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avery r young
175 Plays5 years ago
Interdisciplinary artist avery r. young is a 3Arts Award winning teaching artist, composer and producer with work that spans the genres of music, performance, visual arts and literature. Examining and celebrating Black American history and culture, his work also focuses in the areas of social justice, equity, queer identity, misogyny, and body consciousness. As a writer, this Cave Canem alum has work featured in The Breakbeat Poets, Coon Bidness, to be left with the body, and Make Magazine. He has also written curriculum and essays on arts education that appear in the Teaching Artist Journal and A.I.M. Print.
Dubbed “sunday mornin jook joint,” his performance and work in sound design merges spiritual and secular aesthetics with dramatic and comedic sensibilities. He has performed at the Hip Hop Theater Festival, Wordstock, and Lollapalooza. He has recorded with house producers Anthony Nicholson and Charlie Dark, and is featured on recordings such as New World Reveal-A-Solution, Audio Truism, Catfish Haven’s Devastator, and New Skool Poetiks. His new full-length release, booker t. soltreyne: a race rekkid, features songs and other sound designed created during his artist residency with the University of Chicago's Arts + Public Life initiative. It was during this residency that he worked on sound design and poems called "cullud sign(s)."
Through voice, sound, visual art, and performance, young is constantly exploring the forms and spaces in which poetry can exist. Most recently, he is the vocalist on flutist Nicole Mitchell’s Mandorla Awakening (FPE Records) and his poetry is featured in photographer and fellow 3Arts awardee Cecil McDonald Jr.’s debut book, In the Company of Black (Candor Arts).
Young’s first book neckbone (Northwestern University Press) is out on the shelves now. He is currently one of four directors for the Floating Museum and touring with his band, avery r. young & de deacon board. New album Tubman. is available via all major musical outlets.
https://www.averyryoung.com/
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Transcript
00:00:00
Speaker
You
Introduction to Avery R. Young
00:00:02
Speaker
are listening to Something Rather Than Nothing, creator and host Ken Vellante, editor and producer Peter Bauer. Welcome everybody to Something Rather Than Nothing podcast and for this episode we have Avery R. Young out of Chicago and
00:00:27
Speaker
Boy, he does a lot of great art, spoken word, poetry, music.
Spiritual and Lyrical Power in 'Neckbone'
00:00:35
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I wanted to read a forward to his recent book called Neckbone. And the forward is by Vyaster Gates, who is another great artist. And this is the forward to Neckbone.
00:00:53
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One of my earliest memories of going to church is the way Deacon Bond would bend on one knee and begin to slowly and in chant recite, our father, which art in heaven, hallowed would be thy name. As a young person, my friends and I would mock him, reciting his chant with all his emotion, mimicking his hand gestures and facial expressions. Deacon Bond had the responsibility of singing or speeching the Lord's Prayer every Sunday without fail. He, like so many others in the church, had a way of being devout.
00:01:22
Speaker
Their ability to embody both the spiritual life and the lyrical life demonstrate a relationship with Christ in the eternal that can be described as a romantic one. When I reflect on my experience at New Cedar Grove Missionary Baptist Church, located on the West Side of Chicago, I believe this was a place where Jesus was a friend to the West Side and to West Siders. It is at this kind of place that we meet Avery R. Young.
00:01:49
Speaker
I reflect on the ways in which spiritual power is transferred to us and how often that spiritual power is a power residing in the absence of any other kind of power. That transference is amazing. Avery has been given that power, translated into a poetic power. It is with and through his power that Avery is able to ask poetry to perform the severe act
00:02:12
Speaker
of telling the complicated stories of loss, suffering, and subjugation while cultivating stories of food, dance, and clothing, as well as black hair on black streets. While every touts often that this is a black poem, even if he never used the word black in his poems, they would still be blacker than most of ours. Avery not only knows but embodies blackness because blackness has been his gift. It's been his endowment.
The Essence of 'Neckbone'
00:02:40
Speaker
I know where this talent comes from, and it is not from theories on timbre or cadence structure. Avery is from the Lord and he's from the endowment of blackness that is so deep and wide that I worry not of its depletion because every day with this talent, Avery is adding more and more. As you read this book, recognize that you're not just reading one of our greatest living street poets or one of the most important thinkers on the black experience, but you're reading about yourself.
00:03:07
Speaker
Allow yourself to step into Avery's words to be moved by his spirit and other spirits. Give yourself permission to write and breathe and raise your knee and move the mic up and down. Out of the many lessons bestowed upon me by Deacon Bond, one of the great significance was teaching me how to believe and that my belief required my breathing and that my breathing would make room for the righteous. And so in the spirit of Deacon Bond, keep breathing Avery.
00:03:38
Speaker
Yeah. Whoa. That's a heck of an intro. Yeah, you can do that. Tell us. Tell us about it for that for that forward. Yeah. Yeah. Avery Avery are young. Welcome. Welcome to something there rather than nothing podcast.
00:04:01
Speaker
Tell us that was the intro from Neckbone, which is a beautifully bound collection of visual verses. Can you just tell the listeners about what you're doing in that volume, what visual verses are? OK. Well, visual verses coined by my editor from Northwestern
00:04:31
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University Press, Parnisha Jones. It's really my intent of communicating poetry is being art in some way ground the line. A lot of it becomes this thing about work
00:05:00
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literary work being viewed more as academic and not just an exploratory and not more so an exploration of a person's imagination. So what I wanted to do with neck bone visual versus is really be transparent about the ways in which I see the poems and put place, put that
00:05:31
Speaker
in the working on page. So that's what Meg Ball's Visual Verses is really all about, these moments and that have happened in my life that has informed what I am doing with my work. And for me, my work is about my journey to one,
Influences and Early Inspirations
00:06:00
Speaker
liberate myself and then stay liberated. I hope that answers. Yeah, yeah, it certainly does. And I one of one of the comments I want to make on on the volume that I appreciated for, you know, for what it is, is that there seems to be a lot of open ended
00:06:27
Speaker
questions and juxtapositions visually and with words. And I think it opens up a lot of territory to think about it. I know sometimes if you grab a volume, everybody's going to have a different way of interacting with art. But if you grab a volume of poetry, it might just be looking for it to be
00:06:44
Speaker
you know, something that's soothing and melodic. But it can also, with the visual components of your poetry, it tends to open up a lot of questions for exploration. It's kind of like the beginning of thinking. And that evocative nature of it is something that I noticed right off the bat. But Avery,
00:07:11
Speaker
Going a little bit back you talk about you know some of the moments of the development in the book One of them one of the you know basic questions. I have is what were you like when when you were younger? What was I mean? Did you find yourself attracted to words attracted to art and images when you were younger? Yes, I I've always been attracted to photography just a photography and music since since
00:07:40
Speaker
a baby or images. Poetry came into my life around eight when I learned that I could kind of articulate what I was feeling through verse. And I'm just very studious kid, but I also was mischievous in ways. And like this full life love,
00:08:09
Speaker
love being inside the the pageantry
Creative Process and 'Neckbone' Development
00:08:13
Speaker
and gesture of service, even if I was a little bit more resistant of the dogma of religion and religious practice. And I was just always thinking and asking questions.
00:08:37
Speaker
always fascinated with the way in which people spoke and dressed and presented themselves in this world. So that was me as a kid, singing and dancing, playing, and just a bunch of that.
00:09:07
Speaker
Yeah, I got I think you should have that for a quarter one of your books mischievous and ways. That sounds very cryptic. Very open ended. No, no, no. You know, the funny thing is so the so the so my thing about my thing about poem about the poetry and what I wanted to actually really do in that thing is it's like life doesn't happen left, left to right. You know, so
00:09:34
Speaker
A lot of these poems question the way in which you can even enter a poem. So the access and the exit from many of those poems are very different. Yes. So sometimes you have to turn the book around in order to read it. Sometimes you have to pull it away from you. Sometimes you have to dig in it. Some of the words are legible, some of the words are not.
00:10:02
Speaker
All of that is intentional because even as a little kid, I was very physical with things. Watching TV for me, depending on the show would be, depending on what the show was, would inform my physicality while watching. For instance, Soul Train,
00:10:32
Speaker
was not a show that I just sat down and looked at. Soul Train was a show that I danced while watching. Because there was music on Soul Train. There was music that, you know, I was grooving to. So that is the... There is...
00:10:57
Speaker
whenever we were watching maybe a broadcast of, we used to watch the fellowship Baptist Church had a broadcast every Saturday night. And it again, it wasn't just us sitting in on couches and on floors, just watching people have church. It was really us saying a band and clapping hands and singing along with the choir. So that's
00:11:27
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That's kind of like, if that gives you any more clarity on where things get mischievous. When I was saying mischievous, I just always just been hands on. I don't know the fires until I put my hand on fire. Yeah, right.
00:11:53
Speaker
Right. You got to get into it. You got to get into it. I was I was not the challenge. You could say I was like what it does not. And then I would go home. Yes, it is. Recall that, you know, I you mentioned you mentioned Soul Train. I said, I you know, obviously a great show. I I got sidetracked for years. I'm still been sidetracked because I watched the clips.
00:12:21
Speaker
And I'll always be trying to figure out how Michael Jackson does the robot with his feet. He's moving those feet up and down, and he's going all back and over. I would have done the same thing, but I've always been trying to figure out his damn technique. How the heck he does it. I still don't know to this day. So one of the things I wanted to chat about, Avery, obviously we chatted a little bit about
00:12:51
Speaker
neckbone, your volume of visual verses that came out last year. But some of your other material, you do a lot of things, that I encountered with music was Tubman and that album.
00:13:13
Speaker
Can you I mean, first of all, I love it. I love the the deep soul resonances in it. It's it's great moving spiritual music. Get your body moving.
'Tubman': The Soundtrack of Liberation
00:13:26
Speaker
What? Yeah, yeah, absolutely. What? So so how did you know, how did it come about? And, you know, again, what do you what what are you looking to do? What are you trying to convey in your album Tubman?
00:13:42
Speaker
So Tubman is basically the soundtrack to Neckbone. And there are the songs on Tubman, excuse me, are meant to extend some of the poems, if not all the poems, in the book Neckbone. I recorded it.
00:14:13
Speaker
I was recording that bone as I was writing the book too. So, um, I wanted to really just to create my thoughts about the music too would be that there'd be songs that would arranged when the range was, I'm sorry, the range of the other songs would kind of reflect the music that I grew up listening to.
00:14:41
Speaker
You know, so that's where you have that nod to soul and funk and gospel, because this was all of the music that was playing. And the music on the record was the type of music that was playing in the house as I was growing up as a child on the west side of Chicago. So, you know, when you have a song like Sit Down Job,
00:15:12
Speaker
It reflects the relationship that I had with one of the pivotal characters in the book, Mother Mary, a big mama, you know, and that's what, you know, when I was young, that's what she had told me. You need to get you a sit down job. See, that was funny because there was a poem that did not make the final on her. So sit down job specifically was a poem that did not necessarily make
00:15:42
Speaker
Well, it didn't make the book. It wasn't even done, not necessarily make the book. It was one of the points I had to take out of the book in order to, when I was editing and revising the final manuscript. So therefore then it became a song for the record. So that's how a lot of the record happened. Cause there were pieces that were, um,
00:16:08
Speaker
Some of them were pieces that could not be in the book. Some pieces were pieces inspired by pieces from the book. And that's, that's how Tubman came to be.
Art Creation During the Pandemic
00:16:20
Speaker
I decided to name the album Tubman one because I knew that a lot of the work in the book surrounded my maleness.
00:16:35
Speaker
But a lot of what I've learned to be or learned how to be liberated is through these wonderful black women in my life. And that that inspired the cover, that inspired the title of the album, because Harriet Tubman for me is is like if I had a dictionary
00:17:02
Speaker
If I was to make a dictionary and put a picture by the word liberated to get people to understand what liberation is, it would be our picture. Amen. Yeah, that's so that's beautiful. So that was that was. And I mean, that's for me, like I said, my art is so attached to my liberation because for me, it's self
00:17:30
Speaker
liberation is self-selected. It's nothing that you have to wait on someone to sign a sheet of paper to obtain. Right. Yeah. If you're kind of coming from from from the self and in your art, I mean, your art both within the music and a neck bone. I mean, it seems me you're trying to trying to prompt that that exploration and that journey. Is that safe to say? Yeah, that is.
00:18:00
Speaker
Fairly safe to say. The quote I usually get about Harriet Tubman is that she didn't run the freedom. She ran because she was free. So her journey in emancipation was really aligning her body with what her mind and spirit already knew of herself, that it was free and should be in spaces where it could be.
00:18:31
Speaker
And there was nothing that would satisfy her soul until she was also in a space where her body could be as free as her mind and her spirit. And this is what I'm really doing or want to do with the art. It's probably also why I am crazy.
00:19:01
Speaker
with the fact that, oh, you're going to write a book and record an album at the same time.
Art as Liberation and Freedom
00:19:07
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I mean, any other, I think, sane person would at least do one and then the other.
00:19:18
Speaker
Well, it's the use of the things that you have to be able to tell the I mean just by you Placing those two together for me, you know as somebody who you know is enjoying both of them It's it's the different ways, you know you as an artist just trying to get get that out in different ways let me explain a little bit further in this song right and I
00:19:44
Speaker
or go back to the poem and let's let's go in. Let's go in that way. Well, let me play your little Lily track off of Tubman. I'm going to. Yeah, I love that song. Let's let's play it. We'll chat about a little bit after. I'm also going to ask you about, you know, what is art after this? But we're going to play that song now. This little Lily, every are young off the album topic.
00:20:38
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Watch your baby's daddy's come and know Your baby's daddy is too shamed to know criminal to see
Authenticity in Art
00:23:05
Speaker
It's all divided in this
00:23:51
Speaker
Come on now.
The Role of Art in Society
00:23:52
Speaker
That's that's a hundred percent dancing guarantee. You can't not dance to that song. I don't know. I mean, I speak directly to the podcast listeners, even if you're in the car, you can you can pretty much do a whole dance in the car. Yeah, look, this is so little Lily is a song about my mother and the
00:24:18
Speaker
The folklore around that is that when my mother was carrying me. She, you know, she's she's she's very to this day, you know, somebody is going to move and groove. Yeah. And she would do splits like James Brown and all these things where she was like big belly with me.
00:24:47
Speaker
And so the song, so her song had to, so her song had to thump like that. Yeah, it had to thump. So when I think about how I think about like my dancing or just my, just me liking to dance really is also like, it's me.
00:25:11
Speaker
like my love of watching my mother dance and turn and spin and split like James Brown and things of that nature. So that's where your parents, that's where you that's where your mama there set your destiny. Right. That's how they work out. When you're starting off like that, that's the way it's going to go. So so a big, big, big question.
00:25:36
Speaker
You're an artist working a lot of different mediums, a lot of different forms. For you, what is art? That's a big question. So let me figure out how to answer that one. With me, the root of it always is the poetry. And what I'm doing with poetry is
00:26:03
Speaker
I am using as many materials as I possibly can to express myself through poetry. That is what I am doing with my art, right, is using sound of a language to express a young
00:26:33
Speaker
man who is forever insisting on his liberation, forever insisting on being able to enter every room with all of his adjectives, all of his modifiers. And art for me is
00:27:04
Speaker
the ways in which, it's the tool in which keeps the world honest. It is through art history can't lie. So that's what art is to me, you know.
00:27:30
Speaker
Art is art is the entity that keeps the world honest because at the end of the at the end of the day, a history book can be revised and and it can it can it can omit. Truth and voices, but the art that is created during those times.
Cultural Influences and Self-Design
00:27:58
Speaker
Keeps those voices heard
00:28:00
Speaker
relevant and valuable. That's what that's what RDS for me. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you. I, um, you know, I started the podcast about, about a year ago and, um, you know, I've, I've added questions and modified, uh, questions and, you know, a couple of them have to do in particular with, you know, you take that, you take what you, your definition of art.
00:28:27
Speaker
And the next question related to that came about with the advance of the pandemic. And just kind of an open question for you. What is the role, what's been the role of art for you?
00:28:44
Speaker
in the pandemic or the role of your art, I talked to a lot of artists and some have struggled saying, man, I should be super productive because I got time and others are like, screw doing art because the world's going to hell or, you know, everybody's having a different reaction. What do you see as the role of art in a pandemic? I don't know if art has a role.
00:29:13
Speaker
um in pandemic but I do believe art is necessary during pandemic it has been for me um but I as I as a writer have been able to remain in
00:29:42
Speaker
and alternative universe. Because as a creative, I've always been in the practice of alternative universes in the context of my body believes that I'm just in an extended art residency. Yeah. So I'm not having those problems with producing work in art and things of the nature.
00:30:11
Speaker
projects like a lot of my visual work stuff has been kind of on haul, but like the writing, the poems and the dreaming of songs and things of that nature, none of that has stopped. Like I said, I'm about body to stick, I'm able
00:30:40
Speaker
I'm in a space where I'm able to create. So just keep creating. You know, I have to actually stop and rest. Yeah. I have to like stop and make myself go to sleep. You know, if if it is with you, which was so which this was so. At some point during that moment, I was doing so many things.
00:31:08
Speaker
The book was like, look, you've got to take time out for me. So I had to do a residency in order to figure it out. I mean, I did a self-imposed residency to finish the work of the book. Now it's like, OK, what book am I going to work on today? Yeah, OK. I just had it. I just had it. I just had it.
00:31:39
Speaker
This time, I don't. I'm not the one who has the attitude that the world is going going for shit or or I'm not defeated by the pandemic. I'm from a people who for me have seen way worse depending on it. You know, since 1619 has been pandemic. Yeah. For me and mine. So.
00:32:09
Speaker
that much of ways in which COVID-19 has stopped the desire to produce art has not hit my spirit yet. I have, though, been a bit more resistant to submitting work
00:32:43
Speaker
because my work has always addressed these things that people are now addressing and want to create anthologies about and things of that nature. So I'm a bit more selective in where I'm submitting work or where that work would be presented because I don't want to be a part of
00:33:10
Speaker
a trend in work on the back of such lost in and devastation. Right. Right. Because that's not what the work is about. No, that's not what you know, that's not what my work is about. So. Well, with your with your work, I mean, just to just to jump in, I mean, I heard you when you were saying
00:33:38
Speaker
that, and it was a powerful statement to me that, you know, you, your liberation as, as, as a person being tied up to those, to those creative works. So that's been part, you know, that's been part of how you're doing your work. And when we, I was reading the, the Theaster Gates, you know, introduction, um, about how, you know, he expresses quite clearly that there's the
00:34:07
Speaker
Blackness that's imbued and the spirituality that's imbued in your work. So If I'm hearing you're right, you're saying this is what I've been doing. This is this is what I'm doing I'm gonna continue doing this and Whatever whatever currents and I'm not trying to speak for you, but you know, whatever the trend is now about you know, um With with with currently in the role of art and black lives matters. It's like this is a
00:34:34
Speaker
what you're continuing to do.
Mentoring and Unique Creative Expression
00:34:36
Speaker
Are you concerned about, you know, that getting tied up into something that's passing when you're actively working and creating with what you need to work? Is that part of it? The. That's I'm sorry, that's the that's the fire fire engine.
00:35:01
Speaker
No, I'm calling it to Chicago. Right. Chicago. Yeah. And I'm on the West Side. The West Side, yes. On the West Side of Chicago. There's a whole other thing. And I had chose the back porch just for lighting. I didn't know that this is going to be being the audio, but this is
00:35:30
Speaker
That's the the head of there. My thing is, so I've walked past a lot of storefronts with Black Lives Matter signs in them, right? And then I walked in those and I walked in those establishments and I've seen no Black people in them. So
00:35:56
Speaker
I'm asking myself, oh, is that sign in your window to keep from keep some motherfucker from busting it? Was, you know, so. For me. My. I have to continue to do the work that I'm compelled to do. The.
00:36:26
Speaker
because it is that type of work that has sustained me before, during, and post this pandemic. I worship Nina Simone's Mississippi Goddamn. James Brown's I Don't Want Nobody to Give You Nothing, Open Up the Door. I Get It Myself. Gil Scott Herron's
00:36:56
Speaker
home is where the hatred is or plan or Aretha Franklin's version of To Be Young, Gifted, and Black. These are pieces of art of Lucille Clifton's Won't You Celebrate With Me, this thing I've shaped into a life. So there's art.
00:37:24
Speaker
in artists who lay at my art altar. And this is what they did with their work, no matter what was going on in the world, no matter what was going on in their personal lives.
00:37:49
Speaker
I'm compelled to just continue to work. What I am being more mindful, though, about is joining the machine, because I like to think that my work is against it. You know, there's, you know, my challenge to myself, well, when I'm talking to students currently, I am mentoring for young artists
00:38:17
Speaker
through the Aster's Revealed Foundation over at the Stoney Island Arts Bank. It's home to some archives. The one being the Johnson Publishing Library. Then there's a library of glass. There's a lot of
00:38:48
Speaker
Some wonderful things inside this bank that these four young artists will engage and create work based off of. And one thing I was telling them is they should challenge themselves to make the work that could only come out of their hands. That is always my challenge to myself. I can only make this work that I make can only come out of my hands.
00:39:17
Speaker
And that is, like I said, that's what I, in my hands, I still moving and grooving in spite of and despite of any and everything that I may be going through personally. What I meant, what I, the world outside my window, the hands will see them moving and grooving and going to do what they got to do. You know, sometimes they don't need me. Yeah.
00:39:46
Speaker
Yeah, that's
Art's Influence vs. Actionable Change
00:39:47
Speaker
where it comes from. I mean, that's a powerful statement. I like that because it brings in, you know, kind of like, you know, the the authorship, right? The artists like your hand, your voice, Avery is what's important to help bring that out. You are the artist to produce that. And I think that does work against the grain. I think that is partly against the machine because
00:40:09
Speaker
you know, sometimes there's a technical skill of like produce this thing that the culture wishes to be produced and just go ahead and do it. And there's less voice. It seems there's less voice in that. Yeah, I mean, I just wanted to say, I think a lot of times, especially during these times now, people are looking to art to fix a thing. And I never make that the assignment of my art to fix a thing. OK.
00:40:40
Speaker
Um, like, don't look, my art can't be a teddy bear. You know what I'm saying? And if it's going to fix the thing, it's really a band-aid, right, over a gigantic wound.
00:41:05
Speaker
Right? Right. What fixes things is legislation. What fixes things are, um, I can influence a shift in mentality that can work towards people then fixing things, but it's not the fix. Right? It's a conscious, more of a consciousness and more of a provocation. Yes. Yes. It can definitely, it can, there has been
00:41:34
Speaker
There's been artwork that has moved me and changed, like I said, and changed my consciousness about, you know, things. But I do know at the end of the day, I'm not being the judge that's going to put another black or brown body into the judicial system. Right? Right. That is, that
00:42:04
Speaker
is, you know, that's not, the power of my art doesn't do that, right? That's my, the power of my art is, in spite of that, I create. So that's, that is, you know, that's what I'm grappling with, you know, because a lot of that, I get resentful
00:42:34
Speaker
And people wanted that to be the assignment of the of the art. Yeah. So it makes it like the art. The art didn't pollute the ocean. Yeah. Yeah. Right. Right. The art tells us that the ocean is polluted.
00:43:04
Speaker
And then we have to do the work to not pollute the ocean. You know what I mean? I do. I do.
Art as Energy and Presence
00:43:12
Speaker
That's really helpful. And then just kind of the approach and the role. And I think there is a great question and potential debate is, yeah, you're saying, look, the answers aren't going to be
00:43:27
Speaker
You know produced in this here we get it's you can be led to the answers, right? You can listen and and but you got us you got some work to do on on your own each one of us do a Couple couple more big big questions Yeah, it was speaking to Avery are young poet singer artists out of Chicago a couple couple more big ones
00:43:54
Speaker
OK, Avery, Avery, what what or who made you who you are? Oh, oh, my goodness. That is what made me who I am. I guess by from a standpoint of biology, my mom and my daddy. Oh,
00:44:23
Speaker
But I will say the person who you're speaking to was designed by the person who you are speaking to. So a lot of what has made me and the person that I am are decisions that I've made for myself as to how I will exist.
00:44:53
Speaker
in this world, you know, I've made cross decisions of what, of what will anger me and what will not what's important to me and what is not. Um, and that has been influenced by conversations, books,
00:45:21
Speaker
Food, people, smiles, tears. Yeah, that's been influenced by a lot of things, but ultimately, you know, I've designed me. Yeah. Yes. The big, big question, Avery, why is there something rather than nothing?
00:45:52
Speaker
Why is there something rather than nothing? Because something comes with thump. All right. Come on now. That's the answer I've been waiting for. This is episode 40 something. Come on now. Because something comes with the thump. That's why there's got to be something. Thump exists. Thump exists.
00:46:19
Speaker
And because thump exists, something must be there.
Current Projects and Collaborations
00:46:25
Speaker
That's the only way thump happens. That's just like I said, I mean, I can use the word thump a lot because there are a couple of decisions made in the final mix of Little Lily, right? And I'm like, ugh.
00:46:49
Speaker
I wanted to thump. And I wanted to sound like a thump. And a lot of it was really just to tie in my analogy about, you know, there's something because there's a thump. I had one mix
00:47:14
Speaker
I wasn't listening to figure out the final mix. I asked that everything be beauty except for the. The kick. And. Then I had them bring in the bass. And what ended up happening was the organ in that song comes in at the tail like right at the end, right after the rise, the bridge.
00:47:44
Speaker
Yeah. And it may be by need to listen to anything, things of that nature. But it was something about the organ and through the rest of the song to me that minimize the thump that I was looking for. And I had to kind of mute everything and start listening to it instrument by instrument to understand what
00:48:14
Speaker
what I wanted to hear. But that kick is the thump that was able to direct me to what would make what I wanted to hear what is heard. So like I said, that's the evidence of something is the thump. Well, and I love that too, because when you said that,
00:48:44
Speaker
In the back of my head, the thump kept going in the back of my head from that song. I heard it and I know where it is. And thanks for placing it there. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. All right. That's great. Hey.
00:48:58
Speaker
Before we let you go, Avery, I wanted to just for you to let the listeners know, like I said, you do a lot of artwork. Again, thank you. I love your pieces. I love the visual verses. The music is fantastic. I've watched some of your videos on YouTube, but without me trying to give it all away as far as where to find you, what can you let listeners know as far as
00:49:21
Speaker
We're defined, you know, if you got a project coming up or folks are in the city in Chicago, you know, whatever is going on. Could you let us know? Yes.
Commitment to Authentic Expression
00:49:31
Speaker
Right now I am one of four directors over at the floating museum. So you can the floating museum.org is a space and you can reach me on any social media platform from Instagram. That's Avery underscore are underscore young.
00:49:51
Speaker
on Instagram and at B-E-B-L-K on Twitter. I am currently working on a play and a collection of experimental prose. All right. The play is based on the 1968 King Riots
00:50:21
Speaker
on Chicago's west side, and the other work is centered around a hate crime of a queer man in Detroit, or a couple of queer people in Detroit.
00:50:51
Speaker
Um, I, uh, Friday birthday, um, day I did a performance and premiered a new song, which basically opened up the floodgates. So I'm going to put the Deacon boy together and we got some old music to put out in the world. All right.
00:51:21
Speaker
This is, this is, I'm excited by it. I'm excited by it. And happy birthday. Happy birthday on Friday there. Yeah, I mean, I definitely, I'm going to, like I said, I mean, part of me, I love R.
00:51:38
Speaker
And I love the work that you do. For me, I like the exploration of it, just like in the sense of, like I said, some of the open-ended aspects of it, like bringing up questions and kind of jostling the viewer or the person who's working with your art. And I certainly look forward to your new materials.
00:52:02
Speaker
I got to tell you, I've been honored and blessed by it being able to have your presence on this podcast. I wanted to convey that to you. And thank you for your time. And gosh, I really look forward to everything you put out that comes from yourself, Avery. I really appreciate it. Thank you. You have a great day. And hey, continue your birthday weekend, if you can. I am. I am.
00:52:32
Speaker
I am. I know I am. Great talking with you Avery. Thank you. Have a great day. Thank you so much. You too. Bye now.
00:53:01
Speaker
Land in the water, and land in the water to end. And land in the water, Charlie playing God with water.
00:53:39
Speaker
And, and they blew it They know what it would do to the charade And hey, hey, hey Guess they blew it Solid playing God with water
00:54:17
Speaker
Oh, baby Baby, nothing on me Baby, nothing, children on me Baby, nothing, just keep shouting when you're mine
00:55:03
Speaker
Hey, it's a child life
00:55:56
Speaker
You're playing top. You're playing top.