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TTP #10- Wenzl McGowen on his Spiritual Journey and its Impact on his Life and his Saxophone Playing
12 Plays7 years ago
Wenzl McGowen is an incredible force on the saxophone and member of the band Moonhooch. This episode includes practical life advice for the touring musician, why the band went vegan together, the depth of the impact that meditation has had on his life as a musician and well constructed concepts about the nature of the universe and cosmos. We cover lots of ground in this episode from his upbringing on a completely isolated commune in Portugal to his touring life with Moonhooch. In this conversation:
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The dynamics of touring with a band and concepts of conflict/resolution
- Playing in the moment and striving for freedom with his instrument and the tools he is using to achieve the 'flow state'
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Wenzl's path of Meditation. How he got into it, what it means and how it has manifested on his life including how meditation has transformed his stage experience
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Upbringing in a commune in Portugal. Lessons learned from his father who created and ran the commune and turning negative experiences into positive lessons in life
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Making the transition from living completely isolated on a commune with no outside influence to coming to NYC at age 18 for school
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How and why Wenzl became vegan. The significance of the band doing it together
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How Moonhooch tours maintaining health on the road. Bringing a portable kitchen, cooking in the green room, foraging for wild plants and supporting co-ops
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Daily and pre-show rituals on tour -
Goals with his saxophone playing: Strategies to break out of preconceived patterns and musical ‘vocabularies’ and evolve to a system more based on numbers and shapes. How he is implementing this concept
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Influential books and documentaries in his lifePlease 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
Tourganic Podcast Theme song 'The Path' written by David Bailis and this episode's musical interludes by Moonhooch
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction to Torganic Podcast
00:00:00
Speaker
Welcome to the Torgannic Pumpkin. Take a deep breath and trust. Just trust in the unfolding of your life.
00:00:12
Speaker
I am your host David Bayless and this is the 10th episode of the Torganic Podcast. In these conversations I speak with touring musicians about how they live a healthy lifestyle on the road. While many of the episodes are about how and why my guests live a plant-based vegan diet on the road, the content of these conversations has a diverse and holistic approach to focus on health of mind, body, and spirit. My goal is that this podcast will give you a window into their life and offer you some insight that will inspire you.
00:00:39
Speaker
Please let me know what you think by commenting and rating the show in iTunes.
Wenzel McGowan's Touring Life and Universe Concepts
00:00:44
Speaker
My guest this week is Wenzel McGowan, saxophone player and member of the band MoonHooch.
00:00:50
Speaker
This episode takes the listener on a ride from practical life advice for the touring musician to well-constructed concepts about the nature of the universe. Similar to the experience of a moon hooze show, this episode is wild, brilliant, and takes you on unexpected twists and turns. We cover lots of ground in this episode, from his upbringing on a completely isolated commune in Portugal till he was 18 years old, to his crazy touring life now with moon hooze.
00:01:14
Speaker
We speak about why he and the rest of the band went vegan together, how meditation has been transformative for his life on and off the stage, and some of the concepts he's been developing on a collective consciousness in the universe. Me and Wenzel spent a few months touring together when MoonHooch opened up for us for a tour in 2016, and I was blessed to get to experience MoonHooch night after night and to hang with the guys a bit as well. We begin this episode talking about the dynamics of touring in a band.
00:01:43
Speaker
How's MoonHooch going? It's been really, really amazing. It's a huge challenge and it's also a huge inspiration. Being so close with other musicians constantly on the road, we spend 24-7 together for months at a time.
00:02:03
Speaker
And after that, you know, personal differences become huge and like really deep stuff starts to surface and we spent a lot of time like working through that on an individual level and also on a collective level just having really open conversations. And what we're really learning about is, you know, all the good stuff, forgiveness, patience, compassion.
00:02:29
Speaker
and trying to get away from being right, having your idea to be the one that is going to be executed, getting away from all that ego stuff, getting away from fear. It's crazy how deeply ingrained all these behavior mechanisms are in our psyches.
00:02:53
Speaker
that we don't really look at, but once we are forced with people in such a closed environment, they become really out in the open.
Music, Connection, and Personal Growth
00:03:03
Speaker
Very apparent. Because everything that's not built on love and compassion, patience and collaboration just comes out. Either it's internal stress, or you say something that stresses out the other person.
00:03:16
Speaker
And then, you know, you can see, wow, I need to look at this in myself. I need to look at that. And so it's been like a huge emotional workout. And the crazy thing is, is that as a musician in this super close knit context, like, yeah, you have differences with people. And then no matter what, that night on stage, you're forced to connect on the deepest human level we can possibly connect. Exactly.
00:03:44
Speaker
You know what I mean? In a way, there's nothing better to heal. Absolutely. I think it's like a very fast path. Being in a band, it's like you have these really intense energies that you bring in every day during the performance. Then you have the really intense days of going to the next show, having emotional conflict or whatever it is. But having the show really is this opportunity to release.
00:04:15
Speaker
Doing shows, I often get to this place of complete forgiveness, of complete transcendence. And all these little issues that you have on the road suddenly are just pebbles on the floor of a giant ocean. And you're like, holy shit, this is so much bigger than me and my issues. This is about bringing this energy to this planet. This is how it feels to me.
00:04:43
Speaker
And so it's a very spiritual thing, playing shows together and transcending your personal differences. Yeah. And have you found, as you've learned about this part of yourself and learned about this kind of connection with your bandmates, has it changed the dynamic on stage as you guys have built that foundation of conflict and resolution? And even on a personal level, has it changed the way you play? Absolutely.
00:05:13
Speaker
interestingly I got interested in personal growth because I was hitting a brick wall with my saxophone playing I always thought everything can be resolved through obsessive practicing but if you don't bring your practice to a deeper level then you can practice much you want and you'll just always stay in that same domain that same dimension and I realized that
00:05:44
Speaker
You know, that was around 2010 or 11. I started to realize that I live a lot in my head. You know, that a lot of my energy is used by my thoughts. And when I'm playing, that's wasted energy. You know, I'm playing something and I'm already thinking about it, what it sounds like, how I could do it better, whatever it is, if it's a critical analysis of it,
00:06:13
Speaker
thoughts in general. So I realized that that I'm putting my energy into these thoughts I'm actually deducting from my timing. I'm like speeding up from having anxious thoughts or you know slow down I'm distracted thinking about something else. So like having that perfect time and being totally grooving required for me to like go into my heart and leave my head. And so I used to then go at night to Central Park
00:06:43
Speaker
and go under the tunnel and just take out my saxophone and start playing one note or a couple notes and listen to how they're bouncing off the wall and that allowed me to sort of stop
00:06:58
Speaker
my musician mind. Because I'm a trained musician, I went to school for music, I put so much critical thinking and analysis into music, that it became this hugely conceptual thing. So then suddenly I was there just with my saxophone in this
00:07:15
Speaker
tunnel just just listening to pure sound and I was like I'm just creating sound I'm not even a musician right now I'm just a sound machine yeah and like a vessel yeah so
00:07:29
Speaker
So then, you know, I would play more and the more I would add phrases and more like musical repertoire to my playing, I would also recognize all these thoughts that would come in. Like, oh, why did you play that? That sounds so cheesy. You know, I'm like, I'm creating sound. Why does it have to be a label to it? So that was really my first experience with
00:07:54
Speaker
with kind of trying to get to the personal growth level with music. Yeah, trying to take value judgment out of that and really just trying to have a free flow from, like you said, your heart. Exactly.
00:08:10
Speaker
I didn't realize how long of a process this was going to be and still is. You know, I started getting very impatient with myself. I was like, why am I thinking now? You know? Like, why can't I be on this, on this pure expression path right now? And then I had this really interesting experience. So Mike, the other Saxon player for MoonHooch, he never really had that issue. You know, he had never,
00:08:39
Speaker
come from the very intellectual perspective of music. For him, it was always this free flow, pure expression thing. So we kind of came from opposite ends of the spectrum. And one night, we just had rented a new practice space. And all the other practice spaces in the warehouse were empty. And all the doors were open. So we were there at night.
00:09:05
Speaker
and we smoked some weed which I usually don't do but I got extremely high and we went into one of those empty rooms closed the door turned the light off and just started playing and we were not playing any songs or anything we were just playing just making sound and suddenly I realized oh my god there's this river of flow
00:09:29
Speaker
There was another one of those experiences. And I can jump in this river and be totally in the moment, be one with what Mike plays, and at the same time contribute and listen. And then I realized I can also fall out of this river by analyzing it. So it was the same realization. And then I started getting so deep into this river that I suddenly saw myself flying over a lake.
Meditation and Trust in the Universe
00:09:54
Speaker
and like the music was just like the force that propelled me and up on the other side of the lake was a mountain and a monastery so I flew up there and there was this monk sitting there that kind of welcomed me and I was like whoa like what was this like I'm tripping out and then a couple months later
00:10:16
Speaker
a band moved into that room when the practice spaces filled up. They put a sticker on the door with their name on it and their name was Old Monk. That was a weird experience.
00:10:34
Speaker
But yeah, that was the beginning of my path of using meditation and the vegan diet now to raise my vibration and try to get into that flow state as much as I can. And you know a lot about getting into that flow state and what you're talking about, I think, is also just a level of trust in yourself. Absolutely. Trust that you can jump off the cliff and it's going to be all good. Yes.
00:11:00
Speaker
Absolutely. And it's not just trust in yourself. I think it's also trust in the universe. Yeah. Because at some point, like you can get to very scary points with meditation where like the self dissolves and you're like, is it safe to just like totally dissolve into everything? And trusting it is extremely important that it is safe to jump off the cliff.
00:11:42
Speaker
And so talking about that experience with playing with Mike in the practice room and then the tunnel in Central Park and those things started to bring out that flow state mentality. And how are you able to continually work on that? What are ways? Is it through meditation? What are ways that you continue to try to achieve that higher level?
00:12:10
Speaker
I approach it from both sides, from the intellectual level and also from the practical level, which means developing the habits that support flow. So from an intellectual level, I know that I have all these programs in my head, which are habits.
00:12:32
Speaker
you know that at some point in my journey served me whether they protected me from a dangerous situation I mean that goes far into evolution like what we inherited was useful to monkeys at some point
00:12:45
Speaker
So we're dealing with all these programs that are automated will responses. The situation arises, this is how I react to the situation. So my habits are very much that I try to make myself safe by having full understanding of the situation and then trying to control it by projecting into the future.
00:13:05
Speaker
so that other people use more like anger and aggression and as a habit for defense. Well, if I feel threatened, I become very intellectual. So this I know about myself and then it is a daily task of developing the habits of being like, okay, now I don't need to think. And I literally tell myself all the time, shh,
00:13:33
Speaker
If I'm thinking, thinking, thinking, I'm like, focus on your breath. How does it feel to breathe in? How does it feel to breathe out? What do I feel in my chest right now? What do I feel in my hands? What do I feel in my legs? So I just slowly bring my attention to my body and out of my head. And that's literally something I need to do hundreds of times a day. And the more I do it,
00:14:01
Speaker
the longer I can maintain my body and my focus and my heart. And the better shows I play. And doing shows, it's the same thing. It's like I catch myself thinking about the music and then I'm like, no, I'm not thinking about this right now. I'm playing music. And sometimes I use even anger during shows to kind of bring myself into the flow.
00:14:27
Speaker
often I would imagine myself stomping on my thoughts or like even like punching my thoughts out of my head like I don't need to think anymore I'm done with this I'm going into the music I'm going for full expression full flow fuck you to my own head and you know this and then of course I do like an hour or two of meditation just sitting totally quiet and focusing my breath
00:14:55
Speaker
or my heart or doing a mantra meditation. Yeah. Yeah. And I like that you, you brought it to the specificity of like, this is something that's not a fleeting thought once every couple of days. Oh, I should focus on my breath that this is something constantly throughout the day focused on. And that's a really important recognition to sort of move forward and keep growing. Yeah. Is the constant focus.
00:15:21
Speaker
Yeah, exactly. It's essentially starting to, well, I'm starting to try to take meditation and just apply it all the time and just realize that being relaxed and being happy is a choice. It's not something that comes to me, but rather I need to be, okay, what am I thinking about right now that is stressing me out and then make the adjustments and then I don't need to think about this.
00:15:51
Speaker
Yeah. And how did you get into the meditation? Like you said, is that something that you do an hour every day? How long have you been doing that? Four years. Four years. Yeah.
Spiritual Experiences and Music's Role
00:16:01
Speaker
And did you sort of, uh, have someone that guided you on that path or did you just sort of like, was it a source that pulled you into that world? Like, how did you get into it? Cause that's, to me, that's a pretty serious commitment an hour a day for four years. How did you get into it? Well,
00:16:20
Speaker
I started to get to this point where I had achieved my childhood dream, which was to play in a well-known band. We're playing in big TV shows, and I got a taste of what it would be like to be famous. And then I realized it's not the end. That's not the goal.
00:16:45
Speaker
I always thought, that's the goal. If I'm there, I'm happy, and everything is good. And there I was playing in the same TV shows, Coldplay, hanging out with celebrities, playing the same show. What band was this? This was Moonhooch. This was Moonhooch. We were a house band at a TV show, and Coldplay played there, and we also played at the- I didn't realize there was a house band on a TV show. Yeah. We had a different name on a TV show.
00:17:10
Speaker
But anyway, I was in the celebrity life. Although I still wasn't rich or anything, but I still got the taste of that lifestyle. And I was like, well, that's an unfortunately very empty life. And with that, my whole dream was kind of shattered. And I became very depressed. Was there a certain moment where it hit you? It was a gradual thing. It just became more and more urgent that I look for something
00:17:39
Speaker
bigger, that the physical reality just isn't all. And then my ex-girlfriend, she was always like, when should I try meditating? She did Vipassana meditation and she has done like two retreats and finally I sign up for a retreat. And I meditated for 10 hours a day for 10 days.
00:18:02
Speaker
And it was the craziest thing I've done in my life. The craziest thing. No drug compares to this. Because suddenly you're not just on a drug, but actually that reality becomes real. So like on the fifth or sixth day, felt like trees were talking to me. I was, you know, meditating for 10 hours a day and then walk, taking a walk through the garden. And the trees were just like, Hey, you finally came to see us. Yeah. Like that was their vibe. Like finally you've made it through all your psychological conditioning and you can see.
00:18:32
Speaker
who we really are and I just broke down crying like in front of a tree just like I'm so sorry I was lost for 20 years in my thoughts so this was a really intense moment but then suddenly it felt like that that force that kept me in my thoughts was something evil almost and
00:18:58
Speaker
And I started to get fear because I was in such a far out reality that I wasn't really comfortable. And suddenly it felt like the universe was so, so much bigger and I had no idea.
00:19:11
Speaker
And I started getting very anxious and kind of freaking out from this overly amazing state of bliss into like a horrible state of fear. And then... Is the fear based in just the realization of what you've come to are also based in the fact that you have to, that this retreat is going to end and you're going to have to reenter society? No, it was really just the fear of losing my mind, I think. It was just like...
00:19:38
Speaker
the kind of things I perceived were things I've never perceived before, that I was like, this is so far out, will I ever come back to normal life? And so this fear became so intense that I'm not religious, I'm nothing, I didn't believe in anything. But I was just like, okay, I need to ask for help. So I started screaming to the universe, like, help me, help me, help me, without my voice, but just as a really intense prayer.
00:20:08
Speaker
and then suddenly this intelligent force came to me and started explaining me my life and explaining me how I've accumulated so much debt meaning treating others not with love and that I have to work through all this debt and that this fear is part of this debt and
00:20:33
Speaker
So then I started developing this relationship with some sort of intelligent force that started guiding my life.
00:20:43
Speaker
You know, it wasn't easy to accept that because I'm such a rational person and suddenly here I am communicating to some sort of intelligent being or whatever. Like that doesn't fit in my belief system. So I was like, I'm going insane. That's literally the definition of insane. Crazy. I must be crazy. So I checked myself in a mental hospital and there the people just saw it more as, um,
00:21:11
Speaker
as symptoms rather than the discovery of a larger reality and that just didn't resonate with me so I then took the scientific path to finding spirituality and I interviewed quantum physicists and started to realize that deep down reality doesn't actually exist but rather all probability distributions and that consciousness seems to be the force that organizes matter not the other way around
00:21:41
Speaker
and so I slowly started to create this world view of a larger reality and wrote a book about it and that has really been also this path that I took besides my music has been always cross-fertilizing and
00:21:59
Speaker
That's obviously a lot of really intense stuff going on inside of your spirit, your being, your mental well-being and all that. And I'm wondering, you're continuing to play saxophone, and how did this affect your playing? You know, I made it more shamanic.
00:22:18
Speaker
You know, like now I view music and performance more as, yeah, just as this healing process of connecting the two worlds, so to speak. And I mean, that's pretty much the way tribes have been looking at music for thousands of years, you know? You get together in the community, you drum, and you connect to the ancestors, or you connect to the spirits.
00:22:44
Speaker
And connect to each other. And to connect to each other. Yeah, to kind of integrate all these different energies that are out in the universe. Yeah. And that's how I see it now too. For me, playing music is not just like, oh, I'm just honking around my saxophone. This is a deep spiritual commitment. And the point of it is integration.
00:23:08
Speaker
integrating by connecting to each other and also I think by connecting to higher dimensional beings. I mean this is like a far out idea but... So this is kind of like how I experience it.
00:23:54
Speaker
I want to take it back because I remember when we were on the road together, you were talking about where you grew up.
Upbringing and Music Dedication
00:24:01
Speaker
It was an interesting circumstance, right? There was something of commune. I'm curious about if you could connect the realizations that you've
00:24:12
Speaker
been making along these more recent years and whether that relates in a way to your upbringing, which to me sounded rather untraditional. Maybe you could just describe what your upbringing was.
00:24:27
Speaker
Okay, I'll quickly tell you what my upbringing was and then how I make sense of it now. My father was a commune leader. He started a commune in the sixties by inviting people to live with him. And every evening they would have, you know, music sessions together, dance, paint together, express themselves. And he was also a therapist and so he would start helping people deal with their emotional issues. And
00:24:57
Speaker
This first worked really well and people became very connected to each other. In the community. Yeah. And through that strong connection it became a really powerful unit to this community. And they started creating companies together all over Europe.
00:25:18
Speaker
selling insurance but they were kind of beyond the game because they didn't really take it so seriously but at the same time they were so linked up and connected and had so much support they were really powerful and became extremely wealthy and then they started playing buying places they owned like a coast on an island in in Spain in the Canara Islands and that's where I was born and
00:25:40
Speaker
Oh, we played in the Canary Islands. We played at the Jazz Fest there. I love it. Yeah, it's like Heineken sponsors. It's awesome. You guys should play that. That would be really cool. Oh, it's the best, man. It's great, but yeah, continue on. But anyway, he then started taking drugs and lost himself. Your father? Yeah. He started taking coke and drinking heavily.
00:26:05
Speaker
and kind of lost perspective and then started just abusing his power and in a way where just you know he just do things just to show that he had power you know because he started this commune or whatever and with that a lot of tension was created in the commune and the whole thing started falling apart he was also having sex with underage girls and
00:26:32
Speaker
the government didn't like him to begin with, so he ended up going to jail. And the economy fell apart. I was two years old by that time. So I don't really remember much. But when he came back out, I was nine years old, and some of the more devoted followers rejoined with him. And that's where I grew up in Portugal.
00:26:59
Speaker
And I never had a good relationship with him because I always felt like that he had lost himself. I kind of sensed that, you know, that he was really going for the path of power and domination. And I mean, he had a good heart and he had good attentions in the beginning, but he went down the deep end. Right. Yeah. It's interesting. Initially.
00:27:19
Speaker
It seems he probably had really positive intentions. I would imagine, you know, starting a commune, wanting to start a community of people, like-minded people that are really linked up and doing good things. And then it's...
00:27:34
Speaker
something somehow a left turn, you know, a turn was taken and I wonder if it was just like the sense of power maybe or money or somehow must have corrupted that path. Because I don't know, I'm not an expert on communes, but I would imagine most communes are people that want to separate themselves from society, don't necessarily want to live in that capitalist mentality. That would be my guess of most people that are in, you know, they're going to
00:28:00
Speaker
mostly share amongst themselves and do whatever they can to make sure their people and their community is healthy and provided for, but they don't want to take part in the overall capitalist system of the world. Yeah, well, he didn't really care about money. His paintings are worth millions of dollars. I mean, all of his paintings together. Wow.
00:28:21
Speaker
he signed them all away gave them all to the commune because he was like I don't care about them so I didn't inherit anything when he died nobody did they're all owned by this organization that was created in the commune but he didn't really care about money or things like that but he he did care about being right about things and about being
00:28:49
Speaker
the one that teaches others and being in charge and I think that he was essentially lost because he didn't make the leap into surrendering to something beyond himself but rather he was like, I am the greatest and I am the one that knows everything he was totally full of himself
00:29:18
Speaker
And he wasn't like, I'm doing this for the purpose of healing the planet. I'm doing this for the purpose of liberating others. It was more, I'm doing this for myself. So this mentality was deep down in him and he didn't really observe that or get in touch with that. And I think a reason for that was because he didn't meditate, for example. He didn't believe in anything greater than humanity.
00:29:48
Speaker
you know he was essentially a nihilist and so these I think are things that kept him trapped and yeah I mean I also didn't really know him before he was like that you know by the time I got to know him he was already a bitter man and he always had you know issues with me I don't know why but he always would pick on me and
00:30:17
Speaker
Yeah. And was it still a commune type situation when you were growing up even after you went to prison or were you? Yeah. Yeah. Kind of. Yeah. I was like 32 people. It was, it was 600 in the beginning. Okay. And then the 32 craziest or most devoted rejoined with them while the rest was like, okay, that was a crazy ride. I'm going to move on with my life. And it sounds like there is a lot of darkness there, you know, and are you able to also,
00:30:48
Speaker
pull out positives from that in terms of your growth? I totally do focus on that. Especially with this comment, I still feel like I have some resentment. But if I really look at it objectively, there's also so many things I'm very grateful for. And one of them was to be introduced to creative expression.
00:31:11
Speaker
from a very young age on, like I was painting before I could speak and I was very encouraged to just let me paint and my mom and my dad would give me lessons and show me how to paint and also I got used to being a performer from a very young age on because we would have these dance events
00:31:35
Speaker
where the whole commune would gather and one person would go in the middle and do a performance so I had to deal with stage fright like right then and especially with my judgmental father there you know I had to somehow deal with that which is really intense because I didn't really have an option of not dancing or not performing he would always be like no you have to like no questions asked so so I had to confront that
00:32:04
Speaker
Which, you know, was terrifying at the time, but also now I feel like I don't have much stage for it because of it. And then another thing...
00:32:17
Speaker
I'm really grateful for, I mean, they're all the same. All the negative parts are also the positive. Right. It's like the fact that he totally went down the deep end, started out with good intentions is a valuable lesson for anybody. It's like, wow, you really have to watch yourself because you know, you could be believing that you're doing the best thing, but really you're not. And you could be hurting others and not realizing you are. And
00:32:45
Speaker
These are really important things to watch out for. And then also to really work on being modest and being humble, which is a huge lesson, especially for a touring musician. When you have people cheering you on every day, it's so easy to lose yourself in your ego. And seeing my father made me realize that's the deepest and darkest trap you could get into, is your own ego.
00:33:12
Speaker
So it's really important to cultivate thoughts of like, this is not about me. This is something bigger. I'm not doing this for myself. And just cultivating these more benevolent thoughts. And I think my father's darkness was a huge inspiration for me to look for something beyond that.
00:33:34
Speaker
Yeah. I would imagine just growing up in that situation also just teaches you just to have an unconventional outlook on the world. You're not necessarily ingrained into the system that most kids are a part of and their day-to-day life with their schooling and society and all this stuff. You're in a unique situation that at a certain point you probably realize like, wow, I've been on a pretty different path than most kids my age.
00:34:04
Speaker
teaches you probably to question things in a different way and a certain level of openness, I would imagine, to the world. You have sort of a different lens than most other children coming up your age and that could be so deeply ingrained into that as you continue to get older, that quality stays and can have beneficial parts of your life. It's both again, you know?
00:34:30
Speaker
coming from such a different world. I lived in the foot of a mountain without any contact related to the outside world until I was 18. Wow. And all I would do is read and play saxophone. I would practice saxophone religiously, like eight hours a day. So it was a huge retreat, my whole childhood.
00:34:54
Speaker
And I had really good friends there and really my brothers and it wasn't like that bad. It was like, we had a band too. There was nine kids we rehearsed every day for two hours. So just having that set up was pretty amazing. Just like nine kids that are all totally devoted to music. Like we would practice like six hours before lunch or before dinner and be like, how much did you practice?
00:35:22
Speaker
I did seven. Oh my gosh, I gotta do one more hour. So there was this huge incentive to practice and work hard for ten years. And...
00:35:34
Speaker
So that was amazing. But the fact that I wasn't really in touch with the outside world just created a huge shock when I came to New York. Yeah, tell me about that. It was such a shock. Like, I mean, I arrived at the airport in New York. I don't know why I made this insane decision, but... Essentially to go to... Yeah, I was like suddenly when I was 16, I was like, guys, I need to go to New York. Like...
00:36:00
Speaker
I really need to study there. And so I recorded to the Senate there, I got a scholarship. And then when I was 18, I flew to New York.
00:36:11
Speaker
and by myself didn't know anybody here and I was just like not even aware that there's so many different races living among each other like so many different people like so many like I would just get freaked out being in the subway out loud I would think like am I hearing my name like I wasn't just like not used to like there's also so many when sounds in the language when did you go there I was like somebody just went say Wentzel
Urban Transition and Lifestyle Changes
00:36:38
Speaker
So like the first couple weeks were filled with anxiety just like oh my god, this is so crazy I need to go back. I don't know what I'm doing here. I miss everybody. I miss my friends Going to the bank will give me anxiety. What is this like filling out forms all these? bureaucracy stuff was just like totally foreign to me right and
00:37:02
Speaker
Yeah, but then I started to discover the underground music scene and I went to jazz jam sessions and just played all night long and felt totally at home there. And, you know, with all the music freaks, I felt like they were as weird as I was, so I felt very welcomed from the community. Yeah, musicians, even if they haven't been,
00:37:25
Speaker
in a totally closed-off situation in a mountain. We all sort of have our own version of that in our own world. Exactly. I feel like just making that choice to become a musician and sticking with it, you're already some sort of weirdo.
00:37:42
Speaker
That's a very unusual thing to do to just pluck around your instrument for hours a day. Yeah, you know just to do that for years. That's kind of weird and So so I feel like it takes a certain personality to commit to music So you said you took the plane you got here. How did you just start to? Integrate yourself into life here that must have been so hyper intense and
00:38:07
Speaker
Yeah. Well, at that time, I didn't really have much tools to like deal with anxiety. Yeah. I didn't meditate, which would have been a huge help looking back at it. I was just miserable for like, actually, one thing that helped me was going to nature. That's one thing that really helped me. So I lived up in the Bronx. Okay. Like on the last stop on the D train.
00:38:37
Speaker
That is really close to the Botanical Gardens. So it was June and things were beautiful out, so I would often just go to the Botanical Gardens and kind of find secluded spots, like leave the trail
00:38:57
Speaker
and go under a pine tree that's overgrown. So nobody would see me. And I'd be like, okay, I'm like in nature and I don't even see the city. And that's really the environment I was used to. My whole life I would just spend in nature. There was no neighbors where I lived. There was all forest bushes. Yeah. So you're going to these jam sessions and you start to kind of find a home to some degree. Yeah.
00:39:25
Speaker
Yeah, at that point, I was like, yeah, I could live here. I could do this. And I got very excited, actually. After a couple of weeks, I was like, this is awesome. And I started to turn my sleeping schedule around, so I would wake up at like 6 p.m., and then go to the jam session, or like 5 p.m., or whatever, and go to the jam session, and stay there until like 10 in the morning.
00:39:48
Speaker
because I didn't want to take the train at night from Manhattan to the Bronx. So I just like, whatever, I'll just hang out in the morning in the city and then go to sleep at noon. And I was staying with this family in the Bronx.
00:40:06
Speaker
in the beginning they thought I was like such a nice kid and they were like all excited to have me and then like after that I was living the attic I took my mattress and I brought it into the basement so I could sleep all day and they were like that's kind of weird like who is this guy what is he doing all night
00:40:50
Speaker
You mentioned veganism and I'm curious how you got on the path of being vegan. Yeah. My ex-girlfriend, she started raising a sustainable community in college and she was in New School. That's where I met her. Okay. So she was all about just all like alternative lifestyles. What do you mean exact? Cause sustainable community, that sounds like a really awesome idea, but I want to just dig into what exactly that means. She made up her own major.
00:41:21
Speaker
Like, I guess you can do that at the new school. Okay. And she just wants to take classes that would be relevant to creating and sustaining a community. And it's very interesting because she was very interested to go into the life that I just got out of. And in terms of like, she wanted to live in a commune. Yeah. And she was vegan. So,
00:41:50
Speaker
It took me a couple of years until it already made sense to me. And until I cared enough. But eventually... What changed? I really don't know, to be honest. It was the end of 2011 and we just slowly became vegan.
00:42:08
Speaker
Moonhooch, the whole group, because we lived in the same building and Dara, my ex-girlfriend, she used to just give us all these talks about food and nutrition and the political aspect of food and how eating meat is such a waste of water and how the animals are treated, how much toxins
00:42:30
Speaker
the animals are given how much growth hormones, antibiotics, or food that they can't really digest, how much suffering they go through, how their manure piles up, washes into rivers, pollutes the rivers, kills aquatic life. I mean, the whole industry is thoroughly fucked. Like, there's nothing good about it. So just being part of that industry is really...
00:42:55
Speaker
Not a nice thing to do to the planet, to the animals and to your own health. So at some point I was like, oh, it's not that hard to like not eat meat. And the more I didn't do it, the longer I didn't do it. I mean, now I couldn't even imagine it. Like now eating hamburger, like I would feel so guilty and horrible to do that. So, so it started out just by trying it and then realizing I can do it and then slowly really becoming a hardcore vegan.
00:43:25
Speaker
And it's interesting because vegans can be separated into camps of like, are you nutritional? I do it from my body. Or animal rights vegans with the unethical treatment of animals is their guiding principle. And then some people are like the environmental impacts of the meat industry and.
00:43:44
Speaker
I think all those things connect in so many ways. And it sounds like you or your girlfriend and you sort of also had that mentality of all like sort of all encompassing all these things are pushing you in that direction of making that realization that that was the right choice for you. Yeah. I mean, I wouldn't single out one issue and say it's more important than the other. Yeah.
00:44:05
Speaker
But you're right, some people are more concerned about their health and they do it because of that. Some people are hardcore environmentalists and do it because of that. Other people love animals and do it because of that. I think all three of these things are totally legit and I'm passionate about all of them.
00:44:21
Speaker
Yeah, I don't want to kill another animal or contribute to its killing. And I also don't want to destroy this planet. I hope that we can have multiple generations in the future and evolve as a species into something better than where we are now.
00:44:37
Speaker
And to do that, we need to save our environment. You know, we can pollute our oceans and rivers. The animal thesis also more than half of global warming is caused by methane and CO2 emissions that animal agriculture produces. So saying like, I'm going to go green and use like, you know, fluorescent light bulbs and wind energy and eat a burger is a huge contradiction. Yeah. You know, you have to, you have, that's really the biggest change you can make right away.
00:45:06
Speaker
And if you want to be an environmentalist and you want to care about the earth, what better way to start than treating your body as a temple and caring for it and being super aware of what you're putting into your own body to connect with the earth, not thinking about those as two separate things. Exactly. Or the animals are a separate thing. They're all so interconnected. I think it's also really important. What you said is that realization of I can do it.
00:45:34
Speaker
And then you make that, once you've made that leap, and you feel good, and then you start to be like, actually I feel better. Yeah. My conscience, my spirit, my head, physically, I'm feeling great. That's such an important moment. Yeah, exactly. For every vegan. Yeah, I feel like I became less tired when I became vegan. I used to like, wake up and take me like a couple of hours to wake up. I always felt like I had a little fog off my head and
00:46:02
Speaker
Yeah, and eating meat is just very difficult for your body to deal with. Yeah, to digest. Yeah, to digest, especially the kind of meat that you get today.
00:46:12
Speaker
in today's society. And so that's so rad that Moonhoot, you guys kind of did it together. Yeah, and then like reinforced each
Veganism and Culinary Adventures on Tour
00:46:20
Speaker
other, you know. You guys have a pretty serious cooking operation going on the road. Oh, yeah. Because James, the drummer, right, James, he's like some kind of like master chef. Oh, he's, we are so blessed with him. Yeah, like he's just so passionate about food and cooking. He loves it.
00:46:40
Speaker
So we often do all these stops at forests to forage for mushrooms. And he knows all the mushrooms. He knows how to get chanterellis. It's amazing. How to get even lobster mushrooms.
00:46:53
Speaker
You guys stop on the road at certain places that you know are scouted out and foraged for wild. Yeah, and the more he educates himself, the bigger variety of mushrooms we eat because he now is becoming more comfortable identifying a lot of different mushrooms. And then you guys cook a lot. Yeah, he has two huge bins, metal bins.
00:47:16
Speaker
In them are cutting boards, cooking knives, toaster oven, spices, bowls, pans, pots, grinders, food processors, or just one. What else? It's so inspiring. A whole kitchen. So when we load out for the venue, we bring out our gear and we bring out our kitchen. If we have time, James goes straight away to the green room and sets up a whole kitchen.
00:47:47
Speaker
You know, sometimes doing sound check, he'll suddenly run away and say, wait a minute, the garlic is burning. And then we'll do it with sound checking. He's like, the garlic is burning man, one second. So he like sometimes start doing prep work, like doing sound check and like cooking up stuff during sound check. Yeah, he has made some very, very special meals. Also create some really funny stories.
00:48:10
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, that's a unique perspective before I do it on the road. Oh yeah. It's taking matters into your own hands.
00:48:18
Speaker
Yeah. To the fullest extent. Exactly. You can't always count on that vegan organic restaurant to be close to the venue. Right. And a lot of people not singling anyone out. It's almost more just the perception of the musician on the road as sort of the victim of their circumstance. You don't have any options. That's why people are unhealthy on the road. Like you said, maybe there's not a vegan restaurant.
00:48:41
Speaker
Man, look at how you guys roll. I mean, there's no doubt that you guys are fully prepared every step of the way. Yeah, we stop at full co-ops. You know, even if you have a six-hour drive, even if the town you're going to doesn't have a full co-op, you'd probably pass one. Right.
00:48:58
Speaker
Yeah. And then you just, you know, might have to do an extra 20 minutes, you know, calculate an extra 20 minutes, go all the way. And it's so nice to connect to the local communities. Yeah, I agree. Food Corp's the best. It's so smart. It's like, for those of you who don't know what that is, it's people who own the business collectively.
00:49:19
Speaker
So there's not one owner of the store but everybody that works there owns the store and has to work like four or two hours a month and in return gets really cheap and high quality food. Yeah, so it's really awesome to support this model and I hope that this business model actually will branch out into other things because I think through co-ops we really have the opportunity to reinvent society.
00:49:49
Speaker
Because a lot of the issues we're having is created by greed. Corporations that, you know, want more and more money, more and more money. Because they're built, they're organized in a way that accelerates greed. And how that whole system is set up just makes
00:50:09
Speaker
greed the driving force while co-ops it's the opposite it's the experience that counts everybody that's there cares about the experience of being in the co-op cares about getting good food and cares about the store being sustainable and sourcing locally and sustainably yeah so you know if that model would
00:50:29
Speaker
spread into education co-ops, you could have, you know, there's a co-op in Spain called Mondragon that I think has over 200,000 workers or something. And that is totally working in all kinds of industries. So I really hope it's like a bigger co-op that has branches in different industries. It's a collectively owned business that does not just food. Okay. That does all sorts of things.
00:50:56
Speaker
Yeah, shopping at co-ops feels really nice. We actually did a whole tour of promoting co-ops. Oh, where? Yeah, where we just invite local co-ops to come to a show to the merch table, give out flyers about their business, and try to bring our fans to their co-op.
00:51:16
Speaker
because a lot of people don't know about co-ops and yeah. So promoting them helps. And did you find that had like a positive impact? That's really awesome because after the show we would sign CDs and munch on kale. What's your day to day ritual or regimen like on the road? Usually I wake up, hopefully I wake up like an hour before we have to leave. And the first thing I do is I sit up in bed and meditate for an hour. Okay.
00:51:44
Speaker
And I have on my phone, I have an app called Insight Timer, which is the best app to get if you want to keep meditation going because it gives you incentives. First of all, it's a global community.
00:51:59
Speaker
It always tells you after you meditate how many people meditate with you. And the numbers are growing. Sometimes now there are 12,000 people that meditate this hour with me around the world. Which just feels awesome. There are so many people that care about consciousness and do it. And then there are also guided meditations on it.
00:52:19
Speaker
So if you're new to meditation, you can do all the guided meditations until you have your own practice and then just use a timer. And then it gives you a star every 10 days that you didn't miss a day. So it gives you an incentive to just do it every day. The most important thing about this app or that it rewards you in is if you do it every day. It's the pattern, getting into that. Do you have anything you do in terms of before the show to get in the zone?
00:52:44
Speaker
It's not so rigid, but we had many different rituals that we used to do before shows, and sometimes we don't do them. It's not like a mandatory thing, but if the three of us are in the same space at that moment, we get together in a room, maybe a light, some palo santo, or some incense.
00:53:08
Speaker
we just say an intention like why we're doing this what are we about to do and what's the reason and usually what we say is you know to bring positive inspiration and freeing energy to this community and or something along those lines and then we either sing on together usually that's thinking back at it that's really the best shows if we like bring ourselves to the same
00:53:37
Speaker
on the same wavelength right before we go on. But unfortunately sometimes we kind of often our own worlds and they kind of run on stage. Yeah, you know the grind of trying to live your life on tour doesn't always lend itself to be able to have that super in touch moment. Maybe you don't have a lot of time before the show. Your batteries didn't get charged and you have to like, oh my god, and you got new batteries. Or something happens, you know.
00:54:03
Speaker
all these things. But thinking back at it, the best shows I play is when I get to practice for an hour, half an hour, then meditate for an hour. Again, sometimes I meditate another hour before the show and then we do like some ceremony together. And then it feels like that the show is just like flows totally effortlessly.
00:54:41
Speaker
Do you see a connection between the discipline that you had when you were younger, like you said, you're practicing whatever six hours a day, getting that real committed mind state about your instrument to the commitment that you've taken towards your health and being a vegan and your meditation practice?
Balancing Tendencies and Personal Growth
00:55:01
Speaker
Do you see the connections there? You know, I think I always had that. Even before I started playing saxophone, I had that with painting.
00:55:10
Speaker
If I didn't paint for two hours a day when I was 10 years old, I would beat myself up. Okay. I would not be able to sleep and be like, I didn't paint today. I get to paint and I would go up, stay up all night painting sometimes. So I had this obsessive personality all my life. Yeah. And.
00:55:31
Speaker
Yeah, it's been more a process of learning to balance it, you know? Because if you obsess too much about anything, then it becomes extreme. And if something is extreme, it's out of balance.
00:55:44
Speaker
And I had that with veganism too. You know, there was a point I obsessed about the vegan diet so much that I read about what is the best form of veganism, what is the most healthy form of veganism, then I got into this diet called 80-10-10, which is like the most extreme vegan diet you can have. You know, you can't really have a social dinner anymore at this point.
00:56:02
Speaker
Break down what 80-10-10 is. It means 80% of your calories come from fruits, 10% of your calories come from vegetables, and another 10% of your calories come from nuts. Yeah, it's a big fruitarian. It's fruitarian pretty much, yeah. Well, I gotta say this diet does make you feel amazing.
00:56:22
Speaker
but it's just so extreme it's winter and you're eating only fruits I feel like if you're living in like the rainforest maybe this diet is more appropriate but I feel like
00:56:35
Speaker
Living a social life in America is like you have to kind of go to restaurants sometimes with people and sit down and not just bring you a fruit bag and start peeling oranges while they order, you know. That doesn't really work. So I did the 80th and 10 for four months. Yeah, it's crazy though.
00:56:56
Speaker
As extreme as that sounds, there is a lot of people out there that are doing this and they're feeling good, that are living these diets mostly based on fruit or something. I just feel like now, for me, the most important thing of my health is balance. Yeah. And if you can do 80s and 10s and feel balanced about it, then that's great. But if it becomes a mental obsession, then it's unhealthy.
00:57:25
Speaker
For me it was a mental obsession because I felt like I was constantly restricting myself to eat normal food. I wanted to have a plate of rice, you know? And I was like, no, I can't have that. And then I would start binge eating rice suddenly and then feel really guilty. And then I was like, what the hell am I doing? My body wants this. And then I stopped finally.
00:57:47
Speaker
But I see you're connecting that with your overall outlook that you've had throughout your life. Of being really extreme. Diving deep into things. Into anything, yes. Absolutely. I'm that way too. To a certain extent, for sure. I'm definitely that type of person where when I get into things, I get super into them.
00:58:06
Speaker
If I get passionate about something, I'm like a laser beam going into it. Yeah and like for me it manifests itself in my fitness. Combining that with the health in terms of nutrition and those two worlds like feed off each other becomes this thing where they just start keep elevating the stakes for each other you know of how they relate and complement each other.
00:58:48
Speaker
Personally, what are some goals that you have moving forward? Where do you see this thing heading? I would like to get better at improvising in a different way. I think that a lot of my improvisation is based in jazz language. And I kind of want to leave that language behind.
00:59:05
Speaker
and improvise more based on numbers and shapes like repeating threes and you know that type of stuff or repeating fives and just have that really become my repertoire more where I can circular breathe and at the same time, you know, yeah. How do you think you're gonna go about achieving that? I try to do an hour a day
00:59:30
Speaker
of just putting on a beat on Ableton and playing to it, circular breathing and just repeating shapes. Okay. And taking simple chords, diatonic progressions and just doing one scale at a time, finding my ways through it and then speeding up the click and trying to do it faster and faster. Nice. Yeah.
00:59:51
Speaker
you seem to have so many amazing developed ideas and developing ideas about the universe and about yourself and these things that you're working on and personal growth. And I wonder if there's been any really particularly influential books or documentaries in your life that have really helped you along your path. Yeah, Zeitgeist is definitely a documentary that made me like, oh, wow.
01:00:16
Speaker
kind of question everything. And a really dense book that probably most people won't enjoy but that really helped me is Tom Campbell's My Big Toe. It's a 900 page book that essentially takes simulation hypothesis to analyze quantum physics and connect it to consciousness. Then there is a really cool book that probably a lot of people will enjoy called
01:00:44
Speaker
Journeys of Souls by Michael Newton. A really great book called Many Lives, Many Masters. I've read that one. So inspiring. Far Journeys by Robert Monroe. Journey Out of the Body by Robert Monroe.
01:01:06
Speaker
The Great Human Potential by Wendy Kennedy and Tom Canyon. I'm just reading that book. Really cool. It's far, far out. Like, very far out. Most people would probably be like, this book is too insane. It's essentially this woman that suddenly forms this relationship with these beings that's writing through her.
01:01:29
Speaker
And these crazy texts are coming out that she has no control over or that she has no knowledge of. And these beings are like we are from the ninth dimension and would like to help you make sense of your reality. And they start giving us this crazy history about the cosmos.
01:01:49
Speaker
and all the different intergalactic beings and civilizations that have evolved and our relationship with the whole thing. But it's in such simple words, it's so understandable, and it's also really personal, because their argument is kind of that the issues that are we having on a personal level
01:02:10
Speaker
are like a fractal. They repeat each other on each level and they're also the same issues that intergalactic beings will have among each other and so that we can make the biggest difference by changing these patterns within ourselves. If you
01:02:27
Speaker
could give a couple of words of advice to yourself, say when you were on that plane to New York, right? Looking back on everything you've learned and whether it's about health or your spiritual journey or you're playing, what are a couple of things you would give to that guy? Take a deep breath and trust. Just trust in the unfolding of your life. Yeah.
01:02:55
Speaker
Yeah, man. I think that's a good place to leave it. Right on, brother. Wenzel, can you just give the people a place where they can find your music and what you're up to? You can find our music on moonhooch.com or the Facebook page on moonhooch. You can also find my personal spiritual journey documented at Wenzel McGowan, Facebook, if you look for Wenzel McGowan. W-E-N-Z-L-M-C-G-O-W-E-N.
01:03:22
Speaker
Right on, brother. Thanks for doing it, man. Yeah. Really appreciate it. Yeah, thank you. Thanks for having me. All right, man. Peace. Thanks for listening to this episode of the Torganic Podcast, and be sure to comment and rate the show in iTunes. It really does help. Also, come visit Torganic at the blog and at my Instagram page for regular updates on my triathlon training, fitness, vegan diet tips, and musical happenings.
01:03:48
Speaker
Also, I have a new band with the great Meteana Morales called Walk Talk. We're working on our debut album and it promises to be something special, and we need your support to make it happen. We have a crowdfunding campaign happening right now. You can find the link to our Indiegogo campaign at Torganic.com. Please spread the word and donate if you feel so inclined. Till next time, peace.