- Today on the "Shaped by Sound" podcast, Sam Beam of Iron & Wine.

Sam Beam of Iron & Wine, thank you for being on "Shaped by Sound".

- It's great to be here, James.

Thanks.

- So you're originally from Columbia, South Carolina.

- Yeah, not too far.

- Yeah.

Part of the Carolinas.

- Part of the Carolinas.

- But you sort of moved all over the place, right?

- Yeah.

Grew up there and then went to school in Virginia, in Richmond, and then was in Florida for a while, and Texas for a while, and then we came back 'cause all our family's on the East Coast.

- And so you're currently in Hillsborough, is that right?

- That's right, yeah.

- Yeah.

What's it been like living there in Hillsborough?

- Pretty Hillsboroughish.

- Is it Hillsborough?

[Sam laughing] - It's really quiet and nice.

You can walk to the grocery store, which is helpful.

Yeah.

- Are you going to Weaver Street Market a lot?

- I do.

- Yeah?

- Frequent the Weaver Street.

- You walk by the Eno and hit the Weaver Street.

- Yeah, that's right.

Yeah.

Have you been watching me?

- No.

Oh God, no.

It's 'cause I've done that myself.

That walk is really cool.

- Yeah.

- And they have all that Occaneechi stuff there too.

That's really sweet.

- Yep, that's right, that's right.

- And if you keep going down that path, you go to the old NASCAR track.

- That's right.

I do a run in there quite often.

It's great.

- [James] Do you really?

- It's like one mile around.

- Yeah.

And they still have the old like grandstands over there from the high school that used to be there.

- Yeah.

- It's cool, man.

- It's pretty cool.

- It's like an ancient like artifact, but it's only 60 years old.

[both laughing] - That's true too.

That's true too.

- So I guess you're in Hillsborough and you know, you've got your family out there now and obviously, and what's it like sort of being a dad, being a husband, and sort of balancing this creative and professional life along with all that?

- Well, you know, some days are easier than others.

- [James] Yeah, for sure.

- I don't know.

I've never been doing it without having that going on.

There's definitely days like, oh man, why do I have all these kids?

And then there's definitely days where I look at people who don't, I'm like, how do you manage, you know, keep your boundaries or you know, just how do you figure out how to navigate your life.

- [James] Yeah.

- Because there's no, you know, once you get out there and you're being successful and the draws of that from one direction to the other, I found that having a family is pretty grounding for better or for worse.

- Yeah.

- And sometimes I do it right and sometimes I don't.

But you always have a, some kind of beacon you're looking for.

- Sure.

And how does that sort of, that balance, how does that feed into like your work, like your songwriting?

- I mean, you definitely have to carve out your personal work time, you know, because the family always, you know, there's lots of logistical things to take care of.

It's a lot of time.

- There's volleyball practice.

- There's volleyball practice over and over again.

So much volleying happening.

Yeah, practices and, you know, all this stuff.

- [James] Yeah.

- But yeah, for some reason that's helpful because it makes you take your free time seriously.

Or it makes you demand your free time and use it when you have it.

And so that's been helpful.

- Is that sort of like, that routine, does that sort of force you into like turning on a creative switch or not?

- Yeah, I mean, you have to, I'm not gonna say it makes me feel creative.

- [James] Right.

- But it definitely makes me say, yeah, I think it's nice to have a punch the clock feeling, you know, Brill Building, songwriter kind of thing.

- Yeah.

- 'Cause I rarely have anything to say.

I don't think most people have much to say, obviously, think they might have something to say.

- But you don't think that you have much to say.

- [Sam] Yeah.

- Why is that?

- Because I just don't think about, you know, my opinions on life as like something to share like that.

I get into, and you know, I'm not saying that's, you know, obviously, there's lots of songwriters who do have lots of things to say.

- [James] Yeah.

- Whether you want them to or not.

But I don't, I like making things, you know, like using words as like a color palette or something and then sort of getting lost in what kind of phrases turn you on or not.

That's how I kind of make my thing.

But it takes a lot of time.

- Right.

- You definitely have to put the time in for better or for worse.

And so the punching the clock thing helps me feel like I got something done at the end of the day, whether it was one word or getting rid of some words, you know.

- [James] Yeah.

- Just makes you feel like you're actually doing something.

- Yeah.

You're really wordsmithing.

- Exactly.

Instead of like waiting on the muse to pop by because it's not very, it does what it wants.

- Right.

- You can't really count on it.

- Has that always sort of been the case for you?

Or do you feel like that's sort of- - Yeah.

- [James] Flowed throughout time?

Yeah.

- Yeah.

I mean I had like a visual arts background, so pretty early on you sort of realize that you just gotta put the time in.

- [James] Yeah.

- Really, that's what it's about.

Not necessarily epiphanies - [James] Yeah.

- But just doing it.

- I'm kind of curious then, that now that you live in North Carolina, you recently put out "Light Verse", new record.

- [Sam] Yeah.

- And just generally, I'm wondering, do you think that like place that where you're living can contribute to what you're writing for your songs?

- Oh, definitely, for sure.

I mean, you know, you can write about, I mean a lot of my songs are sort of made up.

They have autobiographical elements, but that's a lot of, you know, BS too.

But your experiences are your life.

I mean, you can talk about what you've read or a story someone told you, but you're also filtering it through your own experience.

So I have a lot of Texas songs when we lived there.

- [James] Yeah.

- And like you were saying, like how did your family weave itself into your work?

You know, they're all over the place in my work.

I'm not gonna say this song is about, you know, daughter number three and this experience when she lost her dog, you know, whatever.

But those things all get filtered in there.

- Yeah.

- Yeah.

This place has a lot of, it's a lot of trees.

I seem to like talking about trees all the time.

- I mean, there is, at one point, I guess when John White, one of the early explorers landed here and, you know, took over everything, he was saying that you could walk on a pine tree from the beach all the way to the mountains and never hit the ground.

- That's probably true.

- So there's a ton of trees here.

- Yeah.

- But I'm wondering, like, you're talking about that like how your songs or parts of your songs as a color palette that you're sort of working on?

- Yeah.

- Does the place, like the trees, like do the greens?

- [Sam] Yeah.

- Does that contribute to that?

- [Sam] Definitely.

- Yeah.

- Definitely.

I mean, I'm kind of, I write songs about sort of your, you know, they start with like a tangible experience, you know, something like you smell or you see, and then they go off in other places, memories or, you know, just sort of a synthesis of these different kinds of ideas.

But yeah, a lot of time I'll be sitting outside and, yeah, I don't know, I don't really have like one way to do it.

- Oh yeah.

- You just sort of like dig in and see what you feel like writing about that day.

- [James] Yeah.

- Also the people around here are pretty cool and funny.

They end up in there too.

Yeah.

But I'm not sure I'm writing anything for the Chamber of Commerce.

- [James] I hope not.

Gosh.

- Come visit North Carolina.

- No, no, no, no, no.

Yeah.

I guess it's sort of interesting kind of tapping in and learning more about songwriters and how, you know, and learning about how they've been to a place and how that affected them and then how that ultimately sort of influenced what they were writing.

And it's really interesting to hear you talk about the color palette.

And that's something I kinda wanted to jump into with "Love and Some Verses" the book that you just released.

- Oh yeah.

Thanks.

- Which is incredible.

It's sort of this look behind the curtain of Iron & Wine and going into your lyrics, and your painting, and your visual art along with sort of a background of the songs.

- [Sam] Right.

- Which for us as the listener is always really great to get.

- That's awesome.

- And I'm kind of curious, you know, what made you wanna do the book?

- Well, we had another, we had a previous book, but it was more of like a guitar tablature kind of book and it had the lyrics and stuff included and a lot of, you know, photos and stuff from over the years.

And this other publisher, Roger, he saw it and was a fan of just the lyrics.

And we had never done anything where it presented the lyrics sort of, or like poems then.

And at first, I'm like, I don't know.

'Cause they're songs, you know, they're not poems, but he won.

And so it's cool.

I mean, I love, I have a fetish for books, art books.

- Yeah.

- Can you say fetish on PBS?

- Sure.

- Alright.

- Well, I think you said earlier, so why not?

Yeah.

- I didn't say it, you said that.

- [James] Oh, oopsies.

- But now that I know.

- Yeah, there you go.

- Man, it's gonna get spicy.

I'm a big art book collector.

- [James] Yeah.

- So anytime someone says, you wanna do a big book?

I was like, yes.

They don't have to twist my arm or nothing.

- Yeah.

Do you have a big coffee, like book collect?

I mean is just like a bunch of art books on your coffee table?

- Yeah.

And also.

- [James] Just everywhere.

- On the shelves and yeah, a lot.

- [James] Yeah.

That's cool.

- Well, I went to art school, so that was my, the library at art school was my favorite, my happy place.

You know what I mean?

- Yeah, of course.

- Getting lost in the, you don't really pay attention in class, but you just thumb through all the books.

- [James] Sometimes that's just as good.

- [Sam] Sometimes better.

- Yeah, right?

So what was the process like?

Can you talk to us a little bit more about that?

As far as the layout, and like what went into it, and did you influence sort of how that was, and what you wanted it to be or?

- Yeah.

Well, just as a way of, you know, for simplicity's sake, they're all in alphabetical order and they had a lot of, we provided all the photos and different kind of concert poster materials from over the years, so they kind of pair 'em up with different songs from different eras.

There's a lot of pictures from my actual notebooks from where I wrote the stuff.

There's a lot of album artworks.

I do most of the album artwork.

- [James] Yeah.

- Over the years.

- What is it like for you to like see your like journal or just like notebook, just like in a published book?

Like is that kind of nerve-wracking in a way?

- [Sam] Yeah.

- Yeah.

- Yeah, I mean, it's like, huh, okay, well.

But you know, at the same time, it was a long time ago.

Most of them were quite a few years ago, so it's, you know, kind of just a peek.

- [James] Yeah.

- Open the curtain a little bit.

- What was it like for you to revisit all that stuff as it was coming together?

- You know, I'm kind of accustomed to it now.

I mean, I must say at the beginning I was really a lot more shy and also just sort of cagey with that stuff.

I didn't want people to see how, you know, what goes in the sausage, but now I don't, yeah, if they're into it, they're into it.

- Yeah, what was the change?

- I definitely have lots of artists' time desperately, you know, a lot of artists over the years that influenced me that I would love to see their notebooks and see because it kind of humanizes the thing.

One of the things I thought was really in, did you see that Beatles documentary thing they did back?

- I did.

- You know, that super long one?

- Yes.

- It was wild to see, I mean, I don't know why I assumed that they did this, but you know, a lot of our heroes, we just sort of assume that they bequeath these songs fully formed from the ether, you know?

- [James] Right.

- And they don't, they develop just like anybody else develops them.

- Yeah.

Sometimes Ringo's gotta come in early and just help Paul hammer out that song, right?

- That's right.

That's right.

- And just smoke cigs the whole time.

- Yeah, that's right.

That's right.

So it's that kind of idea, you know, just relaxing a bit and just letting people see it's not about me, it's about them.

You know?

- Does it make you, like, I guess you said time is what's really enabled you to do that, but has it been something for you where beyond just time, you're kind of just at this point in your career where you've seen yourself grow a bit?

Is that something that's sort of like, you've seen sort of that evolution a little bit and that's what helps?

- Yeah, I mean, definitely.

I'm not sure.

I mean, I feel like over the time I just let go a bit and it's fine.

You know, at the beginning I was very meticulous about presenting things in the right, you know, the way that I thought was important.

And then you go back and you look back and you're like, hey, that wasn't really great, I'm not sure why I thought that was important.

And then realize that, you know, people are gonna like what they like and you're gonna think what's, you know, try to do what you think is important in the moment, but your opinions are gonna change.

And so it's best to just give them, you know, do your best in the moment and just relax.

- Yeah.

And put out a really cool book.

- Yeah.

I think I also thought it was gonna, you know, the career was such a fluke that I always thought it was gonna disappear.

You know what I mean?

And now 20 years later I'm like, well, maybe it's gonna work out.

And so, that's a freeing thought.

- [James] Yeah.

- You know?

- [James] I bet it is, I mean.

- Because I didn't know what I was, I was just winging it the whole time.

And that's- - You feel like you were winging it for 20 years?

- Oh yeah, still am.

- Yeah?

- I mean, to imagine that, you know, to think that you have it figured out and it all worked out according to plan because of what you had envisioned is ridiculous.

I mean, we're all just winging it.

- Sure.

Yeah.

I mean, and what were you like, I mean, what were you envisioning when you first got started?

Was it just to play music and be on the road, and hang out, and write songs?

- Yeah.

I mean, I had no idea what I was doing.

- Yeah.

- I think I just, I was interested in songs, like making songs and this label called and I just said, yes.

Let's see what happens.

- [James] Yeah.

- Having no clue.

- Yeah.

So you just buy the ticket, take the ride, and see how far it goes.

- Yeah, exactly.

- That's cool.

Wanted to touch a little bit more on the book and.

- [Sam] Sure.

- Within the book, and whenever you were talking about sort of the summaries from record to record, you're really sort of starting to describe a lot of creative leaps that you were sort of taking from record to record.

- Oh yeah.

Trying to, trying to.

- Yeah.

Well, what inspired you to take those leaps?

It felt like that kept happening throughout time.

And I mean, that must have been nerve-wracking, right?

- Yes and no.

I mean, you're trying to step into unfamiliar territory to grow as an artist, but I'm not sure that staying in the same place and trying to, you know, make the same songs over and over again would be any less nerve-wracking.

- Right.

- You know?

- Yeah.

- And so, for me, it seemed like a natural thing.

Not scary, because at the end of the day, I mean, it's art.

I mean, no one's gonna get hurt.

- Sure.

Yeah, that's a great way of thinking about it.

- And so you're just trying to make something interesting.

I mean, you're, you know, for me, you know, I have a family and so the success of the career and the amount of food on the table is pretty, they're synonymous.

- [James] Important.

- And so I'm definitely concerned about things, but I also don't feel like, you know, I'm not gonna put out a metal record.

You know what I mean?

- Why not?

- It's gonna be something people recognize.

Honestly, some of the differences are just sort of in my own head.

- Yeah.

And I mean, within the book, you were talking about "Ghost on Ghost", right?

And at that point, you're putting a lot of horns in there.

It's kind of an evolution from the previous record, which also featured a lot of pop and all that.

And then you said, you know what?

I'm gonna just stop doing that.

- Yeah.

I mean, I feel like I was fighting, the first 10 years was like me fighting the success of the first record.

Just it was such a, yeah, it just has like a pigeonholing effect anytime you have like some like, get success for a very specific sound.

- Right.

- And so, I mean, I couldn't give much quieter, so I just kept on getting louder and more.

- Yeah.

- And they, you know, didn't seem wrong, 'cause I love that music.

- [James] Yeah.

- I love all those types of music.

But I wanted to, you know, just push myself to see what kind of records I could make.

- Yeah.

- And wiggle out of the pigeonhole.

- Do you feel like you were learning as you were doing?

- Definitely.

- Yeah?

- Still do.

- Yeah.

'Cause it was, I mean, you were pushing, I guess, yourself as an artist each time, but you were kind of learning as you were doing, but also doing it with a group of people that you really trusted, right?

- Yeah, yeah.

That's what makes it easy.

- Yeah.

- Yeah.

- But was it also sort of, you know, nervy there too, where you're in a group of people that you think are just like tremendous musicians and you're like, I'm still learning this for the first time?

- I mean, I try to get in that situation every day now still.

- Yeah.

Why is that?

- Yeah.

- Yeah.

- Well, because, you know, that's, I mean, the minute you have it figured out, it's no fun.

You know, I mean, that's what making art or creative work is about to me anyway.

- [James] Yeah.

- You know, seeing what's around the corner.

And So that's the way you do it or that's the way I try to do it.

Surround yourself by super-talented, cool people and see what happens.

- [James] Yeah.

- Luckily, I didn't have any musical training, so I had nothing, you know, it was only upwards for me.

It was not, I couldn't learn, you know, I had everything to learn.

And so it made it easy.

- Well, I'll say just from a listener perspective, I think the evolution was really cool.

- [Sam] Thanks, mate.

Thanks.

- From me as a young person to where I am now, it's been really to kind of see you do different things and push yourself that way.

- Thank you, man.

- It's definitely influential, I think for a lot of people.

Within "Love and Some Verses" we get to see more of you as a visual artist, right?

- Yeah.

- And many of your album covers are your own art.

- [Sam] Yeah.

- Does your visual art and your songwriting sort of influence each other?

- I don't know.

A lot of people ask me that.

I should come up with an answer, but I don't have one.

- It's okay if there isn't one.

- I think so.

I mean, I think they come from a similar place.

I'm not sure how much they talk to one another.

- Yeah.

I just like communicating with visual.

I mean, I do it with the writing, you know, there's not a whole lot of like explaining feelings.

It's a lot of just sort of describing what's happening.

- Do you feel like the palette, like you were talking about earlier, that palette that you kind of used to inspire some of the lyrics and the lyricism, does that play into the artwork that you're developing or?

- Sure.

Yeah, I mean, some of them are more, you know, just visual pattern colors.

I like the way colors talk to one another.

So there's a lot of pattern work stuff.

And then some of 'em are more story kind of pictures, you know, where there's like figures and things like that.

But they all, yeah, they all come from a similar, I don't know, there's like a surreal quality to it, but there's also like a homemade quality to them.

And I think that is similar in what I'm trying to achieve with the songs.

Yeah, it's hard to say.

- [James] Yeah.

- I'm just kind of winging it, like I said, I don't really do a whole lot of self-examination with it because I feel like as soon as I do, it starts to, I'm either achieving what I'm trying to make out or I'm failing at it, you know what I mean?

- [James] Yeah.

- You either, if I observe or talk about what I'm trying to achieve with the art or with the music too, it starts to narrow what's possible.

- Sure.

- Sounds ridiculous.

- No, well, it's, I'm gonna bring up a weird analogy here.

- Sure.

- But I play basketball a lot.

- Yeah, you do.

- And it's one of those things where the better I play, the less I think about playing.

- Yeah, I like that.

- It seems as though, because you kind of just get into, I don't know, a flow state, maybe.

- Doing it instead of thinking about it.

- Yeah.

You've spoken sort of about your experience during COVID and how difficult that was to write songs and to just, you know, do a lot of anything to be honest with you.

But from what you've said, you were able to start painting and focus in on that.

- Yeah.

Yeah.

- Why was it easier to sort of pick up a paintbrush than a pen?

- Well, during COVID I was having trouble, I didn't know what to say, I didn't have anything to say, you know what I mean?

There was this really intense thing happening that you're hearing about and experiencing all the time.

You're hearing a lot of people talk about it.

And I didn't really have anything to add, but when I had my quiet moments to myself, the guitar and the notebook, I couldn't think of anything but that.

And so I just put it away for a while.

But yeah, I got busy with other things.

Painting, I played a lot of guitar, just couldn't finish a song.

- [James] Yeah.

- I started a bunch of songs too, but just couldn't wrap 'em up for some reason.

Yeah, it was just a noisy time.

- Yeah.

- You know?

- It feels like it still is.

- Yeah.

- You know, regardless.

- And so, yeah, I just did other things.

I worked on a lot of artwork.

I feel lucky in that way.

And I have these other outlets.

- [James] Yeah.

- Spent a lot of time with my kids.

Wholesome things like that.

- Yeah.

Doing art in your backyard.

- Yeah, exactly.

- But kind of on the other side of that, in your experience songwriting, when do you know that you've like got something that you can kind of come back and be like, you know what?

I feel like this is a good time to put this down?

- Oh, you mean like as far as getting back into songwriting?

- Yeah.

- You know, it wasn't like an overnight thing.

It was kind of a, I went back into the studio 'cause I love recording, so I was like, man, I gotta get these wheels rolling somehow.

And so I did some, went to the studio with my friend Matt Ross-Spang and my buddies from the band Phenom.

And we went to Memphis and did some Lori McKenna songs just to keep working.

- Yeah.

- And she has great songs.

I was listening to 'em at the time and just like, let's do this.

And then when things started to open up, I went on tour with Andrew Bird and was just sort of playing music more and hanging out with, you know, musician types, my favorite folks.

- Yeah.

- And that's inspiring too.

And so, you know, one by one it was, you know, it just became, I also think, you know, the atmosphere was just different.

Things were opening up and wasn't quite so intense.

And so I was able to just sort of finish up things I had been working on and yeah.

- Just felt like a better time?

- Yeah.

- You would kind of grease those skids a little bit.

- I think so, yeah.

- [James] Yeah.

- I mean, it was just a couple years later, but it was, it felt very different.

- Yeah, that Andrew Bird tour, that was at Koka Booth, I think you played here locally.

- Yeah, that's right.

Played to the lightning.

- Yeah, you did.

- That was crazy.

- That was wild, it was a wild day.

- Sure was.

- But it was a great set.

And gosh, Andrew Bird's so good too.

- He's all right.

He's amazing, he's amazing.

- The two of you together is such a cool combination though.

- Thanks, thanks.

- I know he's played here a ton too, so I felt like just like a really great fit.

- Yeah, he's like the ultimate straight man, so I just felt like a goon.

- Really?

- Yeah.

He's cracking jokes and stuff.

- Well, I think you had this like neighborhood set.

- Yeah, I did.

- And you were talking about it and then I think you just were like, yeah, it was just for fun.

We were just having fun here.

- Yeah.

- It looked really intricate though.

I felt like there was a lot of time you put into that or somebody put into that.

- Yeah, they did.

I mean, I had this idea of me in like a giant, you know, in like a little neighborhood and I was a giant.

- Like Gulliver?

- Yeah, totally.

Yeah.

Because it's just me, you know, doing this solo thing and this big outdoor thing and I was like, how do I, you know, just have some fun?

- [James] Yeah.

- And then they turned into like being the lights themselves and it was cool.

- [James] It was very really cool.

- Yeah, it was interesting.

- So I wanna kind of segue a little bit here.

So you started out sort of your creative career as a filmmaker in film school, right?

- Yeah.

Yeah, well, even before that, I went to an art, I went to VCU in Richmond to the art program and thought I would be a painter.

And then got into photography, and filmmaking, and stuff, and then went to a film school later and still thought I was gonna do that stuff.

And then taught film and worked on a bunch of commercials, and movies, and stuff.

And then the songwriting just sorta took over.

- Yeah, what was that like for you, like to work in film?

It seems like you didn't like it at all.

- It's cool, I mean.

- It's funny 'cause like I'm on the other side of this and I am working in film.

- I think slagged it in the book, didn't I?

- [James] Yeah.

- It was frustrating, you know, because I'm a fragile artist type.

[Sam laughing] And there's nothing wrong with the film industry.

The problem is with me.

- Oh.

- It's just, songwriting is just so much more immediate, you know what I mean?

I could write and record a song and have a song by the end of the day.

And filmmaking is, you know, it's a lot, there's a lot of wheels.

- Yeah.

Lot of people involved too, right?

- Yeah.

I mean, but it takes that many to make something that cool.

You know, my favorite part about it was always that it was like all the mediums in one, you have storytelling, and visual, you know, photography or whatever, you know, the visual elements and also the writing.

You know, all these things.

Music.

- Yeah.

- Everything in one big grocery bag.

- Yeah.

And, well, that kind of feeds into something I wanted to ask you about, because, you know, your music has been used in film and television so much.

- Yeah, I've been lucky.

- Yeah.

I mean, "Garden State", "Twilight", there's like, I looked it up on how many television shows there were.

It's just immense.

- Yeah, we're trying to get 'em all.

- Yeah, why not?

- [Sam] Yeah.

- Yeah.

There's not that many out there now, right?

But I'm wondering, so like, on this other side of your career, I guess, like, what's it like to see your music sort of interpreted in this visual medium that's not your own?

- Yeah, it's always been really cool.

I mean, I think it's cool.

I've also met, like, lots of people in the film industry, had like opportunities, like producers say like, well, you wanna make a movie or something.

I'm like, what the, you know?

- Yeah.

- And you know, before this career I would've, you know, killed a man to be in that position.

Now, I'm like, I have nothing, no movie that I wanna make.

And people are like begging me to do something.

I'm like, what the?

Life is weird.

You just never know.

- Yeah.

- You know?

You just follow your muse and see where it goes.

But it's been wonderful to approach it from that direction where I was always trying to bang on the door on the other side of the house, you know?

But to slip in through the back was pretty interesting.

- Yeah.

- Not planned, but also really cool.

- And so I mean that also like gave you this and just large exposure.

- Yeah.

Yeah, I don't think, it's hard to say, you know, there's lots of moments that have happened along the way that you're like, I don't know where I would be if this hadn't happened or this hadn't, you know, what would you, it's hard to say, you know, to talk about those things.

But at the same time, I can say before "Garden State", this movie came out and their song was on the soundtrack.

We played to a certain size room.

And then after that, those rooms were double in size.

And then the "Twilight" scene came out and that room was double, you know?

It was a really big effect.

- Yeah.

What were you feeling as that was happening?

Were you like excited or?

- [Sam] Just happiness?

- Yeah?

- I mean, yeah, it's cool to see things, you know, that feeling of like, you know, it's working out, this thing is successful and you don't, you never know where, I mean, I was so green, I had no idea what to expect or what to take from those moments except for just being happy.

- Because you talked about, you know, early on you just liked to record music in your apartment or your house and just like, make music and just focusing on that.

And all of a sudden you're doing it for rooms that are doubling.

Were you not just like nervous?

- I gotta say I wasn't any more nervous that time than I was the very first show.

You know what I mean?

Breaking through that fear, which was real and scary.

I was always like the behind-the-camera person.

That was me.

And then, you know, you just get up and you do it because there's no other way to make music, make money doing music than to play concerts.

- [James] Right.

- And then, eventually, you learn to like it.

You know, there's something exciting about no net, you know, about getting up and doing, see what happens.

And I've messed up in front of a million people and no one got hurt, you know?

- [James] Yeah.

- They still, you know, so the worst thing that could, in my mind, the worst thing could ever happen, happened over and over again.

You know, messing up in front of people and I was okay.

And so, eventually, you just learned to enjoy that fear and let it push you forward.

- Does a part of that, like, and using that fear has it sort of turned into excitement?

- [Sam] Yeah.

- Like, you just channel into like a different kind of energy.

- That's what I mean, yeah.

Let it push you to things that you might, you know, never have thought of yourself trying to do.

- [James] Yeah.

- Yeah.

- I wanna talk a little bit about the show that we had here today, or just talk about the show generally and your performance because you were able to work with Manual Cinema.

- Yeah.

- And, gosh.

- Super fun.

- Super fun, incredible.

You were able to utilize that shadow puppetry as a visual effect inside of the show.

And I would love to know how that creative partnership with you all began.

- Well, it seems ridiculous to say I've always been into shadow puppets, but I have always been into shadow puppets.

- Wait, when did that start then?

Yeah.

- I mean, in film school I learned a lot.

There's like films, you know, old animation films about shadow puppets, you know, made with shadow puppets.

And you know, the Indonesian, I don't know what you call them, but I just was so fascinated by that kind of art form where you're able to suspend your disbelief so easily and like stretch it so much.

You know, you can, I mean even like the butterfly with the hand thing, you know, or the dog or whatever you're like, yep, I see it.

- [James] Yeah.

- You know what I mean?

And like, I'm with you.

Where are we going now?

It's just a really fun space to work in because the audience just gives you, they're on your side like immediately.

And so I find it really fun to stretch out and do those kinds of things.

So I've been talking to my management about working with shadow puppets, thinking maybe we'd get a couple, you know, hippies with a bed sheet and a flashlight or something and do something.

But they were like, well, that's funny that you say that because we just met this shadow puppet troop from Chicago, 'cause they do regular performances and their name's Manual Cinema, we're gonna call them.

And so, yeah, it took us a while, but we all figured out how it was gonna work.

'Cause they'd never done, they had done a lot of performances, but never a traveling kind of show on the stage with an accompanying music.

And so it was a learning process for all of us.

But it was a fun one.

- Yeah.

But what was that creative kind of jazz that was going back and forth that you were playing?

You know, they were doing a visual side of it.

You're, you know, bringing your songs to this melting pot here, like what was that like?

And trying to figure it out, like.

- Super cool.

I mean, they have great ideas.

I mean, I talked about, you know, talked to them in like general terms, you know, like things with transition, you know, one thing, like something becoming something else or you know, something vague like that.

And then they would just run with it.

And a lot of them, they just came up, you know, 'cause they do this all the time.

Thought about, they would just go through the material and like maybe a phrase or a word or something would trigger something to latch onto and they would come up with a whole sequence.

- So they were kind of building off of what you were doing.

- Yeah.

Some of 'em are lyric-specific images and some of 'em are just vibe.

You know, some they would just react to the way a song made them feel.

- That's really neat.

And I'm wondering too, like, as you're playing, so as you're doing this live with Manual Cinema.

- Yeah.

- What does that bring to the live performance from your perspective?

- I mean, I think it's fun 'cause I'm looking at the crowd and they're all like, you know, looking at me.

It's nice to not feel like the center of attention all the time, but also you could see the audience really enjoying what they're doing.

Like, there's a couple revelation kind of moments.

There's one where Julia is, you know, you see her arm moving, like she's in the thing and then all of a sudden it, she's goes still.

And then there's like a, she has a little car puppet and so, it's always like, it's all of a sudden it's a car moving down a mountain or something.

And you just see like the whole audience is like, you know, like it's really fun.

I've had a lot of people say that they didn't know what to watch because there's so much happening.

You know, they have the band and they're all doing their thing and you have the puppets and you have like all the, you know, it's a lot.

But in my mind, it's a good problem.

- Yeah.

What do you think it does for sort of the storytelling that's happening, whether from you or from the shadow puppets?

Like what do you think about that?

- Well, I mean, the idea is to keep interpreting the songs.

I mean, I didn't have any specific kind of imagery that I wanted to, you know, there wasn't anything specific that wasn't already being said in the song that I wanted to say.

And so it's really like making a music video or something.

You have this opportunity to like, make something that either dances with the song in a good way or is stamping on its feet or whatever.

And so, yeah, it's an interesting opportunity.

- Yeah.

Do you think you'll continue to do like things like that with your live performance in the future?

- Oh, I hope so.

- [James] Yeah.

- I hope so, yeah.

- It's 'cause it seemed like live music is evolving into a place where like this visual side of it is becoming more and more apparent.

- Yeah, I mean, I think we're all trying to do something to, you know, turn people's heads on the stage.

I mean, that's one way to make it a different experience than, you know, watching it on YouTube or something, is to have these things that are happening that, you know, you can record them, but they don't always translate to the way it is in the room.

- Yeah.

And I will say just as an audience member and watching you all work together, it's really cool to see the mediums combine because it does speak to the power I guess of that, right?

- Thanks.

- Having a live interpretation of the song and creating a visual and what that does for just story, period, right?

- Yeah.

I mean I think people are, you know, whatever happens with technology, and music, and stuff, people are always gonna wanna see a performance.

Whether it's, you know, musical performance or dance performance.

You know, that's what we do.

- We're still gonna put the shadow puppets against the wall with our hands, right?

- Exactly.

- Yeah.

- Or maybe watch a robot do it or something.

- God, I hope not.

It's a scary time.

So a question that we like to ask everyone that kind of comes in and does these performances is how are you shaped by sound?

You know, something where, we've created this show where we started thinking about how sound sort of influences us as people, as communities.

So I'd like to take an opportunity to just ask you, you know, how do you think that you were shaped by sound?

- Oh, wow, a lot of ways.

I mean, I was just always, you know, kind of a music obsessive, I don't know.

I found, you know, my parents had some cassettes and I wore 'em out.

I liked, we went to church a lot when I was a kid and my grandma would sing the harmony parts and I was like, oh, what the, you know, just into the sounds of things and obsessed with, you know, punk rock music when I was a kid to the point where I, you know, would shoplift things.

Stupid.

- Won't tell anybody.

- Oh, they found out.

- [James] Oh.

- Yeah.

And just always around.

Most of my best friends are ones we, even now, I saw some of my friends from high school.

All we talked about really was music.

It's just always been around.

- And has it sort of informed, I mean, at a certain time, has it informed you what, I mean, you kind of talked about it in your book a little bit and where you made this big decision to say, I'm not going with this visual medium, I'm going to just jump full-on into producing music.

- Right.

I think that had a lot to do with opportunity, you know, that was the opportunity that was opening itself up to me.

Where other things maybe, you know, if I'd put the time in that I put in, I put a lot of time into working on songs.

And if I had put the same into other things, maybe they would open up the same.

But at the time, that seemed like the easiest path forward.

It was feeding me back, whereas other things were taking.

- Yeah.

What's feeding you back now?

- Music, artwork.

Yeah, kinda the same.

- Yeah.

- Yeah.

Just sort of, I mean the things change.

There's always something, there's only 12 notes, but it seems like endless possibilities.

And also, you know, just being creative.

I'm just, I feel really lucky in the sense that I've probably been a miserable failure at anything else.

But I landed in the right spot, you know, to be a happy person with my personality, my commitment to what my skills are.

I feel really lucky.

And so mostly what's been making me happy, just sort of appreciating it.

- So I'd like to take a moment now, and what we've been doing as well is kind of going through the setlist for the performance.

Kinda going through the songs and just seeing if you could provide some context to why you added it to the setlist.

It's okay if, you know, there's, you say, oh, I just think that was a fun song.

I just wanna play it.

But it's been really cool to hear people talk about them and then see the performances.

- [Sam] Okay.

- So I'd like to kind of go into that now if that's okay.

And I first wanted to start off with like, what is your approach to a setlist?

- Oh, it's like a maze man.

Ooh, it's complicated.

Well, I try to, you know, do enough of the new stuff to keep people happy and also dip at least a song from every record.

Try to do some, a lot of them are just songs that we haven't played in a long time 'cause there's that, you know, actually having something to bring to it after playing it over and over and over again.

And so a lot of these songs are those kind of songs.

Do you have one in mind?

- Yeah.

So I could go through the list here and if you wanted to, we could kind of just walk through it a little bit.

- Lets walk.

- So "All in Good Time"?

- Well, "All in Good Time" is a new song.

And it's been probably the most popular, I dunno what do you call it, radio or internet?

Whatever.

- It's a smash hit is what you're saying.

- Exactly.

Exactly.

That's the one.

On the record, it's a duet with Fiona Apple.

So people like some Fiona Apple, man, it's been great.

- Gosh, how could you not.

- Yeah, her voice is incredible.

So that was a treat to be able to do that with her.

And it gave the song a lift, which has been really great.

People have been reacting a lot.

And so we've been playing that one.

Sometimes if I have an opener who's up for learning a lot of words, they'll come up and sing it with me.

- Yeah.

- Amythyst Kiah was singing it with me for a while.

Lizzie No's, she says she's game, we'll see.

- [James] Yeah.

- But it's a lot of words.

- Yeah.

- And so yeah, it's fun.

It works both ways, it's fun as, you know, someone's retelling of their memories.

And it's also fun as like a, you know, back and forth little shooting match between people.

- Yeah.

What about "Walking Far From Home"?

- Yeah, "Walking Far From Home" is an older one that I hadn't really played in a long time.

I don't know why.

I guess just 'cause there's other songs that got in the way, but it's been fun to bring it back, you know, it just lists over and over again this long journey.

We were walking far from home, I saw all these thing, I saw this, I saw that.

And by the end, you kind of forget where you started.

And it's fun, you know, it's a fun one for the shadow puppets to work on too.

- Yeah.

Is it fun to kind of come back to that song?

- Yeah.

- You feel like you're still walking on that path a little bit maybe?

- Sometimes.

Yeah.

I mean, any of these songs you come back to later in life, if they're an open enough set of lyrics and you've lived a bit, you inevitably have like different connotations, you know, or reactions to some of the lines.

It's interesting.

- Yeah.

Is that, like for you as a singer-songwriter, I mean, is that really cool to come back to a song that's, you know, 10 years old and be like, huh, I'm thinking about that a lot differently than I was before.

- Definitely.

- [James] Yeah.

- Definitely.

- [James] Do you sort of surprise yourself a bit and you're like, you know, I'm glad I did that?

- Sometimes, yeah.

I mean, I also have the other direction too.

- Oh really?

Yeah.

- No, it's fun.

It's fun.

I mean, you know, it's kind of like, I always compare it to high school photos, you know?

When you look and you're like, huh, I was wearing that.

- Interesting decision I made there.

- [Sam] Yeah.

- Yeah.

- Or then you're like, yeah, that's not so bad.

Look at that hairdo.

- [James] Yeah.

- You know, it's a lot like that.

You don't have much control over it, but it's kind of fun to- - [James] To look back.

- Yeah.

- Yeah.

- What about "Yellow Jacket"?

- Oh, right.

"Yellow Jacket" is a newer song that has a real kind of orchestral feel, the record.

So it's really fun to be able to bring that to a stage.

It's kind of an off-kilter melody too, which is fun.

And the shadow puppets do this beautiful, I mean, it mentions the aurora borealis in the song and they were able to do this thing with a little tray of water that was pretty magical.

- Yeah, it is really cool how they do that.

- [Sam] Yeah.

- And I also wanna mention this too.

So about, I guess this, I don't know how long ago, maybe it was this summer, you did a show at the Haw River Ballroom.

It wasn't really a show, you've been inside of a documentary.

- [Sam] Right, right.

- And you did a documentary screening and got to go to that, which was really cool.

And you played some songs.

And then afterwards, we got another light show, it was an aurora borealis outside, did you see that?

- I did see it, yeah.

- That was so cool.

- Crazy electrical storm.

We had another one just the other night.

- I know.

- Yeah.

- Where are all these coming from?

- The sun.

- Yeah.

But yeah, that was so cool.

We were all just standing out there just like, oh my gosh.

- Yeah, it was pretty wild.

- Yeah.

- You could barely see it with your eye but everyone took a picture with their phone and, you know, it looked incredible.

- Yeah, it was like one person figured out how to do the long exposure and then we were teaching each other how to do the long exposure to get the shot of it.

- Totally.

- And just standing outside of the Haw River Ballroom, after you're sort of set in documentary screening and we're all just had our heads up in the air just like, oh my God.

- Wow.

- That was really cool.

- "Anyone's Game".

- Oh yeah, "Anyone's Game" is, I discovered this poet from, well, I mean he was like my grandparents' age, Vasko Popa, Serbian poet.

He has this cycle of poems called "Games", short little poems where he describes life in terms of like a games from childhood, like hide and seek or freeze tag or whatever.

And I just thought they were so clever and really funny and fun.

So it's like sort of my homage to his poems.

- Where did you find that poetry?

- This, I'm kind of on the hunt all the time.

The New York Review of Books has a series where they're, some of 'em are are books, but a lot of 'em are like, sort of surveys of older poets where Charles Simic had translated these.

And he was one of my favorites, or he still is, but he passed away not too long ago.

And so I discovered it through that.

- [James] Yeah.

I say Serbian poetry, man, you're really digging.

- I'm a nerd, it's cool.

I don't mind.

- No, that's amazing.

"Resurrection Fern".

This is probably one of, this is on "The Shepherd's Dog", right?

- That's right, yeah.

"Resurrection Fern's" from "The Shepherd's Dog" record.

It's an older one.

I can't remember.

I think the Manual Cinema asked if we were gonna do this because they had an idea of the ferns growing on a house or on a car and like on a life, you know, this kind of thing.

And so I was like, yeah, let's do it.

But yeah, it's a pretty one.

- Yeah.

What was it like sort of seeing them sort of jam out and just come to you with something like that?

For the idea for "Resurrection Fern"?

- It's amazing.

I was very glad that I don't have to watch the screen 'cause it's very distracting when you're playing.

'Cause I have, you know, I have all these chords and you know, lyrics to remember.

So it's nice to, the first couple times we rehearsed, you know, the music was just, it was just impossible.

So we would get halfway through a song or something and it was just so much, what they were doing was so incredible, beautiful.

- Have you like, gone back and watched it, like from a different perspective?

Like, did somebody record it and you go back and watch yourself play with with them?

- I've seen bits and pieces, but not like whole songs.

I mean, I saw what they were doing as we were, you know, as we were developing the stuff.

But yeah, it's really, it's fun to watch.

- Well, we'll have a whole episode that you could watch.

- Yeah.

- Soon.

- That's right.

Love watching me.

- Gosh.

I'm sure that's not true.

- You smell the sarcasm?

- [James] Yeah, I did, yeah.

- [Sam] It's a smell.

- It was dank.

"Autumn Town Leaves".

This is from the "Weed Garden" EP, right?

So that was leftovers from "Ghost on Ghost"?

- Yeah, yeah.

Actually, no, it was leftover from a record called "Beast Epic".

- Oh, okay.

- And so it was a little bit later.

I can't remember if that one, basically, we had a couple leftover from that session and I think I just wrote like two or three others to go on.

And I can't remember if that was one of the original ones or written for later.

I think I had had it for a while.

But anyway, "Autumn Town Leaves" was one.

Yeah, it's just like a pretty, fragile thing.

We play it up a little bit, so the melody kind of has a little more muscle, for lack of a better word, so muscular.

And then, yeah.

And then the puppets, I can't remember, yeah, I can't remember what the puppets are doing.

- Yeah.

- I usually have my back turned.

- I'm wondering too, so when you have songs like that, that you, you know, like, yo, this is really good, but I'm not sure if it's right for this record.

Have you had stuff that's just late, it's been out there for a while, that you're just waiting for the right moment to put it on something?

- Yeah, definitely.

Yeah, we usually have quite a few.

- [James] Yeah.

- It's not, you know, it doesn't have really anything to say about the song generally.

It's just, you know, when you're putting together a sequence, certain things make sense and certain things just get left out.

It's just the way it works.

But it's nice to have little things to hold onto and bring out later.

- Yeah.

Have you had any like happy like surprises like that where you're putting like an album together and you're like, you know what, actually, maybe I'll revisit this one.

- Oh yeah.

Sure.

Of course.

I mean, yo you mean like rerecord old songs?

- Not rerecord, but just like you'd already recorded it or you did a demo or something, you know, like, thinking it was gonna make sense for one thing and then it ended up making sense for another.

- Totally.

Yeah.

We have stuff, I mean, I usually stay pretty tidy and you know, if I have some stuff like that, I'll, I mean, it's a great way to start a new record or like you said, like an EP.

Just sort of do one or two more and just put 'em out that way.

Where I think people expect those shorter playing records to be a little bit more unwieldy.

- Yeah.

- You know, not quite as focused.

- So then we got "Flightless Bird, American Mouth".

- "Flightless Bird".

Yeah, the vampire song.

That's the one that people know from the "Twilight" movie.

And so yeah.

A lot of people have lived with this melody for a while, so it's really fun to play.

- Yeah.

I know we kind of touched on it a little bit earlier in our conversation, but what was that like to see your song?

Did you see the movie?

- Yeah, I saw the movie.

- Were your kids old enough to see it or?

- Not really at the time?

- Yeah, yeah.

- Later they saw it and were like, oh Dad, you know?

I have lots of people who, like my sister was watching "Parenthood", remember that song, the show "Parenthood"?

- Yes.

Yeah.

- It was like her favorite show.

- There's a ton of good music on "Parenthood".

- So much good music.

- Yeah.

Including you.

- In spite of me being on it.

- No.

- I was in the final episode.

Like, she called me like the next day.

She's like, thanks for killing my favorite show.

But yeah, every time, you know, we hear it in the grocery store or something, the kids are like, ugh, dad.

But you know, that's their life not mine.

- Yeah.

Are you kind stoked to hear yourself at like Food Lion or something?

- Yeah, who wouldn't be?

- Yeah.

Just like walking down the cereal aisle and all of a sudden you're on.

- I mean, you feel like, oh, okay's all working out.

- I'm sure that's when it clicks, right?

- It's pretty fun.

Yeah.

- That's really cool.

I know that there's a whole generation of people that know you from the "Twilight" movies and that's no shade to "Twilight", but it's just, yeah.

It's an interesting thing.

It's interesting song choice.

- Shade "Twilight".

- It's a funny story.

I had to, at one point, my girlfriend thinks they're really funny, but also sort of loves them for just what they were for her.

- [Sam] Yeah.

- I had to watch all in the one sitting once.

And that was a long day.

- Yeah, a lot of vampire love.

- [James] So much.

- So much seduction.

- Yeah.

And anger.

- For one day, yeah.

- Yeah, there's a lot of anger going on there.

A lot of angst.

- They have emotions too, James.

- That's true.

- Just 'cause they're the walking undead doesn't mean they don't feel.

- Right.

Yeah.

You learn a lot about that.

But yeah.

Okay, so other than that, we have "Singers and the Endless Song".

- Oh yeah.

"Singers and the Endless Song" is from the record, "Ghost on Ghost".

And it kind of slept, we slept on that one for a while.

I don't think I had played it, but maybe two or three times in concerts.

There's a lot of other material that stuff gets swept to the side a lot.

And that was one.

But so that was the reason we brought it back.

Just sort of a reason to, I was looking for a reason.

And sometimes when one's saying, hey, how about me?

You say, okay.

- Yeah.

- And so it was fun.

We turned it into like sort of a chant at the end in a way that it wasn't on the record.

And the Manual Cinema really went to town on this one where it feels like there's like a chase, existential chase.

- [James] Yeah.

- Between a rabbit and a fox or a wolf or something.

- It's pretty intense.

- Yeah.

- Like in a good way.

- Yeah.

- They really did a great job as far as the performance side of that.

- [Sam] Super fun.

- And they really feed off of that build.

- [Sam] Yeah, super fun.

- In fact, our chief content officer, Laura, who's a huge fan, she was watching and she goes, is it gonna make it?

And I was like, I think you know the answer to that one.

[both laughing] - A lot of people they say, they're like, oh, so sad.

- Yeah.

- You're like, well, it happens.

- That's life.

- Yeah, exactly.

Go complain to Richard Attenborough or something, not me.

- Man.

- That's right.

- I do wanna quickly, sorry, I wanted to backtrack just a bit 'cause I had a question about "Flightless Bird" and I wanted to ask you about it, if that's okay?

I feel like, so in the moment, I remember we did a couple of takes of that one.

- Did we?

- I think so.

And I felt a little nervous asking you about doing it a second time.

- Ah, tough.

- And so like, does that song for you as you continue to play it, like, how does, I mean, does it get sort of exhausting?

- Yes and no.

I mean, you know, it depends on the day.

I mean, you know, it's like a Christmas carol, you know what I mean?

You sing this Christmas carols over and over again, sometimes it makes you cry and sometimes you're like, well, when are we gonna eat the casserole?

You know?

It's like an in-the-moment kind of thing.

I've tried lots of different versions to try to, you know, just sort of see where the song could go.

This is a bit more open, kind of not free jazz, but you know, it's a bit jazzier to give it some space and some air.

Let the melody kind of shine, or at least the chorus.

And so, yeah.

I mean, yeah.

But you also try to be professional and, you know, find the moments in the song that are still speaking to you.

- [James] Yeah.

- Sure.

- Do a lot of people come there and ask you about that song?

- Yeah.

I mean, it's a favorite.

- [James] Yeah.

- For sure.

I mean, a lot of people like that movie, man.

- Yeah, that's true.

Okay.

I've asked now, it felt good.

- Okay.

- It was one of those things I wanted to chat about you with and I totally forgot about it.

- Don't be shy, man.

Anything.

- And so the next song I wanna chat to you about was "Sweet Talk".

- [Sam] Oh yeah.

- [James] Yeah.

- Okay.

"Sweet Talk" is kind of a ridiculous song.

- [James] Ridiculous how?

- That's very fun to play.

You know, it's taking this idea of the wonderful life.

Let's have a wonderful life from kind of pulling it as far as you can take it.

You know, let's sucker punch a wonderful life in the face, stuff like that.

You know, it's a word game.

- Yeah.

- But it's a tongue-in-cheek, silly, fun song.

- [James] Yeah.

- Upbeat and fun to play.

- Just kind of playing with the like, inherent contradiction of what a wonderful life could be, what it is.

Yeah.

- Yeah, it's such a loose idea.

Let's just have some fun.

- Right.

And "Call It Dreaming".

- Yeah, "Call It Dreaming".

I feel like it was one of the more successful shadow puppet interactions too.

'Cause the Manual Cinema combined a real person on the screen with their little puppets.

I think it was like I was telling you earlier about the arm becoming the hill with the car and things like that.

That one really, I think it really works really well as far as what we were going for, as far as things transforming without it being explained why.

- Yeah.

- It's just exciting to watch.

- Yeah, there's a lot of body movement happening there.

- Yeah.

- And a lot of controlled, I mean, I think you really have an appreciation for that side of the performance from them, right?

- [Sam] Totally, yeah.

- Yeah.

- Yeah.

And so, yeah, that was a song from "Beast Epic", two people on an adventure.

Saying that this is, even though life isn't great, let's call this place paradise and just say it is.

And it's a sweet tune.

- And last song that we have on the setlist is "Angels Go Home".

- Oh yeah, "Angels Go Home".

That's another one, I felt like the puppets were really successful as far as what they were doing with the window in different places, different settings, different landscapes.

I don't really have a real specific idea what the song is about.

It's just a real, you know, a lot of 'em I treat as poems rather than essays.

I know how it feels and I know what I'm saying.

I'm not sure I was necessarily making a specific point.

- Yeah.

- But it felt like a closer so we put at the end of the record, and I really enjoyed working with the orchestra that we used for the record too.

- What was it like to work with an orchestra?

- Very expensive.

- [James] I'm sure.

- It was cool.

Luckily, my friend Paul Cartwright, who wrote the scores and stuff, he had a lot of experience, so I was just sort of observing, but it was a learning experience, that's for sure.

- [James] Yeah.

- But when we play the show for you guys, it's just stripped down to just me and the puppets.

- Yeah.

I've got just one last question for you.

And what's next?

- There's more music coming.

We ended up almost recording about two records worth of stuff for this record.

So there'll be more stuff coming soon.

- [James] Wow.

- Yeah.

- [James] Well, that's exciting.

- Super exciting.

- So you're gonna be a busy man.

- So busy, James.

- Yeah.

- What the heck?

- Well, hopefully, you get some time to hang out in the backyard, and play volleyball, and do more art.

- [Sam] That's right.

- Yeah.

- That's right.

- I guess, I'll just end the conversation with opening it up to you and just saying if there's anything else that you'd like to say that we haven't mentioned.

- I can't think of anything else I wanna say about myself, but I am psyched to be on this program.

It's just a cool idea that you guys have to do this local, you know, North Carolina thing.

I think it's really, you know, I feel like North Carolina's needed something like that for a while.

- [James] Thank you so much for being here.

- Yeah, it's super cool.

- It was one of those things where, you know, we thought, oh, well, maybe we'll ask him, just see what he says.

- Never hurts to ask.

- And then all of a sudden, the trailer was just pulled up to the back of PBS and it was really neat and it was an incredible production.

And thank you so much for joining us.

It was, I mean, just a pleasure to do that with y'all.

- Thanks, man.

You guys did a great job and everybody was so cool.

It was fun.

- Awesome.

Well, thank you so much.

- Yeah, thank you, James.

- All righty.

- Thanks, everybody.

- Thanks for joining us on the "Shaped by Sound" podcast.

If you'd like to hear some of the songs we discussed today, you can find them on our website at www.pbsnc.org/shapedbysound, or find us on the PBS North Carolina YouTube page.

Thanks for listening.