As Tall As Lions

0:03Daniel, thank you. I appreciate it. A problem. It's tall as lines, new record. A lot of interesting instruments on it. All over the place is a lot of random things that I hear listening to the record. What was one of the, like, I know as a musician you probably are like, let's try this on a song. No, we didn't. To be honest, we didn't use too many crazy instruments. Is it just keys then? Yeah, a lot of, I have this S90 keyboard sampler. And a lot of the crazy sounds you hear are just us like sorting through the like the 3000 samples that has them going, hmm, that sounds cool. And how do you decide what ends up on which track? Just luck of the drawing kind of thing? No, yeah, you just come, I mean like you, if you're writing a song, you know, a lot of times what happens for us is like we'll

0:50write a song on the piano or the guitar. And then you, when you start playing the song you realize, okay, this sounds pretty as Metallica would say, stuck. Yeah. If you haven't seen some kind of monster. That sounds a good movie. A lot of it is just like you play songs, you write songs on the guitar or the piano. And then you realize like, okay, like, if you, when you start recording a song like that, you risk that it just sounds like any other song. You're like, say like, okay, how do we make this different? How do we make this sound like something that hasn't done before? And for us, a lot, for us, one of our tricks is to go on to like our samples and play the chords, but with like synthesizers, you know, so it just doesn't sound like we're playing a C and a G on a guitar or playing a C and a G on the icicle setting of the keyboard. You know? I've said that though,

1:40that takes you a bit away from mainstream rock. So you're kind of trying to go, you're trying to make a living off this, but without catering to the masses. Right. Right. Well, that's just like, that's, I mean, that isn't that a lot of people's goals? I know. I'm not saying it's a bad goal by any means. I'm just saying it's, it makes it more, you're challenging yourself more than you need to. You've got to challenge yourself because you've got to make yourself happy ultimately at the end of the day. If you're, if you're not happy doing it, then what's the point? Right. So I mean, it's to us, it's never really been about, um, about making, yeah, I wouldn't know. It's not about making money. To us, it's about, it's always been about being happy. You know, we were, for me, I was in college going to school about to get a degree and we got signed to it, you know, Triple Crown, which did not give us a lot of money. The deal was shit. Um, and it was just, but we just wanted

2:31to do it because we, we, we loved playing music. Yeah. And so at that point, you're just like, well, you do it for the fun of it and you do it because it makes you happy. And, and that your happiness kind of, uh, it kind of suppresses the financial aspect of it. Yeah. A lot of times. What's on you into music? What, what were the records that started, that started you? I think the, the music that got, that got me into rock music was, was Nirvana's Never Mind when I think I was in sixth grade. I feel like it was sixth or sixth grade. Somebody played me Never Mind. And at that point, I kind of delve into Pearl Jam and Soundgarden and Nine Inch Nails and you know, you play, but your music's very different than that. Oh yeah. I'm just saying, I'm just saying when I was nine, ten years old, that's what, that's what I listened to. That's what I was like, okay,

3:17I want to play the guitar, you know, and because I'd always play the piano since I was four and, but I never want, I never wanted to play music. I was good at it. But my, my mother was really adamant about, uh, me playing the piano and I, I think I even signed a contract with her when I was like eight years old. This was because I hated the piano so, so much, but I was really good that she was, she was just like, you know, if you, I'm, I'm going to bet you a thousand dollars that at 18 years old, you're going to be happy that I made you play the piano. I was like, hell yeah, maybe like wrote out a contract and everything. Did she get that thousand dollars? No, she never got it. Because at about like 14 years old, I think I was the first time I, I think I, I went to private school my whole life and in eighth grade before I went to private

4:05school, high school, yes. In eighth grade before I went to private high school, my parents let me go to public school for one year because all I did was complain about wanting to go to public school because it, because my school had, I think 12 students in it. Oh, so it was just, it was a really small school and I felt really, really isolated and it's like little bubble and I hang out with kids in public school that lived in my block and I really felt like, I felt like an alien half the time. They're like, oh, they're just like all their cultural differences and it's like silly because you literally live in the same block as these people and they're like, you don't have the new like Looney Tunes badass t-shirt and you're like, what's the Looney Tunes badass t-shirt? I wear a suit and tie this cool. And so then I went to public school for one year and I made all these friends and I had a party one, one night. My parents let me have a party and I remember like,

4:52like we had the big piano in the house and like, there were all these cute girls and they were like, you play the piano? I was like, yeah, I sat down and literally like the entire flock of people like gathered around and I was like, oh, this is why the piano is good. It gets girl. And then I was like, yeah, my, I think you were right. So let's talk about this waste challenge because that's probably gonna get you some girls too. Yes, lots of girls in the waste challenge. And do one thing. So what do you do one thing? Tell people what to do one thing is choosing something to do through the environment to have a positive impact on the environment. But the simplest thing is to kind of get rid of your your plastic water bottle use. I mean, I'm still learning about it all now. One of my closest friends, Mike's, works for Ace. And so with that he did a waste challenge about,

5:43I want to say it was like four or five months ago and I was in Chicago actually visiting him. He lives in Oakland now. But at the time he was working in Chicago. And so what happened was, is that we hung out for like two days because I had the day off and he was doing this waste challenge. I remember first thinking like how ridiculous it was because we were going to a restaurant and, you know, he's like, there would be a napkin and like, silverware on the table. And he'd like, give it back to the waitress and be like, listen, like, I'm trying to do a challenge where I don't accumulate any disposable waste for the month. Can you put this napkin back, like where the napkins are and just moving back a fork and a knife, you know. And when you bring me out food, like, please don't give me any paper goods with it. Like, as I remember thinking like this is like a

6:28little too much, you know, you're taking a little too far. Like, I feel like a lot of people are going to look at you like, dude, come on, you know. And then the more I thought about it, I was like, it made a lot of sense. Because then I, you know, it makes you think. And you get put back into your place of like being on your, in your van or your tour bus and watching like, you accumulate a bag of garbage every like, you know, twice a day. It's just people just throwing out bottles, throwing out trash, throwing out whatever it is. And you realize it like, honestly, like 90% of the stuff that we throw out is kind of unnecessary. It's just, it's just a matter of convenience. It's a matter convenience that you have a water bottle or that you have your bottle of Arizona iced tea, you have you know, you have your takeaway food, you have your, you know, when you go to McDonald's and you see, I see like every single, and it makes you aware of these things that when you see somebody like go

7:17to get napkins and they'll grab 20 napkins and put it on their plate. And you're like, they're only going to use one napkin. Or maybe they'll use five napkins to wipe their hands once. And you're like, what are you doing? You know, like you didn't need to use any of those napkins. I did it for two weeks last month. And once you tell yourself you like, you prepare yourself with the fact that you're not going to use napkins, you just eat more cautiously. And then if you have to wash your hands, clean your hands, you go to the bathroom and you rinse them with water in your air dry. You're probably eating healthier too though. You eat as you can't, you're not going to grab a little pack of the barbeas on. You can't use any packets of barbecue sauce, butter. You can't eat fast food, because it's all pre-packaged. And it just makes you, even like when you go out to a restaurant, it's really simple to sit down and like, well, first of all now I'm aware of when I walk into a

8:02restaurant if they're serving everything on plastic, you know, plates or they're giving it to you in like, in like a plastic wrap. And it's, and like, I've been a little bit more selective. I think it's, one of the things that my friend Mike said that, that rings true, but I'm still like getting used to it because I still feel like this like certain like energy pull that's different. But that I've been more cautious in working, when walking into certain restaurants, like looking in the window and seeing that people are eating like from like ceramic plates and with regular silverware. But the thing that he was saying, which I agree with and I'm trying to find my voice with it, is to be more vocal, like walking into those places and actually making other people aware and saying, hey, like, would you mind giving it to me, you know, without the paper under the

8:49under the food or like, you know, you're making that sandwich, but do not wrap it up for me because I don't need it because it doesn't need to be wrapped, you know. And so yeah, so it's mainly just eating food in bulk, you know, like, like a lot of nuts, fruits and vegetables that you could get in whole foods, like that. And then eating at restaurants that aren't going to be wasting anything. And that's kind of the only thing that.