I became a baby again and it's the best thing that's ever happened to me - conversation with Nick Webber

good morning ~

(click the link / becoming sunflower to listen)

today’s track reminds me of “summer feeling” by Jonathan Richman, but probably won’t remind you of that song

tomorrow is Bandcamp Friday and so it would be an excellent time to book one of these Personal Tone Zones - - I may get around to putting some of the last tour t-shirts up there, as well :)

today’s newsletter features a conversation with my friend Nick Webber who I recently had the chance to play a gig with in Denver - - he and I have been connected over the Internet for five or six years now and it was so cool to meet him and his A Place for Owls crew and find that they are exactly as earnest and good at music as they seem online.

NW: My name is Nick Webber. I'm a singer/songwriter, artist, producer...and tech support guy? I play in the band A Place for Owls. And I help people make music.

MBB: Let's just get right into it - don't think about it. What's the one project you're most excited about right now?

NW: My solo stuff! I'm working on a followup to the record I did a few years ago. I'm a really slow writer. I have to have time to accumulate stuff - like a planet forming, one speck of dust that get its own gravity after a while. I call it an "input period" - I just need to be sponging. We're hitting the point where the tap feels on for songwriting again and it's been really fun. I feel like every time I do something with songwriting I'm worried that it's the last time, there'll be nothing left...but there's always something, it just takes some time.

I have a handful of things that are decently far along for that and it's gaining momentum.

MBB: Was playing the gig [with me] at Goosetown Tavern energizing for your solo music?

NW: Yeah dude - historically I haven't played my own songs much. I set somewhat arbitrary goals every year and this year's was not to pay for a haircut (which I've succeeded in) [laughter]. The other was just to say yes to life, essentially - yes to opportunities, even if my initial response is "that's scary, I don't have the energy for that," I've just been saying yes. That show was one such example. And yeah, dude, I'm so glad it worked out, so glad we did it. I was super encouraged overall.

It's been a big year for me - when I feel fear or anxiety I've been trying to acknowledge that the feeling is valid, but then saying "I'm going to do it anyway."

MBB: That's what it's about!

NW: Exposure therapy to myself.

MBB: Derring-do and bravery is not about not having those feelings, it's about doing what you want to do in spite of having those feelings.

NW: I think that's right. The more I do stuff that scares me, the less scary it is. So yeah, that's good! [laughter]

MBB: I want to tell you something - I just did a pretty thorough national survey of venues and shows on my tour and I feel like the reception to what you were offering your community was really remarkable and not typical for other places on Earth.

I think a big part of that is the professionalism and the hard work ethos that pervades everything related to A Place for Owls. You guys are doing a Big Boy show and valuing your work in a way that many are not, including myself. I personally like a lot of sloppiness in what I do because I like unexpected things and I'm uncomfortable setting myself too far apart from the listener. I want to be a little egalitarian. But you guys roll in with a very considered, very polished, very well-executed thing. And often when something is too professional-feeling it can lose the emotional core, but that is not a problem with your work. There's an emotional heft.

NW: That's rad, first of all. If it was just me running production it would be more simple. I say that, but I'm really glad that Jesse our drummer does what he does. Everything is way better for it. But he's really the brains and the energy behind it, he's the one running the in-ear monitoring rig. And I'm just like, wow, sounds good, dawg - I can hear my voice! That's so nice.

I feel you, though. Especially because we play a lot of DIY spaces and shows with a shit-ton of bands...

MBB: Yeah, what was our show, a Monday night? As they say: you didn't have to go so hard. But there's something so inspiring about the effort. And clearly Jesse loves running cables, he loves the tech of it, but that's the other part - the visible love of the work. Which is also uncommon, surprisingly. Jaded and wrung out, that is extremely not the vibe with you guys.

NW: It's easy to forget why you start doing something. There's a purity when you get into doing music, but anything can become familiar and rote and boring or just a drag. I think about the sound guy that night - Danny - who bought shirts from both of us. That's so sick when the sound person buys a shirt.

MBB: Oh yeah, that's a gold medal victory lap moment.

NW: But yeah, he told us both afterwards that the show was a big deal for him. I always want venue staff to feel humanized and included when I play a show. That's really important for us. If that was the only person who needed that tonight, that's worth every ounce of effort we put into this thing, you know?

But at the same time playing music is an insane thing to do. I think it was Josh Scogin of the Chariot / Norma Jean that said this...to do music you have to have total, 100% insane faith in what you do, but also realize that it's not that big of a deal. Both things are true. Putting on a show it's important to me - whatever I'm doing - to treat it like it's important, to value the people. I want them to have the sense that, not that what I'm doing is important but...

MBB: [gesturing with hands] What we collectively are doing is important.

NW: Yeah, I want them to be blessed. Really loaded religious language, but I can't think of a better way to express - I do want them to be blessed.

MBB: I'm sure this will be a predominant flavor in our conversation, but it can be really hard to get away from that language. In the abstract sense...if you imagine aliens coming down and observing human beings, there's really not that much difference between a Monday night DIY show and a Tuesday night fait based worship service. They are quite similar, actually.

I had a moment coming home from a big weekend rave once - I told Gracelee, you know, I just wish we could regularly get together with these people and have community more than once a year, enjoy music together, you know, like maybe once a week, maybe on the weekend...and I was kind of horrified to discover that I was just describing church. Oh, whoops! And it is this weird thing because the big weekend raves end on Sunday afternoon, it's not dissimilar at all from leaving church. And music performed with live instruments in venues is even closer than freaks in a field somewhere.

NW: I remember reading somewhere that on "Youth Pastoral" that you kept making Will Stratton turn up the kick drum to make it sound more like a rave.

MBB: Yeah I was really in my party boy era then!

NW: Damn, maybe I need to go through a party boy era...

MBB: Have you dipped into that world in Denver at all?

NW: No, but I do know it's a big deal. A lot of shows like the one we played will usually close out with a DJ set and that's really what gets folks to come out. I had this really wild experience - I saw the band Florist play a few years ago and their set got cut short for a DJ set, they had to pivot and stop early! I couldn't believe what I was seeing. The audacity!

I have a friend who's a DJ and an artist and she does a lot of the forest rave stuff, maybe she could show me around the scene, it looks so fun.

MBB: Making the work you do as a musician feel important...is that something you apply to other aspects of your life?

NW: Historically I've taken everything too seriously. For a lot of my life, I've been a really anxious person. Religious stuff is pretty tied up in that. I grew up in Church of Christ - some people describe it as culty, I don't think it super qualifies - but there is the thing that, if someone else is not Church of Christ, they are most likely going to Hell. Like, we can't say for sure, but if you're not in our faith then chances are, Hell. So really, truly, billions of people's eternal souls are at stake, that's what I grew up believing. What I realized eventually is that I was one of the only people in our church that really felt the urgency of that, like, oh my god, we gotta do something!

There's something there - for many years I just took it too seriously.

MBB: This really speaks to me specifically. I have such vivid memories of starting to understand what I was being taught from the Bible. And it is pretty explicit [counting off on fingers] this person's going to hell, this person's going to hell - I had an atheist brother and a Jewish father and I was really panicked about my family members' souls, let's do something about it! And I remember the urgency of testifying to other kids on the playground.

NW: There's just a certain type of kid...a heart disposition. Not gullible, you just believe, you trust people.

MBB: I still find myself taking people very much at their word. I feel let down and somewhat betrayed, I dunno, somewhat regularly. Because it's very normal for people to say things and then not have it work out. If you're able to be a little more dismissive of human interaction, maybe you're shielded in a way.

And just to clarify for people who might be reading this and might not necessarily be familiar with your vibe - we keep saying "take everything too seriously," but I think what we actually mean is "take everything too meaningfully." You're not like a "serious" person, there's a levity to your being and your work. Buoyant, not grave.

NW: I think that's right.

MBB: And eventually you learn that what's stated is not necessarily what is. And when that happens, how do you read the gospels?

NW: Yeah, dawg. As many people have, I've been on a journey of learning to be a lot nicer to myself. Because almost unequivocally the way people experience me as a peer or as a friend didn't match up to how I felt about myself - I'm glad I project as joyful and buoyant, but the past several years have been about bringing my inner life more in alignment with the good things that people experience around me.

MBB: The feelings you inspire in other people?

NW: Yeah - not to over-therapize stuff, but it's been a sweet several years. I kind of had a faith crisis but came back to it in a very different way. In a lot of ways I became a baby again four or five years ago and it's the best thing that's ever happened to me.

MBB: Tell me more about being a baby.

NW: Being a baby...pretty heavy-handedly the title of my last record was "All the Nothing I Know" and it was such a crisis for me to feel like I lost my certainty in general. It felt like the certainty was all I had.

In learning to live without any certainty at all, beauty has been the big thing for me. The three classical virtues, beauty, truth, and goodness. Beauty has been the whole thing over the past several years. It's been really fun because it's so subjective - it doesn't require you to be certain of anything. If you can approach life like poetry instead of an essay, it's way more fun. It's a more fun way to be a person.

MBB: Poems are unresolved, often, and life is only unresolved.

NW: Yeah, only unresolved, totally. Best existential crisis that ever happened to me.

And different people need different stuff. I've considered going and becoming a philosophy professor but I don't think I like reading enough to do it.

I get annoyed with myself sometimes because, in writing the new album, I had essentially a list of philosopher quotes and it's just like - I can't do this, insufferable [laughter]

MBB: So regarding "inputs" for the new record, what are they? Where do you find them? What's the grist?

NW: Yeah dude. I love asking friends for recommendations, particularly when they're pretty different from me in whatever way. Lots of reading, I'm in a book club right now which has been really fun.

MBB: Hell yeah.

NW: We're reading The River Why right now, which is a little like Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance but from a madcap, fly-fishing perspective. It's so funny, one of the funniest books I've read in years.

Lots of reading. But I also listen to a lot of interviews with folks I'm inspired by and I try to figure out what they're into. I follow the influences and it leads to these deep rabbit holes. I just keep a several miles long notes app thing where I punch in lines or phrases or quotes as they come to me non-sequitur, basically one per project. Like, it maps the world of my brain.

MBB: Maybe you could just fire off a few recs for either me or the general readership?

NW: Let's see what we got here.

There's this movie I watched by Ingmar Bergman, the Seventh Seal? That was so sick. I had been meaning to watch it for a while...there's this band called Starflyer 59 who started off as a shoegaze, My Bloody Valentine-inspired band and have since had this kind of wild and interesting career, they're on Tooth and Nail records. And they have this music video that's a parody of Seventh Seal, and even in the parody the imagery was really striking. But I wasn't expecting it to resonate with me the way that it did - it's essentially about the silence of God. [laughter] So that was a big one.

I've also been really into Gillian Welch lately, basically anything that she says. She has this thing in songwriting, particularity and peculiarity. Two axioms that she uses to do her thing, a really cool way to think about it.

And there's this whale named J35? It's a horribly sad story, but I've been thinking about it a lot. It's really just about paying attention - when something moves me or grabs me I make sure to take note of it.

MBB: Taking it to the Nth degree but I do think there's a crisis of interest in the world.

NW: Yes!

MBB: People are seemingly losing the ability to find what they themselves are earnestly interested in as algorithmic feeds become more and more predominant. And personally, when I'm low belief, low agency, low serotonin, I just have no agency whatsoever in what media I consume or what I pay attention to. And when I have faith, belief, and strength my interests are obvious and compelling. And I just feel like the default mode kind of the world over is "feed me AI slop, daddy." It's refreshing to talk to somebody who's like, yeah, check out this whale. It's urgent that we flex those muscles!

NW: The slop is just junk food, right? It gets the job done. It's "I want a cookie right now." It's not nourishing. I feel that really acutely. If I gorge on whatever the algorithm's giving me for even half an hour, I feel so horrible in my body.

MBB: It is exactly the same as eating a Filet-O-Fish.

NW: Maybe even worse! I just need it. I need stuff to excite me and wake me up.

I went to this kinda random mens' gathering thing a friend invited me to night of. But he brought this prompt - we talked about the memento mori, you know, remember your death. And he had us draw a line across a piece of paper, your birth on one side and your death on the other. Then you have to mark an X on the line where you currently are, reflecting on the space on the left (what you've lived) and the time on the right (what you will live). And a big part of the conversation was the ways we sleepwalk through life and how we number ourselves to the reality of our finitude. It's a gift in some ways that life is not a forever thing - which is a trip, been thinking about it all week. But whenever I become aware that I've been sleepwalking through life there are few things that are more disappointing. I've been phoning it in, what a bummer.

MBB: Yeah, you know, I was feeling kinda blue yesterday, nothing felt good, been crashing kinda hard, and I just realized - you know, I could go swimming right now. So I did! And it restored my faith and my agency, you're capable of so much more than just taking what's on offer.

NW: Right, and it's so wild because sometimes it really is that easy. You probably have access to a restorative space that might even cost no money, the only price is the energy to go and do it. And other people - I'm so reliant on my homies now even though historically I was 100% introverted. But it is important to learn how to do stuff by yourself that's energizing and nourishing. And it's not a chore. Going swimming! Amazing!

MBB: It's one thing you can do, one apple you can get a bite out of.

So who do you think I should talk to in the future?

NW: I think you should talk to Will Lindsay from the band Caracara. He has a sick new project called Buying Fireworks in Indiana that he describes as Drum & Bliss that's really, really rad. He's doing some super creative stuff on his YouTube and his Instagram, bypassing all the embarrassing bullshit we all are supposed to do. He's got this energized, mad scientist angle that's super inspiring.

I was just thinking that you and Will would find some resonance - he's all about finding what he truly loves to do and turning into something that feels meaningful and rewarding.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

But what about you? Uh-oh, are you sleepwalking rn? What are your inputs? Are you having a crisis of interest?