 Hey everybody, my name is Evan Wardell, I'm going to play some music. I'm going to have at least some intro, right? This song is called Getting Bigger, it's on Bunny Brawler, I believe, which is under Evan Wardell music instead of Evan Wardell, because I screwed up when I was licensing the songs, but this is what happens. Is this my camera? Is this got a light on it? I'm a professional. Wow, it's so hard to actually be able to play two instruments simultaneously and sing. Oh yeah, I hate it. Hello everyone, welcome to Simulation, I'm your host, Alan Sakyan. Very excited to be talking about singing and songwriting. We have Evan Wardell joining us on the show. Hello, thanks for coming on. Oh yeah, thanks Alan. Very excited, very excited. Evan Wardell and I were first introduced at Piano Fight, which is this awesome indie theater here in downtown San Francisco, and that's also where Ron and I met, and Ron and Evan know each other as well from working at Piano Fight, so it's really cool to be able to see you in the state of being a musician as well, rather than just doing technical work and audio engineering and that type of stuff, light work, etc. Yeah, I've still subconsciously worn my theater tech blacks that you're supposed to wear when you're doing tech work in theater, so no one can see you. It's like camouflage. You wear black clothes, you disappear into the night. And for those that don't know Evan Wardell's background, Evan Wardell is an SF-based musician, songwriter, and audio engineer. His music blends vitriolic passion with meandering psychedelia into a soup of poppy, hook-laden indie rock that seeks to understand just what makes its creator tick. And you can find Evan's links below, both to his band camp, as well as to his podcast, WeTheListeners.com, and also his Spotify, Instagram, and Twitter. So, Evan... It's WeTheListeners with a Z. With a Z, that's right, and that link is below with WeTheListeners. Alan, you're better than my publicist. I don't have a publicist. Not yet. That's not yet. Ron's my publicist. Ron's a publicist. Let's do a shit job. Ronnie, get him more gigs. Come on, what are you doing? Yeah, don't wait for me. So, that's a little background on Evan. Evan, I want to start things off by asking, we're going to dive deeper into the music and the meaning of it and why it makes you tick. We're going to talk about that. I want to start things off with, you're a current analysis on the state of humanity. Oh boy, yes. I like the nice, easy, just really easing into the conversation. We live... God. Analysis in the current state of society, of the world. Yeah, humanity. It's bad out there folks. Humanity in general. It's bad out there. Didn't you just finish a gorgeous guitar and harmonica and singing song? Yeah. It's getting big. Yeah, you try to make it better in here because it's so bad out there. It's not that great in here all the time, but the music's fun. God, I don't know. We live in a time where we have unprecedented levels of wealth and production of goods, and you still look around and see pain and suffering everywhere, and it sucks. Social media's fun, but also turns you into a crazy person. It lets you indulge in your most basic and probably unhealthy instincts. Well, write a song. Oh death and sorrow and greed and murder. Did you listen to the lyrics, Ron? That's basically what it is. Most of my songs are really about like, God, I don't want to get up today. I feel like going out. I'm still bummed out. They do. They do have that flavor. Yeah, but you put a nice melody and thing around it, and hopefully people get sucked into the nice way it sounds, and then they listen to it and go, Oh God, is this guy okay? Would you say that the juxtapositions of having so much globalized abundance, while simultaneously having the degree of suffering that we have, or the way that we use social media to get good messages out, but also in terms of the way that it disconnects humans from actual visceral eye-to-eye experiences, this type of thing and trolling the trolls and stuff, would you say that these juxtapositions are one of the reasons why you have that degree of melancholy in the music? Probably. Yeah, I mean, it's hard to track any individual feeling back to some larger story or system. There's a degree to which I can make that connection and understand why it's a compelling story, but it's not like... Actually, no, it is true. I've definitely gone on Facebook and been like, I feel so alienated and terrible. I'm not seeing my friends, I'm looking at this stupid thing, and it definitely does create melancholy. The lightest thing it causes is melancholy. If I only get melancholy out of it, that's nice. Usually, it's more depression and actual sadness. And does this have to do with the way that you view both the way civilizations currently exist and then your alternative potential world that we could live in if we just organized ourselves better? So I said that again? That does the degree of sadness slash depression come from the way that you see existing civilization and you see the potential that we could be organized better and that gap is what causes the learning to spare? To be honest, it was just the feeling bad for a long time, and finding some sort of story to help explain all of that isn't something that I really came to until three years ago or whatever. Especially after the 2016 election, it was a real bummer for a lot of people, but I was definitely one of the people who was radicalized by the leftist analysis of the world that was offered up by Bernie Sanders and then the other people that I found out in the world with more concrete and specific analysis that helped explain a thing that I had felt intuitively for a long time and I think a lot of people just feel it feeling intuitively that like things are kind of messed up and they're kind of like depressed or anxious and they're not really sure why. So yeah I think like with me specifically and I would even like venture, I would even like guess most people they have the feeling first they don't know why it is they're just like I feel like shit today and then they wake up the next day and they're like I still feel like shit today but then you wake up all turn all their days and you're like I feel ecstatic yeah ecstatic is rare but sometimes I wake up and feel fine that's good yeah that's what I'm always going for I'm just trying to hit fine if I can get like okay you know then that's good yeah yeah Ron go ahead what do you what do you drink on a regular basis I know we got the wine going on right now yeah you're like whiskey or vodka or whatever the fine bartenders at Pianophyte serve me shout out so couple so as as we move trying to inspire the kids you know we're talking about trying to inspire the kids yeah well yeah you know by getting them drunk yeah life is bad kids you don't have to get drunk get hammered at Pianophyte you'll probably see me there let's let's let's transition to the journey side of things so all right the journey the journey that's right yes because I think this will give also deeper insight into the why the way you feel the way you do at times um Ronnie turn those turn that phone on silent please thank you I feel like I feel like we got way too hard into depression real quickly but yeah you brought up the state of the world I yeah yeah well that's some people show so yeah I'll call you back yeah he's literally talking on the phone on the microphone big bucks ladies and gentlemen big bucks yeah yeah show runner Ron Vargas talking on the phone I was into the microphone I was perpetrated so okay okay so born in Martha's vineyard over on the east coast was Evan Wardell and then that was me decided about 10 years ago to move to the bay area and you were trying to get far away from home yeah on an adventure with your girlfriend at the time all started in the shire oh yeah so tell us about this uh well I found this magic ring yeah um now you know I think a lot of people uh grow up in a place when they're a kid and want to like get out of it you know um uh yeah so I moved to the other side of the country did you pick up your artistic interests um when you were young like music yeah I've been playing guitar since I was like I don't know I want to say 10 or so I remember I remember the specific moment when I wanted to play guitar it was at like an end of the year um like barbecue at the middle school I went to and a friend of mine got up and started playing they had like a band and a friend of mine like went up and played guitar on stage you know with uh some of the like some of the parents who were there and I was like that is the coolest thing I've ever seen I want to do that I must do that and so I demanded you know I just wouldn't bother my parents forever and ever to lay by me a guitar um and yeah I just went along from there yeah okay so then started seeing and songwriting and playing guitar all this stuff yeah yeah pretty much I think it was pretty clear like as soon as because like music is I feel like music is a great escape for a lot of people that um and it definitely was for me and uh I kind of felt intuitively that like I wanted to like write things you know I didn't just want to play the songs that I know or that I liked in fact like the idea of doing that was like I mean it's fun obviously but I could feel it just felt kind of like cheap because it's like when you hear a song you hear the full recorded song like all the instruments and the drums and the singing and the whatever and you know as soon as you like play those uh first couple chords and like smoke in the water like that every guitar teacher teaches you when you start playing guitar you're like this doesn't sound like the song I need to record a bunch of guitars together and you know all that so I immediately went to like well I have to write something because then I can sort of play it on my own and it'll sound the way I want it to sound and then as soon as I did that I was like this needs more instruments on it and then I had a little like um like hand me down stereo from my parents and it had two tape decks on it and you could record on one of the tape decks and then I realized you could take that tape put it in the second tape deck press play on that one and then when you put another put a blank take tape in the other one to the first cassette tape deck to record onto it'll record whatever's playing on the first tape okay so then I realized you could overdub so you could I could play like a couple chords recorded on one tape put it into the next tape slot put a fresh tape into the first tape deck press play hit record and then record like a little solo over it or whatever and that's how I discovered multi-track recording recording that's some that's really important yeah and that that was really that was like really liberating and sort of like blew my mind and as soon as you figure that out like you know your brain goes to all the places like oh I could put drums on this I could you know I could do this whole thing myself and so I've been you know doing that ever since I guess yeah yeah wow that I love that moment of of inspiration for you for realizing yeah to track recording and then like I had to do with tapes yeah with tapes too yeah not just digitally like we now have uh oh that was funny because like each time because then I just switched the tapes to get the next track onto it and the more times you record on a tape the quality just degrades and degrades and degrades so by the time you get to the end of it it sounds terrible but you're like it's all there and it's like really exciting as a kid um and so what were the first couple um uh instruments that you decided as your as for your multi-track recording as well as your singing as well yeah well it's just yeah it was like guitar and yeah and singing this guitar first I knew I wanted to like sing so I could sing the songs that I write um but it was like a terrible singer forever totally yeah I'm still still marginal I'm getting there I like can you play the banjo uh the banjo is a terrible it's a terrible instrument but if you could play the banjo you'd probably play like foggy mountain breakdown and then I might I would uh I would no I would take it outside and I would burn it like like an adult no the banjo is fine the banjo is a pain in the ass to play though because it's like the strings are super high off the frets the neck is like so this neck is as wide as it as it is and banjo neck's like that thin yeah so it's just like weird to get your hand around it and it's it's the the high this the string that's the furthest on the top is the highest in pitch which on a guitar it's the lowest in pitch but then it goes to a low one is next and then it gets like it's just confusing to play um what are we talking about the banjo for you brought it up oh all right he's all he knows he knows ron's like ron's a hidden hidden troll oh yeah no he's out in the open troll oh no oh no but he relies on people forgetting oh where did we hear about the banjo from yeah so okay so I love I love the first dose into the into the multitrack recordings that's that's really important and then then what about you know who you were when you were in high school and then deciding you wanted to get away from from everything and go to the west coast um jeez who I was in high school was weirdo desperate weirdo were we all to some degree yeah like that's what high school is you're like crazy and desperate I'm like nothing is again like my parents and I wanted to hang out with my friends yeah yeah pretty much and I liked playing guitar and that was like the three things that I knew uh but yeah this was an interesting experience I mean I'm I'm still super close to my friends that I met in high school this day so like it was a really like good important part of my life like it seems like an eternity but it was like and even just like the last two years of high school were the were the good ones but I still just imagined that that was all of high school for some reason um your parents got you a guitar so shout out to they did yeah shout out mom and dad yeah got a guitar that's that's important when the kid wants to yeah explore into the music now what about um the transition to the west coast uh yeah that was so long ago I moved here like 10 years ago in 2009 um one of the dumbest just blunders just no thinking at all I'm like it was 2009 so it's right after the huge economic crash um I remember um and of course I was like 21 so I'm like I wasn't thinking about anything I'm just like I'll move there I'll get a job whatever it'll be fine I was like unemployed living off savings forever um I remember just like 20 people trying to get the same bar used to job at Starbucks it was like it was a nightmare um but I did bumble my way into a rent control department which I didn't know is rent controlled or even what rent control was when I did now 10 years later I'm still living in that same apartment and pay the same for like a 500 square foot single bedroom apartment as like many people I know pay for a single bedroom so like um it's funny that I moved here at a time that was such a terrible time trying to move somewhere to find a job but conversely rent was way cheaper yeah um still like more expensive than most of the country um ended up being your one of your greatest treasures today is the fact that you yeah through this big risk and you moved out to the west coast in a time when you were in your early 20s to pursue something that was uncertain for you but yeah you thought would reap some good treasures yeah and you know I benefited from a fair amount of privilege so it was like I'm kind of like I feel like I cheated a little bit like I didn't have to scrape that hard I like blew through all my savings but you know eventually found a job um and what were you doing when you first moved your booty out here you know hanging out yeah trying to find work and failing a lot yeah I worked for the 2010 census as an enumerator walking around the tenderloin knocking on people's doors and be like hey how many people live here I'm with the US government I'm with the US government nope yeah it was weird yeah but it paid really well um it's a good thing about government jobs it paid really good and um I got a really cool side pack side bag that I still have and it's been like probably the thing that's sparked the most conversation with strangers in my entire life people are like what is the like they're like you have a US Census Bureau bag just got the big seal on it yeah and it's just a really funny like US Census Bureau yeah everyone everyone wants to know about the Census Bureau bag that's great yeah they want to know what questions you're asking excuse me how many people live in this building yeah I'm with the US government yeah we yeah so it's important you have to you're knowing how many people are actually residing in the in the cities and in the country um Evan now what about this this continuation of of the desire for being an artist and a singer songwriter how did that continue with you into the Bay Area and start its own evolution here um to be perfectly honest I think it just embedded itself in me when I was a teenager yeah and just attached itself to my like ego and sense of self so I just have to do it or I feel like I'm not doing something right you know um it's it's weird because that's definitely how some sort of like hobby or artistic endeavor I feel like first gets you in a way yeah I mean like I've since then uh found uh an amount of like not really purpose but like meaning in writing songs because before I was just trying to like make something that sounds good but now I've been doing it for long enough that I can finally like write stuff where I'm like trying to say something even if that something is just like an aim or just like myopic or whatever um but yeah it's it's it's hard to see how I don't know about like artistic drive specifically just like I feel like I have to do it and it kept like every single week or two weeks or month or so you were at least performing writing I mean sometimes sometimes you go like weeks without doing anything without doing and sometimes you go and you really want to work on a song multiple days in a row yeah that type of stuff yeah I like have periods where I'm just like non-stop doing it um and then periods where I just like don't pick up a guitar for like two weeks you know yeah yeah um it's like hard to find uh motivation and inspiration a lot but you're on you're on your way now you're I mean you're on Spotify now you're a newest album Little Boys on Spotify now and it's fantastic I like it a lot thank you and this these are the types of moves though that I think are awesome to see artists and entrepreneurs doing which is finding that spark within to go and and build and create and especially for all the young people that watch around the world it's that finding that spark within and just surrounding yourself with other people that can help you ignite your own spike you ignite their sparks and yeah and building up from there yeah yeah so okay let's let's do um an explanation of um some of the um the meaning from the first song Getting Bigger and also and also explain to us okay the complexity of the uh of of you're doing you you are yourself literally walking uh multi-track yourself because you're doing guitar harmonica singing um all at once and that's really really interesting um so teach us about the complexity of that as well as the meaning of Getting Bigger okay complexity wise uh this instrument is horrible it makes a fun sound sometimes but it also as you're playing with it it uh you asked about complexity this is going to be me complaining about the harmonica I like I've had a lot of attitude harmonicas in my life um and that's why I fall off playing it and then get back into playing it because inevitably it like goes out of tune um there's like probably a tiny little range in here that's like good enough in tune that I feel good about it how do you tune the harmonica you you don't you buy a new one uh you can tune them but the way that you tune it is literally you get some tiny files and you go into these holes you have to file uh depending but you can't even see what you're filing so you have to find the read that you want to there's two reads in every hole there's like the the suck read and the blow read um and you have to go in and file it at a different spot either at the base of the tip depending on if that read is sharp or flat you have to literally file it yeah metal on metal yeah no one does that people just buy new harmonicas yeah they cost like 20 bucks no well that's the thing the 20 one suck I like I like went out and bought this one for 50 bucks and I did my research I like looked at forums they're like okay this is the best is it a honor it's uh what is it I think it's an oscar oscar whatever the hell right the oscar whatever the hell brand the oscar what have you yeah that was great no no no no free no free plugs will invoice you yeah yeah so to be honest I don't really know a whole lot about harmonicas the only thing I the only things I know about them are like my experiences with them and they're a pain in the ass and they don't like to keep a tune and then also while you're playing it um like you've got a position that just so on your face if you're playing guitar at the same time and I know while I'm playing and singing I like salivate a lot so my spit will get into it and it'll the spit will physically block the hole so I'll try to like go to hit it out and it'll just go and then like it'll push the spit out and go and like make a terrible noise yeah but it's just a it's a weird difficult instrument uh my friend my friend and co-host of my podcast uh Bobby Good once described it as the uh the wet and smelly mistress because it always smells like your breath because you've like got your mouth on it yeah the whole time and it's the old saliva yeah that's germs that have built up over time yeah interesting okay now um how about combining these these the harmonica guitar and your singing all into one now you know we we feature a lot of neuroscientists and we talk about the cognitive resources that you're allocating to guitar versus harmonica versus singing okay does it feel like you're having a task switch between the three not so guitar I can pretty much do an autopilot on autopilot yeah the the song I just played is a little harder because the the chord shapes aren't like normal so I have to think a little bit more but I can kind of ignore it for the most part once I'm into it it's like and you'll see if you you go back and really rewatch the thing I just did because I know I do this all the time is the first time I hit a new part I'll flub that a little bit and then I'll find it and then the next time I've just got it and I don't have to think about it oh it's almost like I have to re like get my brain onto the like the the the ingrains and their old pathway that's been created by me doing it over and over again and once I'm there I can I can do it and it's the same with like the beginning of lines like the first note or two might not be quite on but then I can like get it for the rest of it um so yeah I definitely have to devote most of my uh when I'm when I'm basically the the guitar is the easy one and then I have to think more about singing or harmonica is like like pretty hard for me I'm not that great at it um I definitely have to think about it a lot and I only have you have to buy a different key for each each harmonica has to be a different key so this is an F harmonica so I can only play uh harmonica on songs in F so I have to like capo move this capo around and like change the tuning um to if I want to play harmonica on a song I have a lot of songs like the song I just played is uh in E so I had to capo it up a fret so then I'm in F and then also some songs I can't it's in a weird key for me to sing so I'm just like well I can't play harmonica on this one um because I can't be bothered to buy another harmonica uh but these are some interesting nuances of being a musician is that when you have a sequence in one of your songs then you have this transition you know maybe the guitar is as more of a autopiloted algorithm and then when you have to add your to harmonica and you kind of have to you know discreet you know you're rediscovering where where that exactly is at precisely and then you're like oh yeah that's okay that's it yeah and also like with the guitar there's like in there's frets and I can kind of feel them and there's also these dots here interesting there's no place with your mouth like just like a computer keyboard with the f and j you can feel where that's at bumps this I kind of know it's like about here about there yeah so I have to like blow a little bit and and luckily it's since the whole thing's in the key of F I can kind of like blow and like move my mouth up till I find the right note and it'll still sound okay because all these notes work in the key of the song I'm playing in but it is a weird and every time I just go like um like I'm paying attention to the guitar part I'm playing and then go oh god I gotta start playing this harmonic part and just like put my face on and blow and it's the right note I'm like awesome yeah feels like I totally lucked into the right the right spot which is which is fun and then how about some of the meaning uh to the music of getting bigger specifically and then we'll play up Chuck after this um well the the music are the lyrics the to the meaning of the lyrics of yeah lyrics I feel like it's pretty straightforward so it's sort of over the top dramatic um but I like that style I like to sort of like lean into the the weird drama of a thing and give us some of the lyrics yeah it's uh the the chorus part the verses are basically um talking about let's see so the first verse is like it's like a being told that I'm not that old yeah I know the way that I look which is just a funny anecdote from life because I get a lot I look way younger than I am if I like shave I get carded if I want to buy tobacco which I don't do anymore mom I remember when we first met that you were you were big on letting me know that you know you weren't as young as you might have thought I thought you were look a lot of us have some pathologies okay I just know of mine are but you're still not that old I'm just trying to tell you no I know it's just because you're ancient yeah that I've that I'll give you that I haven't been around the block right here for a while yeah but anyway so that was just that's I don't know that was the whatever struck my head at the moment when I wrote that um but yeah and then but it's like being told but there's this feeling that I get it comes from my chest I'm sick of acting like it's okay so it's kind of like the sad thing I'm like I'm I know I look like a young fresh kid but sometimes I can be bummed out too and all the verses kind of follow this thing and then at the end they reference this whole or this gap and then the chorus part is just and it's getting bigger and then I guess that's not the chorus that's more like a pre-chorus I don't know it's hard to just decide what's what and then the actual chorus-y part is we're not going to fill it today which is like sort of an admonition directed at myself to be like stopping such a bummer and stopping so down on yourself sitting here and like covetching over it isn't going to like fix anything interesting and a lot of the lyrics to my songs kind of follow that pattern in one way or another yeah where it's a lot of just sort of because like when I write stuff a lot of the time just in a bad mood and it's like an outlet for that so I'm kind of like singing about how I'm not feeling great and then by the end of it I'm by the end of like writing the thing when I'm like in the sort of like writing flow space it like feels really good and then I like feel better again and so I want to put like a happy sort of like or just at least a positive forward thinking sort of like coda to the whole thing like I don't want every song to just be about being bummed out unless I can get to the end of it and be like you know there's hope there's there's there's there's a reason to keep doing whatever we're doing you know yeah yeah that's this is another one of those you you also kind of follow like you just describe this path of of of expressing yourself through your lyrics and then also re uh expressing through your lyrics the way that you want to motivate yourself at the same time so it's kind of a a little bit of a of a roller coaster as well yeah yeah no yeah you have to have and that just works on an artistic level you have to like have some sort of journey in the piece you know you want to like start one place and end another place I like to and as of I wrote that song probably like actually I think I wrote the original a bit like three four years ago and then didn't finish it until maybe two or three years ago um and uh oh what was I saying but by the time I got to the end of it it was like um I've completely lost my train of thought when I say we were still talking about the song getting bigger but let's yeah you were talking about your stint at MIT my stint at MIT broke a lot of hearts and then okay let's transition inexpensive equipment to the to the to the new album little boy we have upchuck downtown city slicker blues oh yeah short for you short call it upchuck yeah yes every trade secret every band every musician calls all of their songs something other than what they're called uh I I have to remember all of my songs I call all of my songs today I hate writing names for them I just like I don't know it's annoying to me uh because I feel like just calling it the name of whatever's in the chorus is just sort of like reductive and like dude you didn't use any like it's not an artistic process uh to name a song with a thing that everyone's going to remember it by which now but then I realized just as a practical matter you should just do that so people can find it yeah that's right so it's an interesting balance between the practicality of the chorus and what you say a lot naming that the song versus wanting to be like different than everyone else yeah or just like I want to feel like I'm not just doing something in some sort of like road uh unintentional way you know I'm just like this is what it should be so I'll do that um when in reality that's just what you should do because you know it makes it easier for people to find it and you know I don't really care what the song is called that much but what I call all my songs so I can remember them is the first lyric of the first verse literally the first thing I have to sing the song is the thing I remember the song as so I can just um you know it like puts me in the headspace to do it or whatever you know just when I'm when I'm like putting it together a set uh and I see the words written I don't the first couple lyrics written I don't have to think about what song it is I'm like oh it's the one that starts there yeah Ron do you have a thought before we entered the song well I thought it was cool the other night when I had asked google to play uh music from Evan Wardell and they came up I want to know what it is that uh that they decide what track it is that they're gonna play uh were you aware that you could ask google to play music from you and that they they can deliver um uh me and google aren't on speaking terms that's fun I've only recently started to ask Siri about things I got some hue light bulbs at home I'm really psyched I can walk into my home be like Siri make the lights red and then we'll go like it's cool I love it yeah voice is a major part of the future some people are calling it a even up to a trillion dollar industry and just voice algorithms it's going to be a massive part of our future all right yeah it's crazy let's jump into um up chuck downtown city slicker blues oh yeah let's do it all right very excited transform uh this song surprise surprise is about the city I guess all right I want to get a good uh mix here Ron wants to get a good mix I don't know what I'm doing hold on everybody Ron's gotta get a good mix I'm gonna adjust this a little bit so it's funny the two themes that I write are like I'm bummed out and then the other one is like walking down the street you know like uh Medical Mechanica is the song that I tried to write right I love that I love that song we both love that song a lot yeah I know a lot of people really like that one and that's literally me trying to create an aesthetic that feels like walking through the city at night like walking home from like a bar or whatever and it's just sort of like like hazy and like trippy and so that that's a good way to stop it yeah I think I really succeeded with what I was going for there I remember Ron actually was playing um Medical Mechanica when um he was sitting right there and and I go who is that and he goes that's Evan Wardell and I go what that's dope and then that's when we were like let's like look up Evan's new asylum let's have him on the show yeah yeah yeah it's a good song yeah uh yeah all my friends who anytime anyone and anytime any of my friends are like I liked that thing you did it's always that song it's good because I love that song too I'm glad uh I have good friends with good taste all right this one it's about the city I guess I don't know it's not an f so I can't play harmonica one two one two three we're hustling to bustling to shuffle my way across town I'm gonna meet a woman trying to keep on my lunch meat down hit everybody everywhere wanting to piece of me now cause I'm living on the surface while I'm working for the underground oh they're the amaran and clamor and diamond and I tell them how my guts and I hop on an eastbound train about the record while I'm choking on my higher brain we all get together and talk about a remnant fame hey I know it sounds crazy but it really isn't all that insane because all right he knockoffs or taunts and G because I should go to lecture me and set me free without you see you might as well just like me just another thank you thank you thank you now there's so many good questions along with this one um one why yeah yeah I know I know well we'll we'll get to um um you know meaning I got me water lyrics yes yes we got water for you yes meaning so meaning of lyrics we'll get there I want to ask you how you pick where to have things like a solo happen um how yeah how do you pick you know how to how to when you when you go and you're you know you really strumming fast across the strings versus when you're strumming slower you know how do you how do you pick your your your increases in energy versus your kind of slow yeah um you just have to use your um perfectly curated impeccable taste I mean it literally is just like I feel it you know I'm just like this feels like it needs to do this now um I'll like be playing a song and then I get to a certain point and I'm like and I just I just feel like I want it to have this sort of energy change you know um and so I'd find the way to do that I mean I'm all about the sort of like ebb and flow of the song I like it to get big then small and then like groovy and then I like it to hit all these notes um and you can feel it in this one yeah this one has a lot going on in terms of like energy changes including like playing one part multiple times with different amounts of energy because like the song is really simple at its core note wise there's really just there's a verse in the chorus and and a pre verse which is basically the verse but louder and with a little like melody over it and then like the the bridge which is its own separate thing um at least in the way that I think about it it's really simple but you kind of like play with those volumes going up and down um and yeah it's that's the one thing that it's not like a really I don't know that I could describe any sort of process I just like kind of it's like a feeling it's like it's like a a painter in front of a easel being like I don't know this needs red you know yeah it's almost as though the music is channeling through you and you're feeling the how it's flowing through you I want to ask how similar is this to writing let's say we're writing an article we're writing a story whatever maybe we're trying to tell a story let's say and that how does it feel like when you sit down and you're writing your music does it feel like you can really get through a decent amount of like an outline like a story arc of what you want to tell and then you come back later and fill it in a little bit or teach us about what that's like um I usually began at a like purely aesthetic place um where I just find just a little little kernel of something I like um be it a chord change or a rhythm it's usually it's usually a set of chords with a rhythm with maybe a bit of melody over it or even if there's not a specific melody within the chords there's a sort of implied melodic progression um that I like or am I attracted to somehow um and then I just kind of build it from there you know I'll be like I have this thing I like and I'll go back and play it every once in a while I've gotten in the past couple years really into taking notes on my phone and just like when I have a thing that I really like I'll break on my phone just record whatever amount of it I have and then just forget about it and then I'll come back to it like maybe a month later when I've just completely forgot it even existed and you know see if it like still feels inspiring and cool and like something I should work on um because for a long time I would do this I'd write these kernels of things and just forget them I'd be like oh I kind of like this I don't know I guess I'll play with it later I have some I have a lyric book that I write all my lyrics in that I definitely have some lyrics in there that I'm like I don't remember at all what's supposed to go to this so you can keep these little bits of really strong chord changes or um or whatever it may be and then you can kind of plug and play potentially at later times if you haven't embedded it yet into one of your pieces yeah that's cool I like that it's like you're building up a modular library of unique uh musical yeah I'd say it's rare that two things like came up with independent of each other like get combined into something together interesting it's usually each little thing becomes its own song okay okay um I've definitely like written lyrics for a song that ended up in another song but it's pretty rare that they combine you know it's more just like uh it's a notebook you know and you would build a bunch of ideas you'd build a song around something that you really liked yeah interesting that's cool and then it's like I found this cool thing and it really does it doesn't feel like writing it feels like mining you know just like I went to the mines today came up with this gem uh I'll put this over here maybe go try to like cut it into a shape and polish it later you know yeah it does almost feel like independent of my like almost doesn't feel like I'm doing it you know it doesn't feel like I'm sitting there and writing a thing out it's just like I bang my head against this piece of this nugget until something comes out of it that I like like I feel like like verses will come out pretty almost like whole formed for me you know I'll just like hit on a sort of lyrical progression that I like that almost writes itself um it's like you know I think in a way it's sort of like you are mining you are mining those like neural pathways in your brain that you that have that have been primed to sort of um string together a piece of things a bunch of things that you like in some way and like you strike on one and it goes like zip zip zip zip you got a whole verse like all of a sudden I'm like oh where'd that come from uh but yeah this is another interesting part of the artist's uh processes when you when you find something like a really interesting permutation of some music or some writing or whatever your creative endeavoring is if you kind of put it in your library and store it for a bit there's an opportunity cost because a yes you may come back to it at a later time with a fresh mind and be able to add to it and then release it but also it can just get stored in your library and you can forget about it and not actually bring it forth as a gem into the world so there's kind of an interesting opportunity cost with that yeah I think it kind of depends the thing is like one way or another I'm going to write a little bit of a thing I'm not going to find it it's I've think of only only like once in my life if I ever just like sat down to write a song and written the whole thing you know maybe once that's ever happened I always come up with a verse and then have to like or like a verse in chorus and then have to come back to it later yes yes um and silence usually helps a lot with these things like if you just sit if you just sit and you're not by your technology and you're just more um just just enjoying your environment yeah I found it really like to write in the morning like when I wake up before my brain's been polluted by the world yeah they're interesting something about just like making breakfast and coffee and not being plugged into like yes the stuff the matrix yeah matrix uh is you kind of have that time to sort of like brood or whatever and it's yeah I don't know I just I feel just like more optimistic and like sensitive in the morning I'm not beaten down by the world yet there's still hope for the day uh doesn't like super hungover although I've written a ton of songs hungover too uh do you write when you're um under the influence I mean do you hang on just did you oh I can you save anything okay I'm I suck when I'm like drunk or whatever I can't can't do anything thank you um creative endeavoring um now with uh with with with intoxication versus not with sober it's interesting to the wet intoxicants also cannabis sometimes psychedelics maybe as well not just alcohol so there's always room to play and pick okay let's talk about the meaning of upchuck downtown city slicker oh god news that one lyrically is definitely sort of gobbledygook nonsense it is sort of just trying to create a sort of like aesthetic it's like more like almost impressionist like the the lyrics of the verse are um a hustle and a bustle in a shuffle my way across town because this is like I'm trying to have have like a hustling bustlely fun city vibe uh going to meet a woman trying to keep all my lunch meat down everybody everywhere wanting a piece of me now I guess like those women trying to keep my lunch meat down yeah what's that that's a good one yeah I know it sounds funny trying to keep my lunch meat yeah I remember when I was a kid we'd call like uh like deli a slice deli meat lunch meat because you'd put it on your lunch sandwiches and I was just remembered one day as in the nervousness or the anxiety of yeah it's like I'm there I'm trying not to like throw up on the subway or whatever um and I just liked trying to keep my lunch meat down it's just the funny like turn of turn of freight not even turn of fray just a couple of words together they kind of make you go oh that's funny um it's that so yeah I guess this all makes sense this let's gobbledygook than I thought it was yeah uh everybody everywhere's wanting a piece of me now got a million friends trying to do things all the time so it's like trying to like keep up with plans and whatever um and saying no um saying yes to things that accelerate you potentially yeah you know this is I'm not trying to come up with answers I'm just trying to like create a embody a like a feeling or an environment I'm trying to like like I feel like it's rare that you know a painting tells you what to do or is like prescriptive and what it's saying about how to be or whatever you know it's sort of like it presents you with a an image uh and it's trying to like uh create or like represent some sort of feeling or some yeah it's trying to create some sort of feeling generally I feel like um so yeah that's that's usually what I'm trying to do I kind of I'm into the like I come from it from a very aesthetic place um and having like a literal meeting is something that sort of emerges afterwards maybe but it's not always like a thing I mean or like a thing that's real you know even when I'm saying like I or me um I might not be even might not even be talking about a thing that's about me um although recently I've done that a lot more uh I got really into like uh bright eyes probably like three or probably four years ago bright eyes bright eyes or five years ago meet what is it uh it's a band okay Conor Oberst great recommend them check it out okay uh and he writes like really good like the very personal at least seeming songs I don't know about I don't know how much of these are like actually him talking about experiences he's had or whatever but I don't know I just got really into that so it took me a long time to actually like express by itself and like what I'm feeling uh and I've sort of like gotten into that more in the past like probably five years yeah yeah um that's which is good it's fun yeah yeah it also is most uh it's most relatable to your life journey and then you get to express that through through music yeah it's the most cathartic for me to write cathartic for you to write yeah correct yes yes okay I want you to um you know we here we have instruments and we have you singing and this is not being played through you know live in person is not being played through a a compression an audio compression digital audio compression we were streaming this yes but other people so this is the key right so this is what I want to ask you about yeah so Evan how many years you did audio engineering here at san francisco state university yeah I went I did their uh recording industry program recording industry program so yeah and that was almost uh how many years ago was that eight something like that it was a long time ago so Mike here's a here's an interesting thing is when you understand audio engineering like Evan's coming in here and he's like yo there's all the stuff with the mixer and the mics and everything and and so you guys had the mics pointed the wrong way I know I know there were newbies we're newbies we're trying to figure things I do remember watching this before watching an episode of this and being like that Mike I'm pretty sure that's not supposed to go that way except except this this is the first episode we're doing with the with the audio technique of mics we were using labs but then we did maybe we used some of these why are you watching our shit not liking it or making comments why didn't you comment about the mic you know you're not supposed to use those mics like that why can't you help out people I don't get on the defensive when I get corrected Ron that knowledge is in free you had me on the show so I'll help you out yeah me turning this 90 degrees is pro bono you know don't have to worry about it so so then with this audio engineering knowledge a couple questions are you know because of the really interesting um you know you were giving this example of of having a multi-track player that would then make you know multi-single track that you could record on top of again making a multi-track this type of stuff and seeing the evolution of the technology and all the way until now where we have the equipment that we have so I want you to talk about the importance of um the technological advances we've had in terms of what it's done for music industry but also how crazy it is having a guitar right here in person in the vibration that you get from that in the quality you get from that versus when it gets compressed through the um digital compression algorithms and out through people's speakers evan hit us hit us with the knowledge it's all about that knowledge wait so was the importance of music technology the advancement of music technology over time and then I can do yep let's do that and then ask me the other one again uh it got better so life is better for everybody I don't have to do crappy recording on a tape recorded over and over and over again into oblivion because that has its own type of compression compression is a really good thing I have to say by the way I feel people like I think people have this intuitive sense that you want the raw shit you want it raw and uncompressed but like compression is really helpful and it and enables a lot of different things and also you're gonna be careful by the way that we're using the term compression because compression there's like the digital compression that you do to a file to make it smaller to send it like over the internet and then have it uncompressed which is not my expertise I don't really know a lot about that um or the compression that turns a raw audio file into a mp3 as opposed to a lossless audio file yeah it's interesting again I don't know a lot about how they do that or how that works but there's a quantifiable difference in the caliber yeah yeah yeah when I export an mp3 from my recording program and listen to it next to the lossless wave file that I export it's like years difference wow I like I listened to the mp3 and I'm like did I do this wrong like did I like fuck up somehow because it like sounds so bad but I don't know yeah then that's the thing I don't know how to mess with like compression settings to make those sound good um but uh back to the advancement of audio technology it's really great remember when I first so I went from like recording on a cassette tapes to getting a little digital recorder that was like this big and could record like eight tracks yeah um and that was like really fun to use and uh uh DAW's recording software was really expensive and sort of prohibitive at the time but now it's gotten really I mean relatively cheap I guess I still have to spend a bunch of money to I got I got a student discount on Pro Tools so I only had Pro Tools is we could have used you at that afghani gig we did the other night with Pro Tools Pro Tools is great no we just need when we when we record a live performance with multi tracks it's really hit or miss we've had this conversation before to get that um to get that mix you need you need your multi tracks you need your vocals your guitar your bass your drums all on different tracks but to remix it if you can do it on the fly you know that that's great you're you know you should be making a lot of money but um with what you need Pro Tools and uh and yeah and and there's not I remember like Pro Tools was the industry standard when I started getting into uh recording on a computer's more now there's like a million of them and they're all great you know you can get a cheaper are they cheaper not really they're still pretty expensive well nowadays uh everything you can't just buy the program anymore like I have a sort of like license that's grandfathered in so I can read download it when I get a new computer or whatever but if you're like new to the the Pro Tools world you have to basically do the renting system or it's like subscription yeah the subscription now we we're in the adobe club yeah premiere photoshop yeah everything's like that now yeah but that is that that does make it easier as like an uh entering initially it's a lot of money over the long term but you can you know if you want opt in opt out yeah opt in opt out and having access to even just the basic plug-in suite and in a program like Pro Tools is like I've like all these songs I just did with the basic stuff in Pro Tools because I was very poor for a long time we couldn't like for like nicer really nice equipment or uh nicer plugins or whatever um so that advancement has been like great like you know you can do a professional recording in your with Pro Tools on your on your laptop yeah you can do it with GarageBand you know it's GarageBand too yes GarageBand is a huge pain in the ass to use but if GarageBand are you guys talking about GarageBand it comes free with your computer the tools yeah that's very interesting so the tools have been democratized to the point where we can express more of our artistic I know that I would say democratized well GarageBand comes with your computer like you just said and so yeah we don't vote on that it's not well we'll say well the democratization of a tool also means just the wide spreading of it in terms of the pricing the pricing of it the wide spreading of it so if it now comes with the um the the the computers that we purchased then it makes it easier for people to express themselves artistically yeah because now they don't have to have these bulky ass big ass equipments and you can get audacity on the internet for free yeah and the company's actually spent all the equipment that's behind Ron right now um and all the equipment that we have now on this set basically 20 years later plus a years later plus then what's happening after this in the next 20 years whatever the technology will be it's these companies and the engineers and designers that work at these companies that push the boundaries of what existed you know a couple decades ago with Ron's equipment to the couple uh to the current systems and then to what the future systems will be so it's good that we have these incentive systems for companies to push the boundaries of what exists to make it easier for us to have democratized tools for artistic expression of all sorts okay yeah so then your um the last point that that we we covered you actually covered um the compression as well in your last okay so okay there's also a compressor which is an audio tool that's very helpful and helps you fit things together i'm learning that myself i like that it would come in yeah they can actually like in a way add fidelity like people think of compression in a digital sense is removing fidelity um you can add fidelity with a compressor yeah in a sense uh you remove your exchanging in a dynamic range for fidelity which i'm just glad i got to say that sense but basically what it does it's a it's an automated volume knob you set a threshold level and when the audio goes above that threshold it turns the volume down by a certain amount interesting oh that sounds that'd be great for all the peaks that we have and when people go laugh or you know go yeah yeah yeah every time i've worked with you guys i'm like we gotta get some compressors in here but they're a really useful audio tool which adds fidelity in the way that it makes the quieter parts louder really what it does is bring the louder part the louder parts down and it brings the lighter parts louder too well then you can turn the whole thing up oh so that's how you use a compressor to make the quiet parts louder interesting yeah um and yeah so that's tools like that are awesome oh yeah they're great there's a million ways to but yeah that's a compressor in the audio basically an if then statement if the decibels reach above seven yeah db and then just bring up the um bring down what goes above that seven line back down to yeah seven yeah and then you can set a ratio so you can like have it reduced by half by a third oh that's great yeah these are these are rocking you can choose how quickly it catches the signal so you can have the peak of the loudness come in and like get that loudness for a second and have it clamped down afterwards so that uh that retains some of the the transients that makes it sound less compressed it just kind of retains some of the dynamic range so it sounds more like full of life or whatever um because that's that's the one thing if you compress stuff too much it just starts to sound like dead and like you know the this with the songs I write I like the energy to go up and down and you want to retain that this sort of like changes in energy and you can definitely overdo it with tools like compressors uh so yeah it's yeah it's a whole thing yeah it's a whole thing kids yeah audio engineering I'm glad that you're bringing up all this nuance to it because the more that we can understand how it actually works it's like double clicking into audio engineering and like looking deeper into it versus just seeing it at the surface level whenever you're like at a restaurant and you just order food and you've never actually worked in the kitchen um or in the operations of a restaurant it's very similar you got to double click into the restaurant to be able to know what it's like getting behind the eyes versus same thing with audio engineering just be nice to your servers that's it don't be a pain in the ass be nice to the audio engineer yeah be nice to me too yes i would man i gotta tell you doing like sound for live events i've never i don't think there's a another job in the world where you get more unsolicited opinions about how you should be doing your job than when you're like the sound guy at an event it's interesting it's always and the musicians are always cool it's like the mom of the lead singer oh yeah that is so it's like i can't hear my baby enough i'm like well that the gig we had in san liandro was we were dealing with that sort of stuff yeah it's a tough world out there yeah you know there's difficult acoustic environments all over the place when i work at piano fight it's just like good sort of difficult environment to work in i can't turn things up too much we get a lot of feedback and it's just it's a whole thing yeah but there has been improvement to uh that that system out front and anyway are you talking about out front yeah yeah that they definitely went through uh this is significant improvement a little bit give give them might be hest good keep on take a lot of i'm just constantly poking cold and like i need this i want this cold does all right it is fine you do a great call you do a great call shout out to piano fight yes big shout out i almost wore my piano fight shirt okay now on the way out we want to ask you about the two things that you're teaching us about um your band the green door has been going on for five years five years and you guys play they've been around for like eight i joined them like maybe five years ago five piece five piece band five piece band two guitars drums keyboard and bass yeah and then um and then you guys play about um monthly or so around the bear yeah okay and then also um so why don't you just yeah may 16th at the parkside oh may 16th at the parkside okay i think it's the 16th what time is that it's if the full five piece band is playing there it's at show time i don't know seven nine something like that yeah no just four of us our keyboardist lives in sacramento and he's a he's a teacher um so he doesn't always can't can't always make it now no teachers about the complexities of being a part of a five piece band this is again it's hard to rally the uh have you ever tried to get five adults in a room together very hard not at work on the show five guests at the same time yeah it's hard stuff it's really hard to get people together um um yeah you know those complexities are the complexities of any sort of uh relationships you have with uh groups of people and individuals who's deciding on this on the songs on the lyrics on the uh on the when the instruments come in or really go out you know we generally it's like a mix of sort of like a tour ship where one person takes control and um collaboration you know uh generally someone will bring in a song and then we'll all kind of play it together and we'll either like jam on it to figure out what we want to do with it or the person will have a very definite idea of what they want to do and then you know because we always want to like serve the uh artistic um direction or impulses of like the person who wrote it um so you kind of like that person will have like as much or as little control as they want over like how it goes and you know it's like so we'll either like let someone direct how it's how the song's gonna come together or we'll just suggest parts or you know there's like a myriad of different ways something can kind of come together it's a sort of ongoing evolving process that is not always clearly defined yeah so sometimes it's um individuals taking a little bit more authorship sometimes it's more of the collective authorship yeah and you guys have to practice in order to be able to determine what that is for every song and yeah and it's like it's a it's a relationship uh that we sort of like navigate uh all the time kind of like figure out the best way to do it um yeah it's uh it's interesting it's a fun time yeah i love those guys we have so much fun together these are the again these are the the questions of how humans um build things together it's similar with the band as it is with you know ron and i building simulation or any startup that's working together with multiple um founders this is all this is all very even a couple um in like a relationship how a couple two people end up starting family all this different type of dynamics so it's interesting to be able to think about it in terms of a band and how that works with leadership yeah we i think the one sort of band specific thing or this is like true of art generally like when you're creating art with a group of people because it's kind of it's the weird complication of like it's your leisure thing like it's the thing that you want to do for fun so you like want to have a good time but you also want to do the work to make a thing that's really good so there's like a lot of different sort of competing um impulses or um oh what's the word like uh it's like balancing out the pinnacle of artistic expression with the desire for leisure kind of uh what's the word i'm thinking of i forgot a word dichotomy no consensus no no it's there it's capitulate surrender how do we how do we get you to capitulate right now ron no but there's like competing incentives not just between people but like oh intra-competing incentives yeah not just like between people but like between in your own brain you know like you want to have a good time but you want to like get stuff done yeah uh you want to like you know at like band practice like we want to hang out in chat but we also want to like work on music so it's like it's definitely an interesting sort of relationship to navigate interesting sort of like do you take charge are you the are you the leader of the band oh no by no means really i would think you would be no no no it's i mean there's no like leader really someone's gotta take charge well the thing is like generally whoever wrote the song that we're writing leads that process yeah and then when it's like you know like the people the guy people always want to talk to his mic because he sings most of the song so he's kind of like the face um although the like secret face of the band is our drummer because she's uh she's got the the most like definite sort of like artistic vision oh that's great what's her name uh Vanessa Vanessa so awesome very very cool and good people awesome uh but yeah it's uh that's also an interesting dynamic is the the the singer is the face sometimes and then the drummer can sometimes have the big vision or whatever and there's these yeah competing incentives and stuff yeah yeah and then and then our bassist is the head of transportation he's got the big truck yeah yeah uh i'm the head of uh making jokes on stage you know we all have the part that we play okay that's the green door and you said may six make 16th i think may 16th yeah hope i got that right okay all right i'm not gonna pick up my phone i'm gonna do it yeah yeah yeah and then so the you you can find the green door performances in locally in the bay area as well some of the music online as well yep it didn't spotify it didn't spotify all that stuff okay now we the listeners is your podcast that you have a podcast yeah yeah so this is a once a week podcast where you speak on music production music news music in general yeah and this is this is cool because then again it's one of those things where you're you're you're building up your knowledge base on the subject of music by doing a podcast that then other people listen to you're like you know this is a good way to think other people listen to it i'm not sure yet only one you always start with zero listeners then one then two four all of a sudden yeah it's how things go uh yeah those four are just me listening to it four times how how are the we the listeners um how is that it's really fun i do it uh with a really good friend of mine from high school who we like sort of lost contact for a few years um and then recently got back in touch like a year ago and it's i mean in a lot of ways the podcast is just a way for us to reconnect and like talk to each other but you know we like to talk about the music stuff we're doing you know we're both interested and he's also a writer he like writes and sings um and he's like getting more into audio engineering now and so we just kind of talk about all things sort of music related and just make jokes and have a good time and it's uh it's fun i enjoy it we the listeners with the z with the z.com yeah dot com you gotta put the w w w in there because bobby hasn't figured out the url stuff you know the internet's a tough place so and you can find that link in the bio too to we the listeners um okay we want to ask you a couple questions on the way out evan the normal questions we ask on the show and then we'll wrap and then we will rap with a song from one of your upcoming albums which we're excited to hear we have not heard that one yet all right first simulation question okay are we alone in the cosmos probably not i don't think they're coming here but they're probably out there i think people who think the earth has been visited by aliens are crazy it's just there's no way did you know how much energy it takes to get anywhere it's just crazy i yeah but they're probably out there i mean in a sense we are alone because we're never going to see those people like ever like us as a species will die out before we ever make contact with anybody well we'll we'll die out before the messages that we've sent through like radio broadcast to different galaxies like gets anywhere you know we're like like material like what's the word uh uh practically we're alone but like literally probably not and then i want to ask evan about what exists beyond the 3d reality are you very spiritual do you think we come into earth to play in the earth suits uh beyond the 3d reality is the fourth dimension time yeah and then everything beyond that is a fun thought experiment people do on their stone i remember someone once showing me a video explaining the ninth dimension i'm like yes this is an interesting thought experiment but it's like can't what the ninth yeah i can really take grasp the fifth yeah let alone the ninth so i the fourth i'm still like i think that thing's uh sure right oh yeah that's no that's a great answer i'm glad he said that what's the fifth dimension wrong it's a beyond life death it's a life yeah it was a show that's when you have to get in touch with your darker side of life and death death the fifth dimension is beyond death so and i can't and pre birth pre birth fifth dimension is also pre birth yeah i just try to yeah i'm doing the best i can i just want to have a good time i don't know all you can do is imagine what it might be or mean but there's no way like if these things even exist there's no right all we got is all we have is 3d all we have is 3d understanding every day i've been waking up as ron varkas for 52 years go all and that's my that's my third that's my 3d reality that's all i have and soon maybe to poke with the scientific probe at what exists past the 3d which hopefully we can we can get there yeah there's the fourth d it's time okay let's ask the next question okay check are we in a simulation no no again a fun thought experiment people like to do that is stupid and doesn't make any sense i mean like may like it's so they came out with that that that study that said like or there's some scientific experiment that said we got a result that suggested it could be possible that we're in a simulation which is like which is like you take a piece of paper and like you make a shadow on your on your hand and you're like well that could be that could be a different planet i mean like we did i don't know maybe it's it seems again it seems like a dumb thing with people that people with too much time on their hands waste their time thinking about because when they confront the actual world the actual problems they feel helpless and atomized and so they retreat into these weird ideas about like fifth dimensions and the world is a simulation but sometimes people do execute quite well in the 3d as well as contemplate some of the past 3d philosophies as well so that's just another thing to thing to put out there i guess i guess evan last question on the show okay what is the most beautiful thing in the world uh um that like moment right when you wake up and then realize you don't have to go to work and just like go back to sleep that's the best it makes me weep with with with joy at the the the beauty of existence when i can go back to sleep that's yeah that's the first time we've heard that answer on the show that's the only thing that there's it's just pure pure joy yeah um that are like um i don't know like heroin or something i mean i you're not doing heroin are you i mean i'm so glad that heroin never never caught on with me i just want to say that to anybody that's watching you know herons uh yeah risky business kids and there's a big problem with addiction to opiates not just just the poppy in general opium no just opium i'm i i'm not a big fan of opiates and i'm glad about that someone's finally saying the things the people don't want to hear heroin is bad that's an important public service announcement though it is just very very very careful with you know yeah there's a lot of people in trouble yeah absolutely yeah i walk by them every day actualizing the fullest potential into the world yeah yeah yeah but yeah but the idea of but back to the beauty question yeah i think like things that are beautiful or the concept of beauty can be like really fraught um and there's very few things that just i don't know are like purely good and joyful and i feel like they're really hard and like you know separate like removed from all the things that make you feel bad i don't even know if this is like a good if if that makes it more beautiful if it's separate from the things that make you feel bad but it's like i don't know the way you were describing it was that when you're waking up and you're realizing like oh there's no burden on me to have to actually get up and go and so i can actually sleep these extra couple hours which in many ways people desperately need those extra couple hours i was thinking specifically of the like when when you like go to go back to nap a little bit or whatever and you like stretch a little bit and then just that feeling of like pure relaxation runs through your body that's that's the best that's good stuff that's that's the most beautiful that's the first time we heard that one yeah i like that a lot this has been such a good show i really appreciate you coming on and teaching us about you know your life your journey i'm a teacher now singing song writing yeah yeah your newest album everyone go and check out all of the links below we have evan wardell.bandcamp.com gonna play another song in a minute yeah we are yeah i guess we're tuning yeah you tune yeah we're closing we're gonna be closing out with a song from one of evan's upcoming albums he's gonna be tuning right now um everyone go and check out the links below to evanwardell.bandcamp.com also wethelisteners.com is the podcast you can find evan's newest album little boy it was released in january 2019 we highly recommend checking out medical mechanica it's one of our favorite songs he played up chuck downtown city slicker blues um from that album as well so go and check that out and spotify the links below his instagram and twitter link as well as below and much love thank you everyone for tuning in we greatly appreciate it we would love to hear your thoughts in the comments below on the episode uh go and share more content around singing song writing and becoming an artist around your communities huge shout out to ron vagus our producer and director we love you very much thank you ronnie and also um support the artists and entrepreneurs that you believe in in your communities support simulation our links are below as well we would love your support helping us scale much love thank you so much for tuning in everyone and we are going to be outroing with evan wardell's song from one of his upcoming albums thanks everyone much love peace yeah i would have loved to play medical mechanica but that's one of the it doesn't work without a band it doesn't translate as well because so it's funny when i play uh because all the stuff i write and record is like me doing it solo i have to be judicious about the songs that i play because not all of them work without a bunch of stuff but sometimes i can make them work with it this thing and this thing okay i'm gonna stop talking this song doesn't have a name but it's fun the postman waits to get onto a bus he always hustles downtown to deliver to the rest of us and it's hard to be kind but he doesn't really seem to mind but i'm still gonna give it a try i'm just blood ranked through the courage to get at the center of town even busy folks take the long way get around it's hard to know thank you thank you that was great bye guys yeah thanks for coming on bye bye bye you're gonna turn off the stream now so my goodbye makes sense okay yeah good yeah that was fun i did it uh thank you