Bartees Strange

00:00:15 Speaker 1: Pushkin. Bartis strange is an amalgamation of musical styles. Listen to any given song on his newest release, From to Table and you can hear hints of Earliott's emo, auto tuned hip hop vocals, and country blues, all housed in an indie rock veneer. Bartiz wide reaching sound makes perfect sense given his Midwest upbringing and early influences. He was raised in Mustang, Oklahoma, as one of the few black kids in an area still rife with the threat of racial violence. As a young teenager, Bartiz discovered Christian hardcore music, and for the first time, he felt at home in a scene that embraced outsiders of all kinds. After graduating college, Bartisse moved to d c where he joined the labor movement and worked with President Obama as a press secretary at the FCC. Overcome with the urge to play music, barti He's moved to Brooklyn when he was twenty five and found a bunch of musical collaborators. In twenty twenty, he released his genre bending debut album, Live Forever. This year, Bartiz dropped his follow up album, Farm to Table to critical acclaim. On today's episode, I talked to Bartie Strange about his ascent into the upper echelon of indie rock now that he considers artists like Phoebe Bridgers, Justin Vernon, and Lucy Dacas friends. Bartisse also performs an acoustic version of a song heavy Heart for us, and he plays stems from two of my favorite songs from his new album and reveals how he's able to expertly blend what he calls sections on sections. This is broken record liner notes for the digital age. I'm justin Richmond. Here's my interview with Bartie Strange from the Bridge Studio in Brooklyn. We start things off by talking about his recent work producing other artists. How does make your records for others impact to your own music or does it not tremendous? Slay So, like I put out Lift Forever in twenty twenty. I produced that record and recorded it with my friends and we'll say it New York in a in a barn. After that record, I got all this production work, so I was able to quit my day job right and I had already started writing farm to Table, but I was like, I'm gonna wait on recording that until I record these four albums because I'm gonna try a bunch of stuff that I'm gonna do on Farm to Table and so for proper cinema, hearts Low Tides this band called Cherish out of DC. I just tried all types of stuff on those records to see if I could get the sounds I wanted. And you know, I wanted to make the records too. Their beautiful records, and they don't sound like me, so I put it. There's a lot of stuff on Farm to Table that I tried on those other records. If you listen to them, you'll hear it for sure. How did you get the sounds on Lift Forever? It's gorgeous sounding record, Thank you. I think the way I got those sounds was being pretty limited in the tools I had. Honestly, I had to really use my ears, and I had a really clear vision of what I want wanted it to sound like. I knew I wasn't capable of making a like pristine album. I didn't have the skills to do it, but I did know I wanted it to have sauce like. I wanted it to be like interesting and flavorful more so than anything. I was like, I want vibe vibe first, and I do the same thing for all the records. I catch sounds on the way in. I don't do a lot of stuff in post like I don't do a lot of like dry tracks, Like every reverb, every delay, every compression, I catch it on the way in. I'm squeezing super hard as I track. What's the genesis of that record? Lif Forever? Lif Forever? What's the earliest known either song or part or even just lyric from that record? Two songs, Mustang and Boomer. I think I played those songs in different capacities in like three or four bands before I decided on the arrangement for Lift Forever, and pieces of those songs songs are in bands. I played a band called Stay Inside Almos, a hardcore band out of Brooklyn. They still make music together, but my first inklings of those songs were in those in those hardcore bands. The lyrics, I do lyrics like Dead Dead, Dead Last. I never really start songs with lyrics. I'll start with like a melody, but I don't know what the song's about until I finished the song. The arrangement that kind of tells me what the song is about. Honestly, you don't even have a thought about what it's about based on the feeling. I know what the emotion is, but I don't know the words. I just kind of freestyle in the demos and once i'm the arrangement is there in a way that I feel like truly emotionally captures the song. I feel like I'm able to meet the song with the lyrics. It's almost I have to build it and then I can like put the final like jinga piece in it. You know. It's Yeah, it's a really interesting way of working. Oh it's cool because I feel like it takes all the pressure off of me as a lyricist, because it's like the song is telling you where to go, Like if you nail it, the song is it's like giving you the answer. Sometimes and I try to write lyrics before the song's done, I end up writing for a song that doesn't exist. It's like these lyrics don't fit in that song. It fits in this other world that's in my mind. But like this song doesn't want those lyrics. Yeah, it wants something else. Do you think there's any song of yours then that might be operating and like on two levels, like an emotional truth that comes through the feel and the sound and the arrangement, and then maybe even lyrics that refer to something that might not even have anything to do with the initial drive of what you were trying to capture in terms of feeling. Yes, Heavy Heart the first song on Farm to Table. The lyrics of that song are very kind of sad. I think the hook is like, I never want to miss you this bad. I didn't mean to run out like that. Some nights I feel just like my dad rushing around. I never saw the god in that. I work so hard if you can't fall back, And then I remember I really upon a heavy heart kind of thinking about times I feel guilty for things I can't control. But I wanted to juxtapose that with a song that felt super victorious and driving and upward moving. It kind of feels like a song by the National, like off a Boxer or something. The drums are extremely like pounding and repetitive and driving and NonStop sixteenth notes the whole time. You know, the guitars, there's like five guitar tracks. They're going the entire time. They create like a round, like a loop, it's like a mantra, and then it just explodes through the bridge and you have all of this arrangement that's sending a signal of like extreme momentum upward, but the lyrics are like downward. You had that arrangement, that exact arrangement before you. I definitely thought some of the arrangement must have come after the lyrics, but I guess you the lyrics are reacting to the arrangement. That makes sense. I just some reason thought of it because when I heard the arrangement, I was like, this is a perfect picture of the record. I'm trying to paint where it's like holding two extreme emotions and at the same time, because most people are happy and sad all the time. Yeah, it's like good days and bad days have happened on the same day all the time. And that song was me trying to do that through the composition and the arrangement of the track. Do you want to play the first song on heavy Heart? Yeah? Yeah, yeah cool. There's three reasons for heavy Us. This past year, I thought I was booking you so nice, Cherry Scoff, we should go to n I never want to miss you this back. I never meant to run now like that. Some nights I feel just like my dad rushing around. I never saw the god and that while work so hard, if you can't fall back, then I member rely too much upon my heavy are. And that's a shame putting up black. It's with scheme. It's a NAT's on the train, that's on DC. Fuck you man, put the red down on your team. Yet I don't need no one but me. Yeah, she said in my turn, and I geeked. She said in my turn, and I geet. She a whole lot of bad news. Put the law on it. Yeah, fool, I'm a rich nigga rad dude. I can buy that, damn fool. When I think about Jay last week's Yeah, how you blad out in them sheets here, how the doc said you were clean? Holloway y'all put on me. I never missed you this bat. I really had had to run out my bad my hand on the small, love your back touching around. I really thought the God in that watching how he braced for impact. Then I remember that too much of fun, my heavy heart. There's reasons for heavy heart this pastie. I thought I was brokeken. You look so nicey a cherry scar hard we should go to to run No more often. I never want to miss you this bad. I never meant to run now like that. Some nights I feel just like my dad rushing around. I never thought a god in that. Why work so hard if you can't fall back? Then? I remember I RelA too much, A punt. I hear you keep on rocking, MB free world, baby beautiful. Thanks. Where did those lyrics come from? Yeo? So COVID was a weird time. Is continues to be a weird time. After I put out livet Forever. I mean I was working a full time job and working from home and doing the whole thing. Record came out and I got all this production work and I was able to quit my job and everything was going so well for me at a time when so many people in my life were experiencing like the most trying times of their lives. My grandfather died, they had a funeral, everyone went to the funeral, got COVID, A few of them died. It was just over and over and over, just horrible things. And I was like, Yo, this is horrible, but also like I'm having like the best time of my life, you know. And I was like, at a certain point, You're like I want to celebrate this, but I feel guilty for wanting to, but I felt like it was still important to celebrate. I think like joy as a form of resistance is like super real. So eventually, after feeling guilty and having a heavy heart and feeling bad about everything, I was like, I'm going to take a second and just like take some take stock here because things worked. This is working, and that was really big for me to do, Like I had to do it for myself, And that's what the song is about. It's kind of counting all of these things that I felt so guilty for, you know, my dad working so hard all the time, or us not going to my partner's city, Toronto, you know she's from Toronto, not going up there and we had a chance, and now we're locked in the house for two and a half years and I feel bad that I didn't schedule the time. Or my granddad dying and me not seeing him enough before he died, you know, and then being like, but then I realized, you know, you can't continue to like move forward in life feeling bad about everything that happened in the past. At a certain point, you gotta turn over a new leaf and move forward. Reminds me of tours. I imagine though, that that's written about your experience of touring, right of being a working musician, quitting your job being a working musician. Yeah, kind of to me. The song's about turning into your parents. My dad was in the military, he was an engineer, and he would go on tour quote quote military tour all the time. My mom, she's an opera singer, so she would tour a lot too, And I remember being a kid and being like, oh, I'm never gonna do that, Like I'm going to be home and like raise a family and do the thing. And then I got I got older, and music worked out. I was able to like tour and I love it. And in that realization, I learned more about my parents and like why they toured, and it was because they loved it and they wanted me to see them doing something they loved. And so the end of the song I ended by saying like, I'm I'm your son, like I'm you, you know, and another realization of getting older, just being like dang, like and turn it into my parents, you know in this in this funny way. Have you had conversations with them to this effect and it's cool because my parents have always been so supportive of my music and they're so pumped that everything is going the way it is, and it's not uncommon that I'll reach out and I'll be like, this shit is so hard, and they're like, no one can encourage me like they can, you know, because I've seen them do hard things and they know what it's like to sacrifice and go after things and face challenges and overcome them in a way that we can relate to each other on a deeper level now, So it's a special relationship. Music has deepened our relationship in that way. So when people hear military dad, I think the first thing they would think is like disciplinarian, And if they're opera singer mother, then they would probably think that she might have been the lenient one or maybe pushing you towards the arts. Military man and an opera singer, yeah is a great pairing. Yeah. My mom and dad they met in high school. My mom was the girl that could sing and dad was an athlete. In North Carolina, my mom went to Eastman School of Music. Her choir director at church sent a tape to the director of music at Eastman and let my mom in school and then my dad he didn't really have a lot of guidance, so he joined the military. And you know, over the years, you know, my mom she was you know, heavy and teaching us how to sing, and you know, we sang in church and I went to opera camp and my mom was very involved. But she never like forced me into music. She was a musician herself, and which I think she knew how hard it was, and she was like, if you really want to do this, you got to really want it, and I'm not gonna like force you. You know, what was her experience as a musician, like after going to school. I think my mom faced a lot because there were a lot of black opera singers, especially not once from the South and black woman at Eastman and Rochester, New York in the seventies. You know, I think she there was a lot of firsts for her, and I know that it was hard for her. Did she want to go to New York? Did she ever do that? And I think she did. She did, and then she got some gigs in Europe and that was another reason. You know, my dad was station in Europe. My mom was singing in Europe, you know, Hawk Shuler and London. You know, she was doing her thing. But after she had us, she moved into like the educational role and she taught music at the University of Oklahoma, where I ended up going to school. She was a vocal professor there, got her PhD at Columbia. You know, she's a she's real, she's deep. But my dad was the one that actually really got me deep into music because he was a record collector and when he would come back from Japan or Korea or wherever, he would always bring like turntables or like tape decks, reel to reels. He was like really into like monitor like listening to music. He's not a musical person creatively, but he collects, and so he was putting me onto like sly Stone and Teddy Pendergrass and Parliament and Rides the Funking Stein and like, honestly that was like rock and roll to me. I was like, oh, these are like rock records that I fell in love with. First, Bootsy Collins, you know, Rick James. That was my baseline. Was like opera gospel from mom, but like the expansiveness of what music can be through what my dad was showing me and looking back, it's funny, Like you would expect my dad'd be the disciplinarian, but he was more of the creator. Like my dad like it's super handy, works on cars all the time, like always building stuff. He's an engineer, but like that creative tick and like wanting to engineer and build things. I got that from my dad, that need to create something out of nothing. I repurpose something, yeah, something better or more useful to you or whatever, or being like how'd you make that? Like that's like my dad in a nutshell. He's always like, how do they build that? I'm going to figure it out today. We'll be right back with more from my conversation with Barties Strange. We're back with more of my conversation with Barties Strange. So you mostly grew up in Oklahoma, right, Yeah, that's where most of all my raising was. Aside from what you're parents were playing around the house. What was the music that you and your friends were listening to. The first like record I ever bought was Millennium by the Backstreet Boys. Yeah I had that, Yeah, it was great. And then the second one I got was Get Richard Died Trying fifty cent record. My mom was like super Christian. She was kind of like weird about letting like too much secular music in the house. But like I said, at the same time, my dad was like playing me Rick James records. Black parents are hilarious. They'll be like, you can listen to Teddy Pendergrass, but you can't listen to like one twelve. Yeah, yeah, super freak school. Yeah. I'm like, okay, cool, right, turn off to the night side of Candle. That song so good. But um yeah so. But the thing that really grabbed me though, early was hardcore music. My friend invited me to a show. I think it was like Victory Christian Center, some church in Oklahoma City, and Norma Jean was playing in the basement. Wow, that's I haven't heard that name in a long time. That was heavy, heavy, heavy, and I'll never forget seeing Norma Jeane. I saw It's too Actually that you mentioned that they're Christian band in California. Yeah, yeah, they're a Christian band. My mom let me go because they were a Christian band. I just told her. I was like, yo, like, there's a concert at church. It's Wednesday, you know, Wednesday night church. You know. She was like, great, go. You know, she was just like probably excited I wanted to go to church, and she drove me, dropped me and my friend off. We watched Norma Jeane play and I found out about all those Tooth and Nail bands, you know, under Oath the almost like I fell in love with hardcore music through that, and like at the drive in came close after, and yeah, they're from El Paso and so they would tour through Oklahoma and I just remember been like, dang, these guys always just speak Spanish, they don't give a shit about That was beautiful, you know for me to see because I was one of the only black kids people of color in my world at the time. But yeah, hardcore music kind of was the thing that grabbed me. And like skateboarding culture, we're like born in the exact same year, yea, and so similar experiences, and that if it wasn't rap or R and B well around the time like we were teenagers, was like very white spaces. Extremely Yeah. Yeah, I think that's why I loved hardcore music so much, because like, even though everyone was white, I didn't feel like I stood out because everyone was kind of wild, like people had like snake bites and like tattoos on their faces and crazy hair. I was just there in like khakis and a button nut, Like I was just a normal kid at the thing, you know, I wasn't the weird one. And I kind of loved that because I always felt like everyone was staring at me every time I went anywhere growing up. Yeah, but those shows, it didn't feel like that. So I found like a safe space and hardcore venues and those little like shitty bars and like random DIY spaces in Oklahoma City. When did you start to recognize that people were looking at you? My parents were really because they grew up in the South, were very upfront about the world that we lived in and wanted me and my brother and sister to be very like clear about where we lived and the repercussions of staying out too late or looking a certain way or being too loud or whatever. So I always kind of was hyper aware, I would say, like as a teenager and as a college student living in Oklahoma, I lived near like clansmanaged and shit people like end up missing and stuff when I was growing up, So you couldn't help but realize that is a part of your reality and this wasn't the time when black people were getting tied up and drug behind trucks and Texas. Yeah, man, I had friends from high school guys I knew, you know, have a bad football game, people run them out of town and shit like crazy stuff. And this was before like body cams and people tweeting and sharing videos and iPhones. It was like people would just go missing in two thousand and four, you know, like this is a nineteen sixty five, you know, and so we were aware, you know, of who we were. And that was kind of like I didn't realize how scared I was, honestly until I moved to like Brooklyn. It was the first time I lived in an all black neighborhood. I was twenty five years old, and you felt normal, Like you just felt like how you should have felt your whole life. Yeah, and I wrote Live Forever. Really that's literally how it happened. Wow, Like I was in a spot where I was around black people, creative people that looked like me. I didn't feel so weird. I was able to like really grow and express myself fully. And those friends are still my friends to this day. It's interesting you've heard to the fact that you went to Oklahoma University, and you kind of had a nice successful career going before music, Like you're on your second career here, you know, like your second endeavor. Yeah. I played football at Emporious State and I transferred to Oklahoma. And after University of Oklahoma, I moved to DC and started doing political work. Worked for Obama as a press secret two the FCC, and ended up joining the Labor Movement and I was an organizer and commas director in that world for years, and then the Environmental Justice Movement, doing a lot of campaign planning and political work there too, which was really special. Were you playing music at the time, Yeah, just playing guitar. When did you start playing music? I mean I had a guitar in high school, so I had like a little band called Belmont, which was the name of my neighborhood. You know, classic situation. And then when I went to college, I kind of played around school. I played with some really great players, John Calvin now at Abney, John Moreland, Samantha Crane. Those are some of the best in Oklahoma right now. And then when I moved to DC, I kind of shelved it because I was like, I need to like get serious about life and like make the place for hardcore music though the birth home I know, I remember well, I had to sell I had no money. I sold all my music equipment and moved to DC and I tried to find some bands to play in. But I wasn't really plugged in and I was I had no money, like you know, I lost my first apartment. I was homeless. I was like living out of my car. And then I met a girl and I was living out of the dorms at Howard, you know, pretending I was a student there. I was just trying to like survive. I didn't have time to like join a band, got you, you know. So then when I started getting jobs, I was just like cool, this is what I'm doing now. And then I hated it didn't feel good, and I moved to New York started playing in band. So I was like twenty five when I really started hitting it hard in New York, and I just gigged for five and a half years. Basically, So lifevers inspired by your moved to Brooklyn to New York and finding a space where you finally feel yourself like free, like comfortable, like not like an oddity everywhere you go, or no one's staring at you or wondering. What were the first songs that came out of that feeling Boomer, Mustang, Ghostly, those three probably I wrote. I wrote a lot of music for that record. I just picked those ten Boomers a crazy song. So I like that song. Where did you find the confidence to mix? Like I actually wrote down. I had to write this song out and like track what's going on in it? Because you know, first of all, listen, I was like, that's that's fucking cool. And then I was like, wait a second. I'm like the verses are like storytelling through like rap, and then you're into like a pre courses like R and B pop course just feels indie rock, and then the bridge is like a country blues or something. You know, You're like, yeah, damn. There's been adventurous artists like Prince has songs that feel like a country song or a gospel song. In Parliament the same. But it's like, don't everything into one song that guts yeah, some courage, man, dude. The songs, I mean, a song scared the shit out of me. It's it was a scary song to write because I thought people were gonna think I was corny. When I wrote it, I was like, people are gonna think this is whack. Like I love this, but I don't think anyone's gonna really understand this. But luckily, my friend Brian Damilia was like, dogs, that's the best song on the record, Like easy, you need, we're putting that on the record. I almost didn't put it on the record at all. I was like uh, And I was like, I don't think I'm gonna take it off the record, and he was like, that song wraps up the record. It like it's like such a clear picture of who you are, you know, Like I grew up in the country. The first shit I learned how to play was like blues and country music, and then it was like hardcore and I fell in love with hip hop and it's all of it in one song. Yeah, great, I love that song. It's a beautiful gift that you have. Did you always have that level of confidence? No, because I was scared all the time. I was scared of everything growing up. I was horrified to be myself. I felt like I was gonna get killed for it. That was like all I learned from my parents, grandparents, everyone, like everything was about fear. So when I moved here, I was the first time I met black people who weren't scared of anything, Like Nigga's outside all day, like like all day, you know, just kicking it, smoking, partying, drinking, having a good time whatever. You know. I never seeing black people so free. So I was like, I want to be like that. And so as I got closer to that, I was like, dang, superpowers, Like this is amazing. That's where it came from. I love it. I think I got drunk off of it because I've never had it before. It's an intense voice that you found. Yeah, but it's so different, Like did you feel that you had to make music that was from that same place, like almost trapped by your own creation in that sense, like or scared of it. No. I felt like that record gave me all the running room I could ever want. Like people expect me to do whatever I want after that record. If I made a country record, they'd be like, well, you know, it's kind of weird. Or if I made like a freaking like a fusion record, they'd be like, he kind of does whatever he wants, you know, Like, and that's kind of the career I want. I want to make a lot of stuff, and in my mind, I'm not limited. There are things I want to do that I'm just I'm gonna do. It'd be very hard for someone to pressure me into making a specific record unless it was like a fat check, you know, if I get the Kanye gig or something. Yeah, you know, now you're on four A D. You've you've taken the fat check A check? Yes, h h check? Okay, won't we won't, we won't. It's okay, it's good, it's very good. I'm happy. My life is fine. Do you feel like there's more people telling you what they do now or no or anyone strongly recommending. That's why I signed with them When I made Lift Forever, like no one wanted to sign me at all. Everyone passed on my album. Everyone. I was like, I get it, like it's weird as well, you know, it's weird whatever, but I think it's gonna work. And it worked. And then everyone came back and they knew I had vision, and they knew that I knew what I was doing and that I could make the record. You know, I don't need a lot to make the record. I can make them by myself, make it with my friends whatever, you know, like if I say I'm gonna do it, I'm probably gonna do it. And so for a d they you know, they I felt like with them, they they understood me the deepest and they understood that I had vision and they were just going to trust me. And I felt like they understood that I was in it for the long haul. Like I wasn't looking for a hit. I wasn't trying to make like the biggest song of twenty twenty two. I was just like, I'm gonna build this thing over time, and one day we're all gonna look down from the mountain and be like, look what we did. Because the bands I admire, that's what they did, Like what groups the National Radiohead TV on the Radio, Nick Cave, people who like, over decades build these followings that are just like you can't fuck with it. It's deeper than like having a hit. It's like I want a career like those because I feel like there's not enough black people that get that opportunity to be in like the alternative space and like have a career like the National. You know, there aren't. I mean, there's Prints, there's MJ. You know, there's dev mind. You know these people they're like pop kind of world. But like in my world, it's like, after all the music black people have made, like it's it's weird that there's not like a band like The National that's black. It's had like seven great albums and it's just like, you know has built that following. And I want to do that. I mean TV on the radio made some great music. They did, but they don't make music anymore. I know what happened. They need to. I really want them to make music again. Dog. I met tun Day for the first time like two months ago, and I was just like almost, I was like, keep it together. You know, he's like patron saint of my the world in my mind. You know, you're just like you're the greatest. Yeah. I had billboards all over LA for my album from the Table, and he was he was telling me about how he kept passing him and how he was like listening to the songs and how he loved the music. And I was just like, dude, like I remember watching you play Wolf like me in two thousand and six on The Letterman Show. Me asking my mom to get me a guitar the next day and I got a guitar, and I started dressing like you and like covering that song at every party I went to for like two years. And now I'm like just like talking to you at a bar in La before I go on headline at the Getty tomorrow. Life was fucked up. Man, It's crazy what can happened? And we have to pause for a quick break and then we'll be back with more from Bartie Strange. We're back with the rest of my conversation with Bartie Strange, who's about to play as stems from his latest album Farm to Table and break down how he built some of the tracks. We should talk about the creation of your new record. I know you brought some stems. Yeah, which song should pull up first? Whatever you want to pull up with mulholland drive, okay out of this track? Get built the song started with this wrote it on electric. Yeah, so straight up. I love like emo music like Twinkled Daddy, shit from the Midwest, Snowing, Sam Ruddick, American football owls, Cap and Jazz Cap and Jazz Mike and Tim Kinsella, all those guys, Victor Villareal. There's a lot of things that happened in this song. But it all started with a guitar line which is kind of like an emo kind of Midwestern thing of ainsla thing, like now you say, like tim yeah, big time. I mean it's especially when you kind of get towards the end of the song. There's some big licks that are big emo licks. I'll just press play, I guess yeah, please listen. Yeah. And now it's like war on Drugs. It's easy track. I don't know what's happening. I know who's playing on this, so I'm playing that lead line. My buddy Dan Kleiderman is playing the cool guitar lines which you'll hear during the chorus, and some of those commenting left here headphone guitar lines, the kind of like filling lead lines. Um. I played bass, and then my buddy John Days played bass as well, kind of the way I there's two basses on it, there's four, So the way I track, I'll play and then I'll have other people play and I combine parts like all the time. Can you solo the bass so you can hear that. So here's one bass track during this section, it's just synth bass. Day didn't just get over me. That's all we have, right, now that's the bass. What's happening? But then what stuffs men in my boat? Cutty in incoming every single time. So right there, it goes from wide, spacious base to a very focused based sound in the middle, which is this, this is me playing bass, this is John, and this is the other one. So you get this thing where normally people go verses are small, choruses are wide, but I wanted to go opposite. Made the chorus is very like direct and punchy. And the way I accomplished that was by making the bass focused and direct. Wow. So a trick. So yeah, that's a vibe. Moving on second verse, classic move different vocal melody than the first verse, and I threw an auto tune on it because I'm like switching characters. This is like not the same person that was in the first verse. I'm on the team. It's your favorite sing angel friend, the biggest and singing songs and the sand and I'm in such a So if you compare the verses first first vocal like, I don't know what's happening in man to this guy, I'm on the team, it's your favorite thing. I'm your nigga, I ain't your friend. Let's gop to the legglow the biggest and play the bands. Remember singing songs in GC all about how you like ty dollars? Yeah, sh it's hard. Do you identify with one more than the other? I'm both at the same time. I wish everyone listening to see your face right now, I'm like cheesing so hard. I love this, Okay, moving forward, jazz emo moment. You know what made you throw that those couple of chords in before the It felt like it was time to move on, you know, like I love that chorus because you know, first chorus is short, no repetition, it's just it's sung through one time. Second time, we sing it through twice with a little bit of an added measure, and then we come out of it with these jazz chords, which are very natural to me. I taught myself how to play guitar, so I don't really know what I'm doing most of the time. I don't know notes or chords or anything like that. But I wanted to create a shift that was out in the jazz sense, like something that really doesn't fit the vibe of the song, but creates a break that ends the space we were in. You know, I wanted to like leave that world and go somewhere else like now, you know, I didn't want to create a transition. I was just like shut that door, next room, amazing, And so I felt like that voicing, you know, it's like sounds like like Robert Fripp, you know, um. And to me it's also I like to show off, I guess you know. I like to be like, yeah, I can do that too, whatever Bloom Boom jazz or right next scord, you know, disrespectful. All my freaking band members are jazz nerds, like Berkeley freaking losers. You got a stunt on them. Yeah. I was just like I didn't do any schooling. And you know, I'm kidding. I love those threats. Yeah, I love them so much. And they and they're always like, yo, what key is this in? And I'm like, you tell me my my guy, because I just work here at Bartey strangealousy. I signed the checks. Somehow I feel like you've got cards to me. I don't really feel like I'm supposed to be my band, my brand, my band, my brand. Somehow I feel lucky to card to me. I don't want to be I was pupposed to be my band, my band, my band. I find it hard to get over this right now because when I'm talking it off, I've seen you like a bye. I find it hard to get over this right now. By you're really showing off on this song. And now I'm realizing, yes, you have more parts than you know what to do with. Yeah, sections, sections on sections, but yo, there's method to the madness. So that section, you expect it to go somewhere, but it never climaxes. We leave that and we just go right back to the chorus and we end the song. So even in writing it, did you feel like you wanted to go big there and stop yourself? What did you? Yes? I felt I was like, I was like, I want to lead them somewhere, and I don't want it to actually be gratifying. I want to suck it all back in and refocus it all small because That's how I'm feeling. Yes, it feels powerful too to take it away and not give it to them as a writer, as a musician, especially after showing them I can do all these things like I can do the jazz move, I can do the big guitar lick, I can write the tight chorus. We can do the cool auto tune thing. Got a nice sound of lead vocal in the first half. But I'm not going to give you the climax, and it's a choice. I like it. Yeah, should do one more. Yeah, let's see co signs or this song is. I was really proud of this, this song co signs right. I had this beat for a while. Actually, I had this for a while, this sound. Let's see if we can make this louder. And I came upon that sound because I was like, you know who Nils from is from a race tapes? I think so, yeah, he's a piano player. Yes, yeah, that sound is like sampled from his hit. He did this beautiful prima vera set with a juno one oh six, and that bouncy, scynth thing was a sound he was getting from that juno, and I like recreated the patch and played it right. So programmed that and I was like, this is dirty. And then Tom York put out Anima, that solo project, and I was like, this is like the coolest record I've ever heard. I really loved it. And so I was playing around a lot with like these like more Housier songs and It's like I came up with that little thing, and somewhere along the way. I think it was because Chris Conner's my co producer, was just coming off of this Kanye gig because he was working on the latest Kanye record, and he was telling me about it and how they were attracting the vocals and just how aggressive the vocals were. And then I was like, dang, let me dig in. So I started digging hard and all this Kanye stuff and I was like, damn, I really love how like evil and mean and aggressive and ridiculous this vocal sound is. It's like this insane, saturated, supergated, like really risky tracking. And I was like, Okay, let's see how close we can get to that. And then when it's like this radiohead meets Kanye meets like this indie rock thing, and I fell in love with it. I thought it was like a really interesting portrait or like amalgamation of ideas. I was also having this realization. I was in four A D's studio in Wandsworth in London, and I just come off towards like Lucy Dacis and Phoebe Bridgers and I was about to go onto at Courtney Barnett and Bonavere just checked in to see it what my touring schedule was like, and Martin Mills was coming down and listening to the music every couple of days, and I was like, Man, I don't know what happened, but this is working, Like I'm doing this shit. Yeah, And this song is kind of it's that energy. It's kind of like Boomer on Live Forever to me where it's like it's two or three vibes in a song, smashed in and succinct, but there's like an honesty behind it that like, I honestly felt like I was the only person who could have made this song because I was like in a stage of my life that I felt like it was really unique and I was around people that I'd always wanted to be around, and I was able to capture that feeling in this recording. Yeah, because that's a feeling you only have once. Yeah, you only kind of are ascending once, you know, all of that shit happens for the first time one time. And then I made this song. Damn, just got out the van. You personal hit me bass and ticks on me to sing my address first and Chicks and Day forget to sing time to fit this chance. It ass coma need to binge. I'm a I'm with Phoebe, I'm a jens Dan, I'm a chet, I'm a little see, I just got the scan hit according as my already stand, I'm a FaceTime. I'm with Justin. We already friends, We already friends, We already I'm FaceTime repeat the line just like Kanye West began. Definitely to me, I can hear radiohead, like the freaking bass line. It's like ball, just like the repetitive nature of the track and how it evolves over time. It feels like that to me. Anyways, it grows, Well, what's going on with the guitars in the background. Yes, lord, I play these guitars. They're the wiggliest, most fun guitars. And then this horn comes in. It's awesome. It's so fucking right. I love it. It's bizarre, man, It's like, that is not what the beat that you started with. Yeah, I would never in a million years think to put those guitars on it. It's weird. And then you've got this bassline down the middle. Could have been a radio ed song, right. I got co signs and Suns gonna ask my team my putter love for forty feet at the Beacon four week with the multiple pointy atus bed I don't know, yall. Yeah wow, that kind of jumps off into this like very what I would say, like a Tom York Anima style like housey section, like an intense thang like remember system of a down of course check this out not arials right Oh oh, I told you say, Yeah, Wow, those are good drums. Beautiful, that's a great playing. Yeah. My buddy Fabian Prinn played those in the UK at the forty studios. He's the house in here for four A d crushing drummer though, and literally we wrote it and I was like, okay, I can try and play the drums. And I went and played it, and I was like, you gotta play better version of this. Dog. I can't. I can't be the I can't be the drummer on this song. Good joy, Yeah, beautiful, Yeah, you crushed it. It's a beautiful, beautiful drumming. And then there's a lot of processing and dog, that's how those drums sounded when we recorded him, Like all these sounds for the most part were done live. That this vocal take I did it's all live. It's just hell of processing, like mostly through UA D stuff and a bunch of pedals. How many configurations did you have to go through til you found that chain? It took me like an hour because I knew what I wanted to sound like. I was like, it used to come off a guitar amp. I wanted to hit a space echo and it's got to be smashed and I need an auto tune. So I was like, how do we want to do this? You know, it's like we got you know, let's figure it out. And yeah, when we figured it out, me Christ and Fabian nils Um Radiohead System of a down kanyets, Yeah insane. Yeah, here, I'll play this vocal track for you just really quick. Just got out the van. Universal hit me Battle Chicks on me to sing me my address, first food chicks that they forgot to sing time to flip this transit what we work were doing for Universal? By the way, Oh, I didn't do anything for Universal. I just thought the line was dope, Okay, I just want no. It's like a hip hop move where it's just like I don't have a Bugatti. I'm not buying Birken bags for chicks, but I'm gonna rap about it, like because I will one day. I love it. It's like, but that's the fun of the song. It's like, when do you ever hear like a rap song talking about like Phoebe Bridgers, Lucy Dakis and Justin Vernon. It's like, yeah, it doesn't exist. Yeah, you know, it's like the it's an art project. It's it's fun. I love what you're doing. Than thanks man, Thank you so much, Bartise Man, Thank you. This was awesome. Thanks to Bartis Strange for dissecting a couple of songs off his new album Farm to Table and for sharing his creative jargon with us. You can hear all of our favorite Bartis Strange songs on a playlist at broken record podcast dot com. Be sure to subscribe to our YouTube channel at YouTube dot com slash broken record Podcast. We can find all of our new episodes. You can follow us on Twitter at broken Record. Broken Record is producing help from Lea Rose, Jason Gambrel, Vent Holiday and Sandler from Jennifer Sanchez, with engineering help from Nick Chafee. Our executive producer is Mia Lobell. Broken Record is a production of Pushkin Industries. IF you like this show and others from pushkin, consider subscribing to Pushkin Plus. Pushkin Plus is a podcast subscription that offers bonus content an uninterrupted, ad free listening for four ninety nine a month. Look for Pushkin Plus on podcasts subscriptions, and if you like the show, please remember to share, rate, and review us on your podcast That or the mus expect Anny Beats. I'm justin Richmond,