotional information. And it's really powerful to play music with anyone. But yeah, it's great. I'm just so psyched that I get to make music with Drew on an almost daily basis now. Couldn't be more psyched.
00:04:30
Speaker
And I want to dive right in. I've heard from a lot of our mutual friends about how healthy you are in general on the road and at home in Colorado and just your vibrance that you're a healthy person. And I'm curious about how that came about in your life. This
Journey to a Gluten-Free, Vegan Life
00:04:47
Speaker
has been a long process since you were a kid. Has this been something that kind of one day you had a moment
00:04:54
Speaker
and there was this sort of revelation, or has this been a long process that's continuing? If you can tell us a little bit about how your path has gone. Well, about 10 years ago, I started taking a much more proactive approach to some digestive issues that I had been experiencing my whole life.
00:05:16
Speaker
I have a lot of memories being a kid and looking around the dinner table and wondering why I was in so much pain, intestinal pain, and no one else was. I kind of thought that I should just pretend it wasn't happening just like I assumed the rest of my family and the rest of the world was. I think that's what I thought. You know, I was very young so I didn't know any better. I also
00:05:45
Speaker
Very vividly remember having an aversion to meat at a very young age and never really enjoyed consuming it. It's not, I mean, obviously I was so young I didn't have any time to make up any opinions about it, but I had a big issue with it. So fast forward till 10 years ago and I just had so much discomfort constantly.
00:06:11
Speaker
I didn't quite know how to approach it. I think up until then my best solution I had found was to drink a lot of sparkling water so that I would constantly be settling my stomach. But that only goes so far and it wasn't solving the major issues. I was very lucky to have a close friend at the time that gave me some advice about trying an elimination process.
00:06:38
Speaker
which is, I'm sure many of your listeners know, is to start taking out
00:06:46
Speaker
problem foods from your diet to kind of pinpoint exactly what the problems are. So the idea is you take out any foods that are either inflammatory or possible, you know, the highest risk allergy foods. And so I started with, you know, just the top ones and gluten was first on the list.
00:07:11
Speaker
Now, this was shortly before it really became a health fad, so I really didn't know anything about it. Luckily, my good friend had been seeing a very well-respected nutritionist in the Boulder area.
00:07:27
Speaker
and he had been taken through a bunch of steps to solve some of his issues and he didn't turn out to have many intolerances or allergies but his information that he helped me with was
00:07:48
Speaker
hugely helpful. So I decided I was gonna take two weeks off of gluten. And you know, as a 20-something year old kid, you know, that's not easy to do. I was still eating sandwiches every day for for lunch, and you're not the best eater when you're in your 20s, you know, as everyone knows. And so I noticed an immediate change. I would eat a stack of gluten-free pancakes, and at the time
00:08:15
Speaker
it felt like I had just eaten a small salad. And the difference of eating pancakes, say, that had gluten in them, it was like there was a rock in my intestine. And so to have that feel like a salad, it was an awakening for me.
00:08:35
Speaker
And so I basically went through a bunch of different foods. It turned out that gluten really was a major factor for me. And so was cow milk dairy. I stopped eating all meat and dairy for a little while. I actually went back to meat while keeping the dairy out.
00:08:55
Speaker
Within about a year, I got to the point where meat was very uncomfortable to digest. And as a musician, I didn't have health insurance, so I really didn't have any medical professionals I could bounce any of this off of. I was just going on what it felt like to eat things and what it felt like to not eat things, and that's all I had to go on.
00:09:15
Speaker
I like how you took a very almost scientific, experience-based approach just saying, okay, I'm gonna try this. Let's see how it makes me feel. And you need to be really in touch with your body to make that experiment successful, right? It's true. Was there anything else? Maybe inspiration, documentaries, books you were reading at the time that were also kind of taking you along that path and giving you information?
00:09:44
Speaker
Yeah, I
Literary Influences on Health Choices
00:09:45
Speaker
think at the time, I got really into Omnivore's Dilemma, the Michael Pollan book. For a while, I went around recommending that to absolutely everyone. It really is an amazing book. And if any listeners who are unfamiliar with Michael Pollan, he is a journalism professor. I believe it's at UC Berkeley.
00:10:09
Speaker
And so his approach to any topic is from a journalist's viewpoint, which is, hey, I don't know anything about this. Let me put some research in. Let me get some hands-on experience with the topic. And so the book is amazing. There's very little opinion. Yes. Yes, exactly. There's very little preconceived ideas about it. He went into it very green, knowing nothing.
00:10:39
Speaker
Throughout the book he kind of takes you through all the different industrial food supplies By the end of the book he is foraging around San Francisco for his entire day's meal So it he really goes from you know, the book starts where he orders fast food
00:10:58
Speaker
at a drive-thru and then drives down the street eating his fast food burger and then it ends with him going and finding greens and other stuff just from the local forest and just eating that. And so everything in between is fascinating. I'd say that was one of the biggest influences on me. I had moved to Boulder not long before that. Boulder has for a long time been
00:11:23
Speaker
a place with a lot of awareness around health and nutrition, a lot of small organic farms around there, there's a lot of small livestock production there, very healthy grass-fed animals.
00:11:41
Speaker
So it was a good place for me to be, to try, to do all this stuff. So I was influenced by my community, probably more than anything. I had not just my one friend, but I had quite a few people that were on their own health journeys. And I just, I gleaned what I could from them. And at the same time, I tried to take it with a grain of salt. I like to do my own research on topics. I liked, I'm a skeptical person. And so I like to know
00:12:10
Speaker
from my own reading and really digging into topics, rather than taking word of mouth. So as soon as I tried this gluten elimination, from that point I ended up reading a lot more. There's this one book, another book that this same friend turned me on to. It's got a strange title. It's called, The Dow of Health, Sex and Longevity. I'm a fan of that book.
00:12:38
Speaker
He, oh my, it reminds me of the author. It's been so long. Read. Yes. I think it's Daniel Read. Yes. And... Life-changing book for me. It's amazing. He went to, I believe it was like Okinawa, maybe Taiwan, and he learned from these Taoist masters.
00:12:58
Speaker
not just about how to live a fruitful, healthy, long life, but so much about what he learned was about how to eat. And there's a lot of concepts I'd never heard of before this book, for instance, food combining.
00:13:17
Speaker
which is if you're eating a several-course meal, what to eat first, to help digestion, what to eat last, when you should drink liquids before or after or during, you know. And the information I got from that book was very helpful. It put me in the right headspace to
00:13:40
Speaker
to get in touch with what food felt like when I ate it. And I think that was the major hurdle, as you were saying earlier. That was really one of the major hurdles for me was to really pay attention to what I felt like an hour after eating anything.
00:14:01
Speaker
And it's just something I had never thought of before. You know, again, when I eat gluten now because I've been gluten free for 10 years and I'm a touring musician and there are times where I accidentally eat it. And not very often, but at least once or twice a year. It's a good reminder it's not fun because I describe it as feeling like there's
00:14:25
Speaker
blades in my intestines. And so it's not fun, but it is it is good to have a reminder of what that feeling is that I've been avoiding for so long. You know what I mean? But I do find that I'm at a point now where for the most part know what works
00:14:45
Speaker
and I know it doesn't and still I'm very focused on what I feel like when I eat something so that I'm more informed the next time I eat. That's the biggest thing for me is feeling good because that's the point of eating food. I mean you need the calories you need the energy but there's no point in eating if you're not feeling better afterwards. Let's check out a track off the Motet's most recent album.
00:15:19
Speaker
Yeah.
00:16:15
Speaker
And just to take a step back there and quickly just talk about those two inspirational books you mentioned, Omnivore's Dilemma and Dow of Health, Sex and Longevity, is that here in this podcast and in my life, I talk a lot about plant-based diet and veganism.
00:16:34
Speaker
and there's such a stigma amongst those words and it can really be divisive but these two books which those aren't preaching in any way plant-based diet or being a vegan Michael Pollan in omnivorous dilemmas he's not a vegan at all
00:16:53
Speaker
But there's still so much to learn and both of us have been able to apply to our lives and I think those books have really enriched both of our lives. Daniel Reed, that science of food combining, he calls it trophology. Yeah. Every day of my life, those lessons are ingrained in me and are still a part of me and something I'm constantly striving to work on.
00:17:15
Speaker
me too you know there's there's there's a lot there and i'm gonna put a link to both of those books and those authors in the show notes so our listeners can kind of dig in and check those out those are really great resources both completely different yet so much great information and the daniel reid book has diagrams i mean he gets into the nitty gritty of how to do this he breaks this stuff down and and
00:17:42
Speaker
You don't want to obsess about these things. I think it can almost get too much, but take from it what you can and use it the most inspirational way possible and it can really enrich your life. Absolutely. You know, just since we're talking about it, the few things from food combining that I think about every day, one is fruit first.
00:18:04
Speaker
you know,
Diet and Mental Clarity in Performance
00:18:05
Speaker
I'll often get a side of fruit with my breakfast. I always eat it first, and I think it's because of that book, but the whole idea is that fruit is full of these sugars that, you know, they're good sugars, they're not, you know, the processed, but
00:18:22
Speaker
that stuff digests very quickly. And if you put that fruit on top of something that is a little slower digesting, it basically ferments in your stomach. So I think it's easy to think of your stomach as just this mix of everything that goes into it, but it actually is like layers in the order that you eat it.
00:18:45
Speaker
And so if you put the fruit on top, you get indigestion and gas. If it's on the bottom, it digests first and it lets your body take the time with the longer digesting food. Same thing with liquids and eating. If you eat something, say you're eating meat. I know it's a veganism diet, but meat is a very difficult thing to digest. It takes
00:19:09
Speaker
I believe it's an acid enzyme to break it down. And if you drink water at the same time as you're eating meat, you're diluting the enzyme that is trying to break down the meat that you just ate. And so Daniel Reed mentions, you know, wait 20 minutes after you eat and before drinking liquids again. And I had never heard of that, never dawned on me before, but I
00:19:37
Speaker
I do it every day now and I don't mean to sound preachy here on this podcast because I want everyone to do what's right for them. I happen to go down this path and I'm still learning. I haven't found the ultimate solution of how to eat.
00:19:53
Speaker
I'm trying to inform myself every time I do eat. Yeah, I'm excited for people to be turned on to these books to see what they can get out of it. Yeah, for sure. And so you start implementing this diet in your life. You're feeling better. And I'm curious, how did that affect your music? You're playing.
00:20:16
Speaker
There's an idea that your gut is directly connected to your mind. Now, I don't know enough about that to know exactly where it came from, but what I notice from myself is that if I have any intestinal distress at all, it puts me in a
00:20:39
Speaker
in a more difficult state of mind. More anxiety, a little more cloudy. And so playing music is, you know, it's my life's goal. It's my life's work. It's the thing that I love to do the most, but it's also my only job. So it's very important to me to not just enjoy playing music, but to try to
00:21:07
Speaker
be the best I can every time. And in turn, that means thinking about not just what I eat before I play, but when I eat before I play. It's hard to get on stage with a full stomach. So much of your body's energy is focused on digesting that food and you're not getting the blood essentially to your brain to be as creative as you want to be. And so that's one thing to eat.
00:21:37
Speaker
I try to eat three hours before a show. And if I can't, I don't eat a whole lot before a show. I'll eat just enough that I can make it through. But that's maybe not exactly what you're asking. To get to your point, eating nutritious food, it gives you the energy
00:22:00
Speaker
It gives you all the things you need to perform at an optimal level. It's like you're a car. If you're a car, you don't want to put 85 octane gas in your car. It's like putting dirt in your car. And what you want is you want the most optimal fuel.
00:22:20
Speaker
so that your vehicle, your person, runs the cleanest it can. I think that's it. The cleaner the food you eat, the better you're going to feel and the more optimal you're going to perform. Along those lines, I want to mention because gluten happens to be my number one food problem,
00:22:43
Speaker
It's such a fad right now. There's so many gluten-free products in the grocery stores. I generally stay away from almost all of them. Right. Because it's not a solution to cut out gluten and then go buy some gluten-free cookies. Or something that's filled, you know, so many gluten-free products in the store are filled with sugar and starches.
00:23:08
Speaker
And I find highly processed. Highly processed, you know. And the thing is, if you want to create a baked good without gluten, you have to add binding agents, you know, which typically is, you know, and I'm a label reader, as you can imagine. It typically is potato starch or tapioca flour.
00:23:31
Speaker
Anyway, a lot of starches to keep, you know, to bind this stuff. And starches are really hard for your body to deal with. It gums up the baked goods just like it's gonna gum up your digestion. So what I do, if I'm gonna eat, is I go for the vegetable-based foods. Even most grains I've cut out, most gluten-free grains I've now cut out because they're not useful to me. They don't make me feel great.
00:24:02
Speaker
And so being gluten-free is... it's not just... it doesn't just make it so that I can go into the store and buy the things that say gluten-free on it. The thing that makes me feel the best is to
00:24:18
Speaker
eat the simplest and most natural foods that I can find. If you're avoiding even the gluten-free carbs, you're avoiding brown rice, right? Yeah. Tell us some of the stuff that, just real quick, some of your favorite things are your go-to dishes, just so people can get kind of a nuts and bolts sense of what you're talking about.
00:24:44
Speaker
is tough because it's different when I'm on the road and when I'm at home. Absolutely. And so I kind of have to be more creative when I'm touring because it's not always easy to get what I really want in the moment. So what I try to do is I try to focus on number one, eating vegetables. So I am a strong believer that
00:25:14
Speaker
Cooking vegetables releases a lot of the nutrition that you can't get without heating it up. Raw foods are great, but I really do believe that I would not be benefited by 100% raw. And so I like to go for things like steamed broccoli, which is one of the highest protein vegetables there are. I also
00:25:40
Speaker
will make sure that there's legumes in almost every meal I have and if not legumes, nuts and seeds. It's hard to get enough protein as a vegan.
00:26:04
Speaker
In my opinion, not necessary to get the amount of protein that the
00:26:12
Speaker
the food pyramid says you should. I think that is very likely heavily influenced by the meat industry. And I feel great when I'm getting a third of what they recommend in protein. I think it's something like 65 grams for someone my weight. And I think I come close to 25 a day. I'm not always counting, but I try to
00:26:37
Speaker
you know make sure i get to that point and and i feel great twenty five grams protein a day you know often i'll get up to forty but uh... rarely i think i ever go over that uh... i eat a lot of mexican food uh... because it's very easy to eliminate gluten and dairy from mexican food you know i also live in colorado where there is uh... a lot of mexican food and a lot of
00:27:04
Speaker
influence on all of the cuisine from the sort of Mexican ideals which are perfect for vegans because you know it's all about individual foods
00:27:21
Speaker
as simple and pure as they could be and then mixing them together. All Mexican food starts that way. And so I often eat, get some corn tortillas and kind of do like a burrito bowl and make my own tacos out of the bowl. And I'll get lettuce and beans and avocado and any other veggies, as many veggies as I can.
00:27:50
Speaker
It actually sounds funny, but it's important to vary the color of your veggies as much as possible because the color of the vegetable is actually a very real indication of the nutrients inside of it.
00:28:07
Speaker
And so try to eat a rainbow of vegetables every day rather than maybe sticking to the things you really like the most or sticking to just green or just whatever. So that's something I'm always thinking about is just throwing things in there and trying to make it as colorful as I can. I know that that's what's gonna get the nutrition that I need. If you experience digestive discomfort,
00:28:37
Speaker
I've recently discovered through my doctor's advice that rice is something to avoid and I was unaware of that for a very long time and it has made a very noticeable difference just in my comfort level. Let's check out the track Think Box from Garrett's solo record.
00:29:59
Speaker
so much to take out of what what you just mentioned there's a lot of stuff there and the the protein
00:30:07
Speaker
Discussion, and I don't want to go down that rabbit hole of vegans and where do they get their protein, but I'm a huge exerciser. I'm working out. I'm running every morning. I'm playing tennis two hours a day. I'm doing weight training. I still don't obsess about my protein intake. I'm having a pure vegan diet. I'm drinking green smoothies every day, and I feel great. There's no protein deficiency at all in my life. I never use a protein powder.
00:30:36
Speaker
I think the main thing to take away from that rather than having a whole debate and talking numbers is let's not obsess about protein right now. There's a lot of other things about nutrition that would be just as valuable to talk about. And I love that you mentioned eating the rainbow. There's so much wisdom in that. So that's a beautiful thing to take away from that discussion as well. And the last thing I want to touch upon is this recent
00:31:01
Speaker
Addition of not eating rice because it shows us that this is a path that is continuing. It's always a trial and error This is something that we're always striving and and there's struggles along the way and there's gonna be bumps in the road of health and we're gonna continue to kind of try to find our way and One parallel I I see in that I'm interested if you see any connection your bass playing is is incredible and I
00:31:28
Speaker
There's a lot of discipline in your life that must have gone into becoming the player that you are today. There
Discipline in Music and Diet
00:31:36
Speaker
must have been a serious amount of practicing that went on and I wonder if you see parallels between that and the discipline that you have for health. Yeah, good question. You know, playing any instrument requires a lot of practice to be good.
00:31:56
Speaker
And I put in a lot of time early on. Similar to eating, I find that I got as much knowledge as I could about food as I could, you know, right when I sort of began this vegan journey about 10 years ago.
00:32:25
Speaker
From that point on, I'm trying to focus on what feels right, and I find that that's how music works too. Before I play, I work on dexterity, make sure that my hands are doing what I want them to do, and then I try to forget everything I've ever learned.
00:32:51
Speaker
use not just my ears so that I'm always interacting with the musicians that I'm playing with around me and always making sure that I am sitting in the right place in the music and not stepping on feet and not being unsupportive, especially as a bass player. That's our role. I know you're not just a bass player, but you know that's our role is to
00:33:15
Speaker
you know, be supportive to the higher register instruments around us. What I find is that I don't stress too much about practicing my instrument, just like I don't stress too much about knowing everything there is to know about food.
00:33:36
Speaker
They are very similar in the sense that eating is all about feeling good. I know that to a lot of people, eating is just a necessity in life. And a 99 cent hamburger is just fine. And I understand that mentality. And I also understand finances are a problem. You don't have a lot of choices. But music is the same. Music is the same thing. It's about
00:34:03
Speaker
making it feel right, making it feel like what you want it to feel like. I know this sounds very intangible, but music is intangible. It's so esoteric, no matter how cut and dry it is or how much you're just playing the parts, even just playing parts, which, you know, I do for most of the night.
00:34:28
Speaker
There are so many variables in that, the space between the notes, the swing of the feel, or the velocity of each note.
00:34:45
Speaker
The way it interacts with what the drummer's doing, it's so much about just what feels right. To be honest, as a bass player that also takes solos, it's very similar. It's not just that I take a solo to prove myself or to stroke my own ego or whatever. I don't look at it that way. The way that I approach soloing is I want to make the listener feel
00:35:14
Speaker
something. I want them to be filled with emotion from hearing what I play and the only way to do that is to put the emotion into it. There's the technical side of playing music and eating, you know, understanding what you're eating and that's a major divide in the world, right? People aren't really understanding the food they eat. They're
00:35:40
Speaker
They're just eating, they're listening to what people are saying. They're maybe eating how their mom said they should eat or how they see their friends eating. And what I implore all your listeners to dig in, do some research. And these days on the internet, you have to really know what source you're looking at and know if it's legitimate or not, because there's so much misinformation out there.
00:36:08
Speaker
And then once you think you found the legitimate sources then to look at multiple sources just because everyone's got a different opinion about this and I remember right at the beginning of this I did as much of that as I possibly could and you know it led me to a place where I was understanding food more than the people around me and I can't tell you how many times
00:36:34
Speaker
people would come to me asking for advice or just for information on food. And I'm no expert, but I just put in some time because I needed to. I mean, it was a matter of survival for me.
00:36:50
Speaker
I wasn't going to be able to go on with such severe pain after eating, which is what was happening. So I do see a lot of similarities there, you know? And it's about feeling great. You know, you can't make music if you don't feel great. You can't live the life you want to live if you don't feel great. And I see them as the same thing. Yeah, I think that's really beautiful how you frame that. And the way I kind of
00:37:20
Speaker
have the image of what you described in music, you did your homework. You spend those years practicing but listening and soaking up inspiration from everywhere. And same with your path of learning about food. You have to dig in. You have to learn. You need to look around. You need to see what works. You really need to get your boots on the ground and experience it. And only once you've truly done that
00:37:48
Speaker
whether it's your day-to-day health or you're playing, can you really let yourself be free and be in the moment musically and feel that you're making the right choices with food? Yes. And your diet and health? Yes, I think we all know people who have
00:38:08
Speaker
given either a vegetarian or vegan diet a try and it didn't go well for them. They didn't feel good eating that way. But it's important, especially if you're new to veganism, it's very important to understand as much as possible about
00:38:30
Speaker
about what you need from your food throughout every day. So yeah, I think that sums it up. Here's another one of Garrett's tracks, Counter Clock.
00:39:38
Speaker
I believe that a lot of the healthy eating movements that are happening are a direct result of the industrialization of the food supply that our parents' generation experienced. They had no choice, basically, but to eat white bread and canned foods. I think that what's happening now is a direct reaction to that.
00:40:05
Speaker
And so now is the best time in history to to be a vegan or vegetarian because there are so many options out there. There was a time not even maybe 10-15 years ago where
00:40:20
Speaker
to get a really good vegan meal you had to kind of go to a high priced vegan restaurant and that's not true anymore. I see so many healthy fast food places that have tons of options for for eating this way and the
00:40:39
Speaker
The resources are there, the restaurants, even Whole Foods. I remember a time where that didn't exist. Not that you have to shop at Whole Foods to be healthy, but anyone who's been into Whole Foods knows that you walk in there and it's easy to find the nutritious choices for what to eat. They make it a lot easier.
00:41:08
Speaker
And so I think that we're fortunate to live at the time we're living. It may have been a lot harder to do this 50, 100 years ago. Certainly, the amount of encouragement, excitement online in social media about vegan and plant-based diet is amazing. I'm relatively new to Instagram over the last year since I really got the torganic thing happening in the blog.
00:41:33
Speaker
I can't believe the global movement that's happening right now amongst vegans and people connecting. I have Instagram followers and people that I'm following that are just doing incredible things all over the world. Australia, Berlin seems to be a huge hub. Amazing, amazing things are happening so I totally agree with you about that excitement. I want to take a step back.
00:42:01
Speaker
You said that I think when you were late teens, you moved to Denver, or to Boulder, sorry. And I'm curious, what made that happen for you? I
Career Move to Boulder and Musical Growth
00:42:11
Speaker
was actually 24. I was living in Boston at the time. And I was a few years out of school. And Boston wasn't
00:42:26
Speaker
It didn't feel like where I wanted to dig roots and I don't really know why, but I formed a band while there called the Miracle Orchestra.
00:42:39
Speaker
I know it's a funny name, but we were kids and we started touring around all over the place. Interestingly, one of our main tour focuses was Boulder because it had a pretty big scene for the kind of music we were doing. And now Denver is a very vibrant place. It wasn't back then. It was a lot more of that sort of culture was in Boulder.
00:43:09
Speaker
And in touring with that band, I met a lot of other bands doing the same thing. One of them was the Motet. And when their bass player left their band, I was just on their list for
00:43:28
Speaker
who to call to see if they wanted to play bass with them and so I was sitting in Boston you know about to come to New York or go to LA I had opportunities in both places and I was just trying to decide what my next move was and I I joined the motet back then it was
00:43:53
Speaker
a band that was touring a lot, covering the whole country at the time. And that's really what I wanted to do as a young adult. I wanted to have experiences and meet people and play music and build a fan base. I grew up playing jazz and as much as I loved it and as much as I learned from it, I was also disillusioned by the support for it.
00:44:23
Speaker
because there isn't a lot, especially among young people. And as soon as I formed a band that involved more dance grooves, but still incorporated the improvisation, I realized that I could play, I can improvise, play the music I loved, but play it for young people.
00:44:43
Speaker
for people just like me. And that was a huge eye opening. Shortly after we formed this band, the Miracle Orchestra, is when someone came up with the word jam band. It didn't even exist. And, you know, there's a lot of pushback against that word. And I fully understand that. It's a genre that allows
00:45:07
Speaker
music to to be heavily diluted and really not seem very focused in any one sort of genre any one place and i think that that it created a very negative stigma uh... around jam music uh... particularly in the two thousands it seemed to just basically start to disappear and uh... that's not what happened it is now growing more than ever and
00:45:36
Speaker
I've really always embraced this scene and I don't see jam bands as a genre. I see it as a scene of fans and clubs and promoters and booking agents that all have a very similar desire
00:45:56
Speaker
to create this fan experience that's not just the same setlist every night, but something that is a little more exploratory. It doesn't have to be Grateful Dead, you know, noodling for hours to be exploratory, but
00:46:14
Speaker
even just a little bit of improvisation goes a long way to creating an experience for the listener. And to me, that is the thing that kind of pulled me out of being a jazz musician and kind of put me into this
00:46:31
Speaker
this band, the motet and this scene and really kind of helped me to embrace it. And I am just so grateful for our fans and for all the people that are making this a reality, not just for me, but for you and for all these great bands and great musicians that we know, you know.
00:46:54
Speaker
It's amazing. You don't have to just be a rock band or just be a country band or just be a pop band, you know what I mean? And at the same time, you don't have to have a completely diluted sound without focus, you know? You can be in the jam scene and be a reggae band. You could be a funk band. You could do all that and create those fan experiences that are
00:47:20
Speaker
that were missing from my jazz upbringing. I think I went on a tangent there. No, no, it's super cool. I think it's amazing to hear how the journey kind of takes place. And you were going to go to LA potentially. Think about how drastically different your life could have been. Completely. And write out that on the onset of this podcast, you're talking about how being in Boulder, there was so much inspiration that pushed you in this direction of health.
00:47:47
Speaker
Not to say you wouldn't have found that in LA. There's plenty of amazingly healthy people in LA for sure. But you found a niche there that pushed you in this direction. So I think it's fascinating to kind of hear that and it happened through the Motet and you're still rolling with these guys today all these years later. And I'm curious because we're talking about the Motet awesome band, right? Everybody's just total badasses. But I'm curious if you could talk a little bit about
00:48:14
Speaker
the
Influence on Band's Dietary Habits
00:48:15
Speaker
dynamic of being sort of the healthy guy in the band and how that works for you guys and how that's been for you. Luckily I think the other guys appreciate my influence on our eating habits. I think most of the guys
00:48:32
Speaker
notice that they feel better when we choose to go to breakfast at Whole Foods instead of fast food. And I know a lot of bands. It's hard to be a touring band. It's not always a financially fruitful endeavor. And so it's very easy to get stuck in a pattern of fast food for every meal. I know a lot of bands that do that.
00:48:59
Speaker
Fortunately, Motet has almost never eaten at a fast food restaurant. In the 14 years that I've been in the band, I can maybe count the times we've pulled up to a fast food restaurant on one hand. And I usually stay in the car those four times. But at the same time, I didn't have to convince the guys
00:49:29
Speaker
to make the healthier choices. It seems like everyone was already somewhat on that path. They all appreciate quality food and nutritious food and luckily it wasn't a struggle to make that happen.
00:49:48
Speaker
You know, I would say one out of every 10 or 15 bands that I meet are like us, you know. You know, we don't go to Whole Foods every day, but that is kind of what, it's kind of an easy way to sum up. It's like, you're either the Whole Foods type of band, or you're the fast food type of band. And most of them are fast food. Here's another slamming track off Garrett's solo record.
00:50:32
Speaker
Oh
00:51:06
Speaker
I'm so thankful to have your time here, so I'm gonna keep it moving, and we're definitely gonna wrap up soon, but I'm wondering, I just have one more question. If you have a particular person that has been a huge inspiration for you musically, and health, maybe someone that would be on the top of your list to sit down and play duo with, or someone that you'd love to sit down and share a meal with in health and kind of give them the thanks that they led you on your way.
00:51:42
Speaker
I feel like I've had so many positive influences on my life. And at the same time, I've had a lot of experiences that have led me to feel like I'm on my own in every aspect. I think that what's difficult about the question is that
00:52:12
Speaker
I don't draw lines between music and life or health and life. To me, you know, say going for a hike is what inspires me to play music. That's, you know. Honestly, I think that's an answer in itself.
00:52:43
Speaker
You did not answer the question. You did answer the question. I don't want to seem ungrateful to all the amazing people that have set me on my path because I am. I'm so grateful. But in so many ways, it's just we're on our own out here. You know what I mean? When it all comes down to it,
00:53:08
Speaker
We gotta carry our own weight. Kind of understanding the connectedness of everything out there. Exactly. It's not
Inspiration from Life Experiences
00:53:17
Speaker
pulling from this album or this artist or this writer. I see what you're saying as kind of this holistic approach, whereas life has been your influence and there's things coming in from all different directions and that's what set you on your path and that's what you're grateful for.
00:53:37
Speaker
Yes, exactly. And I mean, just examples I get asked about bass influences a lot. And that is also a hard question for me because I find that I'm more influenced by Cannonball Adderley, who's a sax player than I am. Jaco Pestorius, which is who everyone thinks is my influence. And so it's hard, it's a hard thing to really parse out in terms of
00:54:09
Speaker
what people really want, what people want to hear, you know what I mean? Right. Just one person that comes to mind who's not alive anymore is Frank Sinatra. It's a really huge influence on me, probably more than any bass player. What about Frank?
00:54:34
Speaker
It's really hard to describe what it is. You know, I grew up playing the Great American Songbook, Jazz Standards. He's the master of the Great American Songbook. You know, there are others. But in my opinion, he's the master and there's so much subtlety in his music that it's easy to overlook. I say this name, I say Sinatra to people. And the first thing I hear is he was a bigot.
00:55:03
Speaker
and that's actually not true but like he's not just this celebrity he actually could be the greatest singer to ever live and it's very subtle ways it's phrasing and tones and intonation and
00:55:26
Speaker
inflection and I just find that his approach to music is it's the approach that I can that I connect connect with the most yeah and I know it's it's a weird answer you know but I guess that would be the ultimate if I could do duets with Frank that would be amazing
00:55:50
Speaker
I love it. I love it, not what you might have expected out of that answer. Yeah, and I know that's not the question you asked, but that's just where my mind took it. No, that is the question I asked because I wasn't looking for anything specific. I was looking for a spark and you answered it in many different forms. Man, I think that's a great place to leave it. I'm really thankful to have you
00:56:20
Speaker
here and sit down and a lot of great stuff was said and I learned a lot. Thanks, Dave. Thanks for coming through, Garrett. Really appreciate you having me. Yeah, man. So do you want to just shout out a couple links, the Motet, or just where people can check out you or the bands you're in just online or anywhere you want to hit people to? Yeah, you know, themotet.com is where we put everything related to the band. We are
00:56:50
Speaker
constantly traveling around and trying to make the world a more happy and dancy place to be in. And so I hope to see your face at one of our shows soon. Peace, man. Thank you. Thanks, Dave.
00:57:09
Speaker
Awesome, big thanks to Garrett for coming through. I hope you enjoyed this episode and gained a few things from Garrett's inspiring journey. I'd be so appreciative if you let me know what you think by commenting and rating the show on iTunes, and if you're so inclined, subscribe to the show as well. These things really do help. You can also find more of what I'm up to in the episode's show notes by visiting the Torganic blog at torganic.com and come say hello at my Instagram page.
00:57:34
Speaker
Looking forward to next week's show. Until next time, peace.