I'm so sorry everyone. Hey, Taito, I forgot about raw impressions, number 36. Actually, it's not my fault. If you're doing the bell, we're on the road.
And somehow they skipped, titling in episode number 36, they went directly from 35 to 37. So this is raw impressions, number 36. Otherwise known as number 41, but next week will be 41, not this week. We'll go and catch up a little bit here.
Catch up meaning we're going to go behind and call this one number 36 on apologies for the confusion. Raw impressions. But this is still the new episode. Yes.
This is not an old episode. No, we just didn't do number 36, but we're doing it now. Why not? Hi.
Hi. Can I share it with people that you smell? You usually do. I just did, but you have a particularly strong whiff.
Um, I'm busy right now. Yeah. I'm doing a lot of stuff. I'm having a lot of feelings.
Yeah, you are. Do you find that the whiff is located stronger coming from one armpit or is it equally divided? I feel like my stress pit usually is like one. I don't want to get in here and take a, just figure that out for yourself.
Get a hit. You want to get in here and smell both of them and do a little rating on each one. I'll write it down here with my little pen. Right armpit, eight.
Left armpit, 10. 10. I don't know either, but it just, yeah, what do you think you're smelling? I'm going to go smelling some armpits.
Right now it seems a little left heavy. Yeah, I feel like my stress pit is usually my left armpit. I wonder if there's something about the left side of the body, you know, because I feel like the left side of the body is sort of a thing, you know, like you're supposed to be careful sleeping on the left side of your body, right? It's good to sleep on the left side of the body.
Oh, it is. It aligns your, it aligns your organs. I thought that it placed stress on your organs. Can I play you something?
Yes. Okay, so last night I got home from a very long day in the studio and it was a very emotional day. It's making me emotional thinking about it, but it was a very emotional day. And so when I crawled into bed last night, I took, over the course of the night I took one full milligram of alprazolam.
Usually I take 0.25 or 0.5, but I just really needed to sleep because I got to go back to the studio today and I have a lot of work to do. But I woke up to like, I was watching the last dream I had tonight, we can talk about whether telling people your dreams is boring or not, I've heard that it is. But the last thing in my dream was a marching band, going to a dinosaur junior concert, singing a song. And so I woke up and I tried to capture what the song was.
So we'll see if this actually works. It might take a while. I'm very tired, very drowsy when I woke up. Breathing in.
Look at what you do. You don't have to see me cry. Anyway, here's this. Wait, so you recorded that in the middle of the night?
No, just one of the night. Oh, I didn't hear you do that. I must have been downstairs. But then you actually came to me and you said, I heard it.
I started saying it to you first. You say it to me, yeah. Before I tried to capture it. And then it started to go away because this is what happens.
When things happen in dreams, it's like you wake up and they're really vivid. And then they just fucking fade really quick. And this is the second night in the row I woke up with a song in my head. Oh gosh.
The night before was kind of intense. This is a song then that needs to be written. Well, I was thinking about it. And when I drove Izzy to camp, I realized it was actually this song called Love and Hate by Michael Kwanaka.
Wow, I love that song. And then I also realized it was style by Taylor Swift. So it's like a, nah nah nah nah, you just can't keep your wild eyes on. It's whatever.
It's sort of a mix of the two. It was like, dang. What was the thing you were saying though, was it? Fade away.
Are we gonna let it fade away? Oh yeah, I see it as sort of like 11 heats on. True. Are we gonna let it fade away?
Or something like that. But it's sort of more inspired by it because, well, I didn't have to go to the studio. Like within the next 45 minutes, I would actually have sat down and worked out this version for this podcast. But I've kind of had a lot of obligations, kind of, not obligations, actually, just finally things coming to, I mean, real things that I've been looking forward to working on, but it gives me a little bit less time to experiment and like share it with y'all.
I'm gonna, and kind of a proper four-tracky can away. I'd love to just be able to sit down right now for an hour or two and just really flesh out this idea, even if it is exactly like love and hate. I'm not gonna want to go on and style by Taylor Swift. Like maybe, because there were some, there are some variations within the mumbling recording that I made that might be interesting to research.
Well, everything is inspired by something else. So it's okay to use them as inspirations. Right. Nothing, I mean, nothing you're gonna do is a direct copy of either of those songs.
It would just be sort of something. Let's see what the lawyers say. Oh my goodness. Once I recorded, now it's gotta be a dinosaur junior song.
It was actually, as I thought about it, I was like, oh, I'm gonna make it. Because I like to write dinosaur junior songs about dinosaur junior. Oh, okay. But about my experience in dinosaur junior.
But it was interesting because it was this little marching band that were dressed in yellow and black. And they were like really excited about the dinosaur show. And it was like in Los Angeles at this, this club that was completely covered in purple carpet. I guess we had just thinking about it right now.
But it was a club covered in purple carpet and there was people very excited about watching dinosaur junior. That sounds great. And then maybe you'll be debuting this new song. It sounds like you've got to write this song.
It's fading right now. You know what it does? It did have like a second part, which I was like, oh, that's kind of cool. But the song that I worked on yesterday with the full conclusion is this incredibly intense song, John wrote about his father passing away.
And I worked on it all day because it was a very elaborate backing vocal arrangement that they had worked out for me. They being Scott. Scott Sultur, our producer and John. So I spent hours and hours yesterday working at these very layered vocals.
But when I read the lyrics initially for the song, I cried for like 10 minutes. I mean, I actually had to sort of go into the vocal booth and just shut the door and just be like, I think, I mean, I've had experience. I think people who've had experiences with people in their family passing away, you know, generally of old age. And John just wrote this absolutely, it's very specific, but in a very beautiful way.
And it's a beautiful tribute to his father. And as we were driving back in our convertible Mustang, John and Elizabeth, his girlfriend, they rented a car to come out here so we could do this studio session. And the only car they had for them was a convertible red Mustang. And if you know John about it's just funny, it's seeing him in this car.
But we were driving back with a top down from the studio. It was about 10 o'clock at night. And John said, you know, this will be the first record I've made that my father will never hear. And he always played his music for his father.
And his father always had something constructive to say. He was a very, he was a beloved teacher. Yeah, in Boston. I think the school is called the Commonwealth School in Boston and downtown Boston, like right in the heart of Boston.
And he was a beloved teacher. So he references his, I don't even, I think there's other forces acting on me right now, too. But it was just really emotional. And I, um, yeah, I spent yesterday doing my best to, you know, do my part to make this song something really special.
And it is really special. And I, it was just, um, yeah, it was, it's interesting how, you know, I work on music all the time and I, I've had real real peaks, you know, in valleys, but you know, real peaks where I've worked on something gone like, well, this is special. And um, yesterday I was like, this is really special. And I, and it was cool to feel more, it was interesting to feel more like a supporting role to it as opposed to like something that I had written myself, you know, reminded me a bit of just, you know, when I did the album, you're living all over me with actually a lot of the early dinosaur stuff to sort of witnessing somebody really stepping in.
And this great moment kind of thing. Yes, you're seeing someone really unfold in front of you and really express themselves and just sort of being there in the wake of it and being in the supporting role. And I had that, I really had that thought really strongly yesterday and the song is so strange and extraordinary and I really, you know, I'm excited for people to hear it when we finally finish it. I'm looking forward to hearing it too.
I haven't heard it at all. So yeah, it'll be a while. It's a lot of, it's been a very, very slow process for us putting this record together because we don't, it's being done, I mean, not being done remotely per se, but we do get together, but it's like, you know, there's five or six month periods between us getting together and then it's a very limited amount of time and also that the work involved is pretty very meticulous. So, you know, I mean, we began recording the basic ideas for this record occurred two years ago.
Wow, was it that long ago now? Yeah, in this house, I remember it was like in July. I remember John came. You know, around our birthday, John went up to the, John and I went up to the attic.
He played drums and I played bass and it was absolutely sweltering behind. That's right. I forgot about that. Yeah.
We recorded just little bits of riffs and those two years ago. It was two years ago. Oh my God. And then it was all the year after that that he came.
In August. So yeah, because he was a year ago this past August. Yeah. And between that then we, he came once and we just came in here in the studio and worked out the basic ideas to a drum machine.
And then six months after that we then did it playing, you know, real bass and drums. And now you're after that. Actually starting to apply, you know, put the finishing touches on the vocals and the instrumental parts. Well, well, it's coming.
You're working on it. It's plugging along and you guys are putting so much heart into it. And you know, no matter what happens. Whatever, no matter what happens, it's something, it's like an expression of love for, you know, John and I.
And out of respect for the, what the music we've done together means to us, you know, it's such a personal project. And I think the weight of it really hit me yesterday and I, I'm still feeling it. I'm just feeling like this. Yeah.
Title wave and I don't know. Um, yeah, I'm looking forward to sort of, you know, completing this phase and in the next week, like being back here in the studio because there's another, I want to work on an episode about my friend Mark. Lose childhood, best friend passed away and that's been, it's been sitting heavy as well. Um, and yeah, he was a very influential, very deeply influential person in lose life.
And in so many ways that, uh, yeah, we definitely need to do an episode to explore and honor that relationship. That's why complicated. It's very complicated. Yeah.
Yeah. As you know, the loss of sometimes we lose people in our life that things are messy with um, things are messy. And so there's a lot of messy feelings that go with it. And yeah, I don't know.
Is death ever cleaned as a relationship ever? I, I, Mark is really my first loss. He's your first significant kind of loss. Yeah.
And I, I, I, I mean, we can talk about this later, but uh, I mean, I wasn't surprised, you know, because Mark was a very hard living individual. Yes. He was. Well, we'll save that for an episode about him.
Here's prank phone calls in 1980s. I think we'll have to have a prep one. We'll have to really prep one for this. I think I'll got to hear his prank phone calls that the he and his brother did towards.
Mm. I think, um, well gosh, I was here. I was about to share my dream too, but it seems so, um, silly and shallow compared to this beautiful deep conversation about you and John and the folk and play. I'm interested.
Like I heard a psychiatrist recently, uh, explain that, um, you know how you think your dreams are so interesting, but when you tell them they're actually, it's not that interesting to other people. Mm. Yeah. And it was the first time that I ever heard anyone cast any doubt.
I'm always like, dreams are fascinating. I love to tell my dreams. And then, uh, but then I realized sometimes when other people tell me their dreams, I do get disinterested almost immediately. And I had to be honest about that.
I had to be honest about it. Mm. Um, because these, these things, when I come to these figments, these that you wake up with and you're like, because you've just experienced something as real as, as real can be, your dreams are real is real can be. So when you're sharing the experience, you feel like you're telling a story that has truly occurred.
But other people know that it's just a dream. Yeah. And who cares? You're just telling them a story?
I don't know. Or maybe it's, I think with you and I, I mean, I'm actually, I love listening to your dreams. And what you had that, your dreams too, I say. And you had that amazing dream when we first met.
Um, it was one of the first, uh, one of the first times that we had sort of, you know, held each other and, and slapped and, uh, you woke up and you said, you know, I had an interesting dream where, um, oh gosh, okay. So I was, I think I was sort of standing in a circle with, um, Native Americans, um, who were in like kind of traditional, like Native American, Indian, like headdress and wear. Um, and the chief, I'm guessing, like came up to you and I think he put his hand on your heart and he said, I call you beating heart and then I woke up. And you were sleeping on my chest.
I was sleeping in your chest. So yeah, obviously I was listening to your heart and, um, but it's funny, um, because. Well, this is an emotional episode. I, um, live had when we got together, like I was having, I had a lot of heart issues and not, not like there have been nine heart issues.
It's my heart. I have this condition called super of ventricular tachycardia SVT ironically, there's a very famous basing up or a very well used base amp, one that I own called an SVT and I'm paying SVT anyway. Uh, it's where my heart will just, it kind of electrically starts misfiring and will beat it upwards to two, over 200 beats a minute. And it's a very freaky thing.
It was occurring fairly regularly. We got together. It's been, it's changed. It's changed pretty dramatically as my lifestyle has changed and, and as our life kind of, well, you take care of yourself better.
I take care of myself a bit more, a little bit better. So, um, I don't know, I haven't had that episode at the time, but when you told me that when you woke up, I was like, Oh, well, because I was very conscious of my heart at that point. I was like, my heart would tell me. Your heart was a big part of like conversation for us.
Um, we were always sort of like, yeah, the beginning of our relationship. I remember, gosh, for the first few years. Um, yeah, your heart, we, it was a big part of the conversation. It was a big part of conversation and worry and monitoring.
But you were, I don't know, you were just a lot more fragile in some ways. And I think that you were also punishing yourself in a lot of ways. And I mean that. And I do like to punish yourself.
Yeah. I mean, I won't get into specifics, but I'll just say that like you're a lot healthier now in a lot of ways mentally and with your choices. So, but yes, it was kind of this powerful dream. And when he said, I call you beating heart, I, I've always thought about that because you are, you're just like this heartbeat that I love.
And I, um, and you know, when that happened, it actually felt really steady to me. It felt very strong. And I remember thinking like, you are steady and you are strong. You just have to find your footing, you know, and you were kind of in the midst of trying to find your footing, I think.
And yeah. Yeah. I mean, it was, we, we embarked on a pretty change together. So.
Yeah. I think that you're a lot more steady now, probably a lot more close to who you're meant to be, you know, does that make sense? Yeah. Who you are.
Oh, what a day. Maybe it's this, I don't know. This is a big summer, you know, you've been gone a lot. Mark passed away.
You're working on a lot of things. There's a lot of juggling, you know, handlers getting ready to go to college. Yeah, lose oldest kid. It's just, there's a lot of big, big changes.
So I get it. And then we're also kind of staring down, um, you know, a big fall where we are often apart for September because that's a heavy touring month and that's pretty typical. But there is like some lead up to it, you know, where we have to kind of go, okay, here we go. And I've got to make sure that I'm taking steps to, um, take care of my mental health, you know, and you have to take steps to take care of your mental health because when you're apart for that long, um, and you care about each other, it's just hard.
It just really is. And, um, even if it's the most thrilling, like best thing in the world, even if, you know, it just, um, I mean, if I didn't care about you so darn much, I'd be psyched if you were going away for that long. I'd be like, great, good riddance. Goodbye.
Now I don't have him hanging around. But, um, man, when you really have found your person and they're your best friend and just your favorite person to hang out with, it can feel, it can feel quite lonely without them. So. All right.
Well, is it time to wrap it up? It is. I gotta go back to the studes. I gotta do a little bit of prep.
Yeah. Well, thank you for joining us on episode 36. Um, I was going to look up what the number 36 means, but everything I look up is like just someone's blog who they've decided what they think. The number, this is an angel number.
This is this number. This means it's a destiny number. You know what? It's just 36 guys.
So. But it's done. We love you. Thanks for listening.
Thank you for listening to Ra Impressions, episode not 41, but 36. 41 will be next week.