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Buggy Jive
107 Plays1 year ago
My guest today is a soul rock singer songwriter, from Schenectady County New York. He’s released six (?) albums since 2018 but to fully appreciate his artistry you’ll need to take a look at his YouTube channel where you’ll also see that he is not just a multi-instrumentalist and performer but a showman, an actor, a director a producer…truly a multiple-hyphenate artist. In 2023 he was featured and mentioned as part of NPR’s Tiny Desk concert with his very meta song about the same “Don’t Quit Your Day Job”. If there were any level of creative justice in the world he’d be a viral sensation in the best possible way and be able to do just that.
His singing voice is emotive and captivating as-is his artistic voice. I’m so looking forward to a conversation with this super creative guy. Please welcome to Wils Bach’s Song Pod. Bryan Thomas also known as Buggy Jive
We talked about Prince, Joni Mitchell. Prince covering Joni Mitchell, NPRs Tiny Disk concert and why he has Rick James’ passport.
Encyclopedia Black and the Case of You
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V2ov4uqMyp0
How To Write Another Song About the Moon
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AqbLCdISCz4&t=1s
Don’t Quit Your Day Job
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A_enRruG29Y
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction to SongPod and Buggy Jai
00:00:01
Speaker
Welcome to Willsbach's SongPod, a show where we dig deep into the songs and artists that move us and how we're moved to craft the songs we write. I'm Tim Willsbach, and I write, release, and perform music as Willsbach, and you can find me anywhere you stream music. Let's dig in.
00:00:17
Speaker
My guest today is a Soul Rock singer-songwriter from Albany County, New York. He's released six albums since 2018, but to fully appreciate his artistry, you'll need to take a look at his YouTube channel, where you'll also see that he is not just a multi-instrumentalist and performer, but a showman, an actor, a director, a producer, truly a multi-hyphenate artist.
Buggy Jai's NPR Tiny Desk Feature
00:00:38
Speaker
In 2023, he was featured and mentioned as part of NPR's Tiny Desk concert, with his very meta song about the same, Don't Quit Your Day Job.
00:00:46
Speaker
If there were any level of creative justice in the world, he'd be a viral sensation in the best possible way and be able to do just that, although it turns out that maybe he's he's done that already and we'll talk about that. His singing voice is emotive and captivating, as is his artistic voice. I'm so looking forward to a conversation with this super creative guy. Please welcome to Willsbox Song Pod, Brian Thomas, also known as Buggy Jai. Buggy, how are ya? I'm doing
Discovery of Buggy Jai and Emotional Backstory
00:01:10
Speaker
all right.
00:01:11
Speaker
good to Good to see you. I'm excited to have you on the pod this morning. So um I first heard of you. I have a ah friend that ah named Gio that runs this thing called Truck Stop truck stop Mixtape. um And he's he's doing all kinds of creative stuff, typically inviting other artists onto to his little YouTube channel or his podcast or whatever. But um he ah showed me, or and they showed me, he put on his um on his pod um this video that you have called how to write another song about the moon. um That's just this beautiful, beautiful song. And really kind of what we do here on this pod, which is talk about how the songwriting process goes and how the creative process goes. And it's almost like a little mini documentary on on how, maybe not how you write a song always, but how you wrote that particular song. So that i once I found found that, I was like, I really am digging this guy and I need to talk to him. So yeah.
00:02:08
Speaker
Talk to me about that song. How did I mean, I know how that song came up because you say it, but, you know, let's talk about that song a little bit. Yeah, I mean, they're actually I mean, there is a real sadness behind it because I came up that with that song shortly after. It was like a day or two after one of my local music heroes and mentors had ah passed away yeah kind of quickly from from an unexpectedly from cancer.
00:02:36
Speaker
And I think that same night I heard Caroline Johnson, um Mother Judge, just an amazing musical force and a brilliant songwriter in her own right, but also just a very big and like inviting people and engendering like the community and um really big in the community arts locally. So it was it was a tremendous loss.
00:03:01
Speaker
and i think it was like two days later where I got an email that another one of my mentors was sick. And yeah I mean, the email just said kind of critically that he had to pull out of a a ah little songwriter event that we were having. And then a couple of months later, he was gone, too. But it was ah kind of, you know, being shell shocked by the one loss and then the other one. And it was just a weird thing. I was at gymnastics practice with my daughter.
00:03:29
Speaker
And I had gotten that email and I came home and my wife goes, oh, it's a it's supposed to be a full moon, like a super worm moon or something crazy. We should go. We should go look at it. And I was like, yeah yeah, maybe. I don't know. I don't know. I was just like kind of indifferent. But then I was just thinking about, you know, the imminent loss of Caroline's husband. Like he had just lost his partner. So it was just it I I started thinking more about their partners.
00:04:00
Speaker
and how they were dealing with the loss in the i and the imminent loss. I don't know. That was the kernel of the song. Like, you know, take those moments when you can. And for whatever reason, like I wrote down what my what wife said, we should go look at, we should go outside and look at the moon. And then, you know, my indifferent responses. I've seen the moon before. I'm good. yeah You know.
Songwriting Process and Influences
00:04:21
Speaker
Um, so I just, I just started singing a melody along with that. And I was like, Hey, I don't know. It's just, there was a fire in me. I ran to the basement and I had an old camcorder, like who uses camcorders anymore, but it was, uh, it was right there. I was like, you know what? I should just, I should just document it just to see what happens. And I just let it run. And you know, it was like two hours of like kind of putting the song together.
00:04:46
Speaker
You know, I added it down with some color commentary along the way. And, you know, there's a little humor embedded um as far as my frustrations with not being able to get things right or, you know, deciding to get rid of the guitar parts or bring strings in and trying to come up with a drum track and talking to myself throughout. But it was just I just kind of forgot the camera was there and just I guess somewhere along the way, I was like, how do I turn this into something?
00:05:16
Speaker
So the idea was public domain but footage from, you know, early silent films. And so I mixed that in. I tried to make the studio footage look like, you know, old timey black and white. Yeah. So that it was, it was, it was fun to put it all together. Um.
00:05:34
Speaker
and I'm glad I captured it. But yeah, there was like an underlying sadness to it. And and that absolutely comes through. I mean, I think that's why not only is it it's well put together and crafted as a music video, but what what keeps what keeps you watching it it too is that there's that emotional connection that you're feeling. And when I came to it too, I mean, it was 2021, 2020. It was right around you know when we were all still hiding in our houses and people were dying. and Yep, yep. So yeah, it was it was just kind of of a time and but but also big enough that it didn't, it wasn't like people are dying from COVID. And that's what I'm seeing about this bigger thing, which is, you know, to me is always the hallmark of a great song when you can
00:06:17
Speaker
I must massage that up. And you mentioned there's some humor in there, too. Like, you you know, you've got the thing about the oh, no, it's in C, which is always the easiest to play in the piano, which I i know I'm like, oh, it's so boring. I don't ever have to hit the black keys. It's nice. is there I can't get my fingers up there.
00:07:03
Speaker
You mentioned in there too, you you shape the chords around around them around the melody. So when you're writing a song, is that kind of typically how you start? Do you typically start with a lyric and a melody or or how does it how do you how do you approach a song? This particular song was kind of backwards from the way I usually work because I kind of started with a lyric and a melody and I kind of built it around that. Just because I feel like the the music needs to be different and interesting to me.
00:07:31
Speaker
Like yeah yeah I try to get away from usually when I write a song, I'm just screwing around on the guitar and I. Not necessarily a mistake, but I stumble onto something that I that's kind of out of outside of the box of what I usually play when I'm just kind of fooling around and riffing. And that's usually I'm like, oh, there's something unique that I haven't really done before. Let me see if I can develop that.
00:07:57
Speaker
And then separately, if I come up with lyric ideas, I'll jot those down in like an iPhone note or somewhere so that when the music and the chords and the rhythm come to me, I can look um over to, you know, my notes of lyrics and find one that kind of matches the feel and the groove um of, you know, whatever riff or chord progression or groove that I've come up with on the guitar.
00:08:26
Speaker
It is interesting that like that video is kind of the opposite way of how I usually work. I usually start with the music, you know. Yeah. but You know, sometimes whichever way it finds you is. Yeah. It's the way it's going to work that day. so Yeah. And it's it's kind of nice to break it up a little bit sometimes to just get a get a quick different creative direction, maybe. Yeah. That was part of it. I mean, I'm like.
00:08:49
Speaker
obsessed with creative process. It's funny, like a a friend, I was just I was out with a friend of mine and he was talking about um particularly like how with Prince since he passed, the estate is released like all these piles of songs from the from the vault of unreleased stuff that we've never heard before. And he was asking me, is it, you know, is it are there good songs in there? You know, like any stand out. And I'm like,
00:09:17
Speaker
You know, I'm not really even listening to them for like song quality. I'm listening to them in the context of like. This was between when he did Around the World in a Day and the Parade album, and I'm thinking much more about its place in the history of his career and. How it fits into his creative process, as opposed to is this a good song or not? Like, I don't even know at this point, I'm just like.
00:09:45
Speaker
I'm just listening, you know, more in, it's almost like as a historian. then Yeah. It's studying almost. Yeah. Definitely. He definitely takes me to school. Yeah, for sure. All of us. Yeah. um Yeah. It's almost like um a museum piece, right? Like he didn't want it out in the world or wasn't ready for it to be out in the world yet. So yeah, it's now it's just like, well,
00:10:08
Speaker
We don't have that artistic and creative force anymore, but yeah, now but we can look, we can dig through, you know, what's left and and see what we can learn. Right. There's one piece that I think he did release on one of his, uh, I think it was on the crystal ball project, but there's an extended version where the beginning of it is he's directing the band. Like he's telling them when to come in and how to build up
Joni Mitchell's Influence via Prince
00:10:33
Speaker
before he starts singing. yeah And that is like,
00:10:37
Speaker
That's like gold. yeah like And the song is like one of my favorites of all time. And yet, like to hear him like directing the band like that like in the studio, that's like... you know You're flying the wall for the actual creative process. It's like I completely appreciate it. Yeah, yeah that's that's neat. You like kind of see the guidewires that they erased when when it got finished, right right right? Right. So you're a big Prince fan. I know you're also a big Joni fan, which... Yeah. yeah yeah um i I don't really know any Joni, which is a terrible, terrible thing for me. I should probably dig into her catalog a little more.
00:11:16
Speaker
I think I hit her at the right time. Like and it's funny because I mean, I always liked. Like the song helped me, I just remember to date myself like. I just totally remember that being on like 70s radio radio, so like getting ready for school, the AM radios playing, you're listening for the weather reports, see if schools close and like I just I hear that song and those horns and it just.
00:11:43
Speaker
It's like a time machine. It's like this. So I always kind of love that song. Yeah. um But I didn't really know much of her other stuff, too. And then when I started really getting to Prince, he would always drop these hints of how much he was a fan of hers and his sing of Summer Long's was his favorite album or the last one he liked all the way through anyway. And um and then he name checked her in ah on the sign of the Times album in the song The Ballad of Dorothy Parker, which is like one of my favorite songs of all time.
00:12:13
Speaker
So that I was like, OK, all right, all right, Prince, I'll check her out. And I think i she she hit me right at the right time because I was getting more into songwriting. I just bought an acoustic guitar and I was really impressed with like her playing and the different tunings and the way she would just created this different sonic energy, the arc of her career. It's like every album is different. I mean, she started more in that.
00:12:43
Speaker
Um, traditional folk world, but since she moved more into like fusion and jazz and world music and it just um I mean, she was sampling back in, you know, 75 before anybody was really even thinking about that kind of stuff. is It's just. She's just a deep, deep body of work that she's that she's created and her lyrics are just like.
00:13:07
Speaker
you know, they're the the gold standard. yeah for If you ever see an interview with her, I mean, she speaks in poetry, so it makes sense that her lyrics are so... evocative and descriptive and um they just really get to the heart of what the hell she's talking about. So I really I really dug it. But if I had come to her like a little earlier or a little later, it might not ah it might not have hit the same way. You know, like some of the early stuff like the helium for I mean, I love those songs, but you can tell she's coming from that school of like who can sing the highest kind of thing like in the folk clubs or stuff. But, you know, the 70s is kind of the 70s records are kind of the sweet spot for me. with Yeah. When did you come to come to her? Like when in your in your journey of of being an artist? I think I was ah ah's probably like twenty four, twenty five. OK. A couple of years out of college.
00:14:02
Speaker
Which and had you been you and you'd been writing already or I'd
Creative Process and Song Inspiration
00:14:06
Speaker
been writing. I don't know if you could. Yeah, I guess you could call them songs. But I mean, like when I was in bands in high school, they we were mostly doing covers. Yeah. I would kind of do my own thing on the side. I was I wasn't really a guitar player back then. I was more of a keyboard player. So I had a little Fostex cassette four track recorder and I'd do my little songs like, yeah you know, with a little Casio keyboard and stuff.
00:14:32
Speaker
but they were always like, you know, kind of quirky and jokey and I don't know, just very, they weren't, um like I won't be digging out any of those songs to record for the next album. like right The guitarist in my band in high school, this was like, this was several years ago, but he's like, oh my God, I found like a bunch of of our old stuff. And I was so looking forward to hearing this stuff. And I played it, I was like, oh my God, oh my God, oh my God, this is terrible. I'm like, what?
00:15:00
Speaker
Yeah, have we did this in front of people. like And it was mostly my vocals that I was just horrified by. yes I was like, I can't believe they made me the singer of the band. I'm like, I can't. You guys, this was just mean. I still get like. ah So yeah, it wasn't ah it wasn't very polished. And but yeah, i by the time I hit Joni, I was definitely understood starting to understand more of what a song was. And by the same token, one of the things that drew me to her was.
00:15:32
Speaker
Her um willingness to, you know, not just do the verse, chorus, verse, chorus, bridge, verse, chorus, you know, je her song structure alone was, you know. Yeah, she's breaking out of patterns and just being a little different. Yeah, she just hit me ah at the right time.
00:15:49
Speaker
um You actually have a ah ah song that kind of, I don't know if it's an autobiographical moment of of discovery around at least a specific song about Joni. I'm assuming that's what that is. Maybe you can tell me about it. Encyclopedia Black in the case of you.
00:16:07
Speaker
That's like his bananas. Yeah. And that's that's another one where the video is like ah incredible. Like you have it's like it's almost like you you need to you need them both. But I have there's there's only been a couple of songs I'll say um where the concept for the video was kind of essential to the writing of the song. hu And that one i did I did after the fact. I definitely wrote the song first and only came up with the video for it afterwards.
00:16:40
Speaker
But it I mean, it is it is pretty biographical. When I finally locked into Joni, I think the first two I bought, it was like a double cassette of. For the Roses and Court and Spark, both on but on. So two albums for one, you know, on one cassette. Yeah. Yeah. So again, to date myself, I bought a cassette. Yeah, right. I'm right there with the legend was that Prince had done a case of you at the First Avenue show where he recorded all the songs that were used in the Purple Rain movie, hu which is pretty cool. Like that video is out there of that full show. And those tracks are basically what they use for most of the songs in the album, like Let's Go Crazy, um Baby I'm a Star, Purple Rain itself. Like, I mean, they edited um all down and, you know, added some stuff. But those are basically all that's basically a live album.
00:17:34
Speaker
um But the legend was that he did A Case of You, um this Joni Mitchell song, you know, as part of his set that night. And, you know, years before I actually got hold of the bootleg or the video of that show, um I just always kind of assumed that.
00:17:56
Speaker
Casey, you was like this funky song. And I really did think it was like a detective case, like, yeah, right. Police procedural. Yeah. Yeah, totally. Like, like I'm investigating this case of you, which I thought was great wordplay, you know. Yeah. um And turns out, no, it's it's a case of wine, Brian. Right.
00:18:17
Speaker
It's it's it's not it's just yeah, it's um so when I heard the song, I thought and began again because of my stupidity and assuming that it's print. So it's probably some funky case. So you I'm a bit skating. So when I came up with that again, this is I was playing the guitar and I was just I don't know. I think I was just doing.
00:18:38
Speaker
It was standard tuning, but for some reason, I wasn't really playing chords. I was just holding my frame fingers over all the ah the strings, just like. Oh, you can't see anyway. I mean, yeah, yeah. we we have This video, I can see you. OK, yeah. But I mean, for the podcast, they can't see. Yeah, it'll be it'll put this. Yeah, it'll be up on YouTube, too. So. Oh, OK. OK, cool. Yeah. So I was just doing this kind of thing just like. Yeah. And And I was like, oh, that kind of, it's kind of funky. And I'm like, ah it it kind of reminds, like in the moment I was like, this sounds like what I heard in my head. This is what I thought of Casey was going to be. I thought it was going to sound more like Prince's ballad of Dorothy Parker, which is the song where he name checks, Joni. And then, you know, you come upon the actual song and it's this gorgeous dulcimer ballad. Like I'm getting tear, I'm tearing up just thinking about like,
00:19:36
Speaker
but oh The song is just gorgeous and slow, but it is the exact opposite of what I thought it was going to be. Yeah. you know So that was. ah So then I got the idea to, you know, write the song about.
00:19:50
Speaker
discovering Joni that way or discovering that song anyway as being the complete opposite, but in its own way, like teaching me more about songwriting than I, you know, ever expected. I came in thinking I'd have a funky thing I could dance to. And then she just ripped my soul apart. Right. Yeah. Yeah. It's almost this inception level of like, you know. Yeah.
00:20:15
Speaker
you're You're looking at it from Prince like this song and I like Prince and he's name checking her. So I'm going to check. Yeah. it's right And yeah, it's it's it's it's cool how you how you you can weave that kind of expectation in and you and it's it's almost like an emotion can grab you from one end when you're looking over here. and yeah it's it's yeah yeah Pretty cool how that can happen sometimes. And that's the lyric. Love is already funky. You don't need to funk it up. It's already funky, baby.
Editing Skills and Tiny Desk Video Creation
00:21:41
Speaker
i could do that Do you have training as ah as ah as a cinematographer or as an editor? are you Is that part of your trade in any way? Because you're very good at it. I kind of stumbled into it. My first full-time job out of college was at the local PBS station. ok And I wasn't by any means like operating cameras or anything, but just by osmosis. like you you know You learn things like composition and pacing and editing, just watching other people, you know, putting shows together. And a lot of it was just learning on the job, you know, as technology got better and it was much easier to do editing, you know, on a computer. You know, some projects kind of fell my way and I'd have to make my way through them. It became a pretty big chunk of my portfolio at work at one point. And I was like, I i got to back away from this.
00:22:40
Speaker
It's hurting my soul. like There was one project I had and there were like 10 people like and I was trying to make art, you know, because I'm an artist. Right. Like, oh, we don't know how we need this in there. Oh, we need this guy because he. Uh-huh. That is hilarious. That's hilarious. so This person in. Yeah. I'm making art. Leave me alone.
00:23:05
Speaker
So I don't know if you know this, but I'm my i'm a ah television editor. yes that's my That's my gig. so yeah And that's what it is. it's it's You create this thing, and then you have literally you know anywhere from six to eight people at different levels of the organization, the you know the production company, the studio, the network, all of it, yeah weigh in and tell you all the things that you did wrong, or or you have to put this in here. And you're like, no, no, no. No, no, that's not the story. That's that's the story. I will say, though, yeah um For my latest record, I have a couple ideas that I haven't gotten to jump on in terms of. Produce music videos, but I kind of I kind of want to back away from the music video thing a little bit, just ah like the next project that I am going to do when I find the time is just set up outdoors somewhere and just do solo acoustic versions of some of the songs from the record just to kind of keep it simple and yeah. focus on the song, although, you know, there are a couple, there are definitely a couple that I have on the side that I'm like, yeah, I should, I should turn this into something more. So, yeah. So we'll see. Hopefully within the next six months, I can, time will stand still and I'll have time to. Yeah. Right. That's the trick, right? It's finding the time. Yeah. I'm, I'm the same way. Like I, I have, I have all this, you know, 20 years of background in the, you know,
00:24:31
Speaker
video and and TV, film production, and and yeah i've I've done exactly one music video, and that was just super down and dirty. Gio came over and we pointed an iPhone as I'm like floating in my pool, basically. The production value is is bare bones. so But yeah, it's it's a time thing, right? It's it's just a matter of- It's always a time thing. Yeah. yeah yeah Another super interesting ah video that you did, and ah very another very meta story is ah for Tiny Desk, which and you you talk about this in the song, but um you've got you know everybody asking yeah why are ah you, know are you going to submit to Tiny Desk? Submit to Tiny Desk. so It sounds like in Don't Quit Your Day Job, you finally gave into that ah that request and and you have have this song in this video. So tell me about Don't Quit Your Day Job.
00:25:22
Speaker
Yeah, that was one where the concept for the video and the writing of the song definitely went hand in hand, you know, because I mean, even in the yeah even in the second verse, I'm talking about there are four of me here. Yeah, right. That's Superman. So yeah I yeah I didn't know how I was going to shoot it. And I went through a couple of ah configurations when I finally settled on like the 360 camera.
00:25:52
Speaker
And just being kind of in the round and just panning around um to all four of me playing the song. But I I. ah I knew I like every year would come up and like, you know, I wouldn't say all my friends but because you should do have you ever done Tiny Desk, you should Tiny Desk. I don't know. But, you know, I figured I'd I kind of find a way to hack in.
00:26:21
Speaker
by writing about. it's Again, it's another Joni Mitchell trick. They're like, we like the record, but we want to hit. Can you write us a hit? And she's like, right oh, I'll write a song about DJs. You turn me on, I'm a radio. I mean, she totally wrote that because she knew the DJs, the DJs, the DJs would, ah you know, dig a song about DJing in the radio. So.
00:26:47
Speaker
And it worked. So it was my way to kind of hack in. I was like, I'll write a song about Tiny Desk for Tiny Desk, you know. um And it and my ambivalence toward, you know, contests and American Idol and those kind of things. I just I i never feel like the kind of stuff that I write and do kind of fits those.
00:27:13
Speaker
songwriting contests, voice contests, kind of.
00:27:20
Speaker
ah see I just feel like what I do doesn't necessarily fit what those contest judges are looking for. Yeah, they're looking for the big, you know, easily digestible big hook kind of yeah pop song. and And you've what you're doing is is definitely more kind of more emotional weight to it. Yeah, I will say the tiny desk is I mean, they're pretty good about, you know, art over commerce and in that respect in terms of the contest and what's, you know, what's won over the the acts that have won over the years. Yeah. But even then, I just feel like, you know, I don't necessarily write the kind of songs that lots of people want to listen to. and Yeah, right. You know what I mean. It's kind of. Yeah, I totally know what you mean. nish
00:28:06
Speaker
yeah um there's ah there's ah There's a line in there that I completely identify with and I think is a truism for a lot of people like like you and I who are songwriters and putting things out into the world and and have some degree of people that that dig what we do, but are largely, nobody knows who the fuck we are. right right right um ah But the line is, I try so hard, but also not hard enough. And I feel that a lot, like that's super me, right?
00:28:36
Speaker
yeah yeah you You go on to you know pray to God, and God says, don't quit your day job. It's just it's such such a fun a fun, fun song and fun video. All
00:29:52
Speaker
I think when I came up with the God rap, the God flow, I think that's that put it together. like yeah Pull it like God answers back.
00:30:05
Speaker
Right. mike check juna mike check check buggie chicken we go behind that time to governoril your day after job's distress regret sucks when come from success You
00:30:39
Speaker
Tom Robinson's a quittle While still be gettin' paid $15 million a year to tell all y'all to shut up and dribble so Oh, and there's a lot of that in in a lot of your songs to that that element of tongue in cheek. I don't want to I don't want to call it comedy, although it it is to a degree. It's it's not it's not weird at all by any stretch. It's just a little wink. Like I know I know what this is. I'm not taking myself too seriously while I'm also taking myself seriously. So is that is that an important element for you that you?
Humor in Music and Rick James Anecdote
00:31:10
Speaker
Yes, I think humor
00:31:14
Speaker
And especially humor versus comedy, like you say, like, I don't always get, ah get off on like funny songs per se, but I do like a sense of humor in, you know, here and there and a knowing nod and a wink.
00:31:30
Speaker
And again, going back to I mean, we keep going back to Prince and Joni were the masters of dropping like this, you know, hilarious stuff in the middle of and not, you know, a lot of it went over people's heads. But you have a couple other in another song that I really appreciate. Ain't going no any ain't going anywhere. Oh, yeah.
00:31:51
Speaker
the The line that that I love, um there's a couple that I love, but and then we I can kind of ask you about that song, but um I got the best damn records that you never heard, which again, I appreciate that. and And I agree you do. um And I got 12 guitars and three chords. Again, also guilty, but ah yeah talk about the genesis of that song. And that's another one with the fun video, too. Yeah, and that that was ah Don't Quit Your J Job and that one were definitely The video was written with the. ah um The song was written with the video and mine, you know, especially as I'm going through. And I didn't think of this until way after the fact, but it kind of like mimics ah the police when the world is running down. You make the best of what's still around. Yeah, because like he's like listing all these presumably he's like in a bomb shelter and it's the nuclear apocalypse or whatever right that is what how I always picture the song, but he's
00:32:50
Speaker
listing all the little things that he has in his possession, you know, yeah as the world crumbles around him. And that's kind of what I did, although I, you know, I i did not have that in mind when I wrote the song. Sorry, Sting. I totally plagiarized you. ah But it was kind of fun to like go around the room and just kind of find rhymes for for everything on the walls and in all the stuff. And I really do have Rick James's passport. Yeah. Yeah. OK. Talk about that.
00:33:19
Speaker
How did how did that happen? A friend of mine who lives in L.A., ah known him since kindergarten, Ed Conseco. What's up? um I think the story was his aunt rented out their house for a party, but whoever rented the place trashed it. And in the rubble as they were cleaning the place up, his passport was just kind of lying around there. And they gave it to Ed. And for one of my he's the best at like the craziest birthday presents. So he gave it to me for a birthday one year. He's like, hey, I got a present for you. And I'm like, what is Rick? I mean, at that point he was alive. I'm like, does he need this? Like what? It's crazy. I don't know if I should be talking about this. It's probably not legal for me to be in possession of it. I mean, it's got to be expired by now, right? Like, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, definitely. But it's funny because it, you know, it has his real name on it.
00:34:16
Speaker
And then in fine print, it says the bearer is also known as Rick James. It's it's crazy. So on on your records, are you are you do you record them all there and in that space that you're in? Are you is that you play in most of the stuff or how are you going into a yeah studio or the drums? i treatat I cheat on the drums are usually um they're live players, but they're like drum packages. So it'll be like oh Omar har Hakim. And here's like.
00:34:46
Speaker
Here's a, you know, a three force beat at 70 BPM. Right. Here's a bunch of loops, you know, from, you know, one session with him. Yeah. Gotcha. um So that's something like that. yeah Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So what I heard is Omar Hakeem is playing on your records. Omar Hakeem, Nate Smith. I mean, it's like these are like world class. I i stumbled on those because I was recording.
00:35:12
Speaker
some song and I was like, Oh, it'd be cool if I had like a a bottom break right here, like when the levee when the levee breaks. Yeah. And that's how I found this site because they had like a bottom drum package. And I'm like, Yeah, what? OK. I mean, it wasn't it wasn't actual bottom samples. It was like kind of recreating.
00:35:33
Speaker
um you know some of his right sure classic beats with that same yeah big Ludwig sound or whatever. So when you do perform live then too, are you are you are do you do the loop pedal thing? Are you kind of building stuff that way or are you just a troubadour style? I try to use it sparingly because i mean you can easily easily become known as the loop guy. Yeah, yeah exactly. you know and it's like It's like, you know, you start the loop and it takes you three minutes to set up the song and the song is only two minutes long. You know, it's like I i don't want to I don't want to get into that too much, but i I do like. I do like the way that it allows me as a solo acoustic player to. Kind of mix it up during a set, you know. Yeah.
00:36:16
Speaker
at a little variety. Yeah, i my kids bought me one for Christmas a couple years ago. and And with the intention that I would, I mean, I asked them, I'm like, what do you want for Christmas? day i miss like um And the intention was, oh, I'm gonna, you know, be one of those guys that can do that. And and I've just never, it's not, it there's something that just doesn't feel, it's like you're saying, it ah it ends up being,
00:36:39
Speaker
too much to build and I just want to play the song. right So yeah, I use it sparingly for those little moments and yeah and it's cool. um Or a lot of times what I'll do is I'll i'll just load ah'll load the drum beat and the bass line and I'll just play it. It's almost like a band in a box. It's good for like, yeah, rehearsing. and Yeah. All right. Well, we're almost at the end of end of our hour here, but I wanted to ask you, i know we talked a little bit about, I'm afraid to say the name of this song.
Future Projects and Creative Process
00:37:03
Speaker
Oh, Scheherazade of Schenectady. Yes, that's the one. Thank you.
00:37:10
Speaker
That's a mouthful. It is. It is. I'm a recovering English major. I don't know. I woke up. I had a crazy dream. I was out in Albany and a friend of mine from high school. We were driving her home back to Schenectady. She was in the back seat. She's kind of passed out. There's some weird dude ah was driving. I was shotgun.
00:37:36
Speaker
And it was this weird surreal dream I had and I woke up and I was like. I kind of want to write a song about that, you know, because I was writing the song about it like in the dream, which doesn't really happen for me. Like I never like wake up and go, oh, there's a song. Let me get. Yeah. But it but it kind of happened. So I just like I immediately went downstairs and I didn't even think I was just like.
00:37:59
Speaker
flow state, just like let it go. And I jotted down a bunch of words and I tried to make it work. And I'm like, this doesn't make sense to anyone but me and it never will. And I will let this die here. So it was a nice experiment, but I'm all done. But then I was reading a couple of books. I was reading James by Percival Everett, who is um he wrote the book that ah the movie American fiction was based on.
00:38:28
Speaker
OK. And his book, James, is a retelling of Huck Finn from Jim's perspective. And it's wow. It's it's it's a wild book. Yeah. But a lot of that book was about storytelling and perspective and the whole Rashman thing of different perspectives. Right. And then another book I kind of stumbled on was ah by Julia Alvarez, um the cemetery of the cemetery.
00:38:58
Speaker
I'm telling you, man, I am the worst. I can't remember anything. Anyway, song about a novel ah a book about a novelist and.
00:39:10
Speaker
She's kind of. At the end of, you know, end of her career, she's got all these piles of notes from stories that she never, you know, that never turned into books or poems or whatever, and she wants to literally bury them.
00:39:26
Speaker
in her yard, but the stories and the characters in the stories, you know, the ghosts of these, you know, forgotten characters start to talk to her or whatever. And it's very much about storytelling. And her pen name in the book is Scheherazade, who is the, you know, the storyteller of Arabian Nights and in that whole thing. Yeah. So what I finally came up with was a mashup of all three of those, like Scheherazade from Julie Alvarez book.
00:39:55
Speaker
And then James from the Percival Albert book. And then the last verse is me trying to force a story out of this crazy dream I had.
00:40:06
Speaker
Yeah. And I don't know. That's that's usually how songs work for me. It's like it's it's usually some kind of mashup of seemingly unrelated things that I'm trying to force to ah to mean something. Yeah. You know, the whole thing bigger than the sum of the parts. Yeah, that it does. it's It's kind of a theme with what at least the ones that we've talked about. There's definitely like you've got a lot of layers.
00:40:31
Speaker
of different stories. And, you know, like I mentioned the, uh, the, what's it called the inception thing, or you're, you're a a little bit of a pioneer of the multiverse too. That's very of the time, right? Oh, that's interesting. Yeah. Yeah. With your four, you know, four buggies in the four buggies. How many buggies could a woodchuck chuck?
00:40:51
Speaker
So if I were a voting member of the Academy, I i would have picked American fiction for a Best Picture. I thought that movie was was that was that was a good one. So good. And there's so much more in the book, too. It's like, yeah, I mean, that was the first thing when I saw the movie. I'm like, I got to read the book because there's like and, you know, because I'm like the movie kind of raises some questions.
00:41:15
Speaker
And then I get to the book and I'm like, Oh my God, the book raises even more questions. Yeah. It's crazy. Yeah. But it's a, it was really cool. Yeah. This has been fantastic. Um, I really love what you're putting out into the world. So thank you for ah everything that you're creating and and putting out there. And, um, we need more people to listen to buggy jive and dig into those videos that are so creative and and cool. Well, thanks man.
00:41:42
Speaker
um What's next for you? You're working on any and and I do know you just came out. your Your record came out this year. Yeah, yeah in the summer to little fanfare. I had all these I had all these promotion plans. I'm like, just, you know, life gets in the way. And now I hear it's funny as I've dialed back day job stuff. There's still are still a lot going on yeah with the music and life and and everything. But it's but it's all good. It's all good. And I'm doing it at my own pace. So that's yeah.
00:42:13
Speaker
That's cool enough for us. And but at these conferences, I've got some shows coming up and, you know, just. Are you still right? You write every day? review Is that is that kind of a I want to be that guy, but I'm trying to play every day. Yeah. You know, like I said, like a lot of my song ideas come from mistakes. yeah ah this You know, I can't sit down and force myself to make mistakes. Mistakes happen when they happen. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. You have to you have to be practicing to make the mistakes. I do have a pile of little mistakes and at some point I'll sit down with and turn into something, I guess.
00:42:58
Speaker
ah But no, this has been this has been great. it's It's been lovely to have you. And like I said before, I really, I truly enjoy what you're putting out into the world. And I hope to hear much more ah from you in the in the future.
00:43:09
Speaker
Thanks a lot man, this has Wilsbach's Song Pod is produced by Wilsbach Entertainment LLC. Mixed, mastered, and edited by me, Tim Wilsbach. See you next time.