Ep. 260: Role Model | Being Discovered by Mac Miller & How Getting Signed Changed His Music

Welcome to And The Writer is, I'm your host Ross Golan, today's heartthrob, ain't just some Eve Saint Laurent cowboy or some guy named Chuck, nope, this artist is a culmination of alter egos, confused, yeah me too, but I think that's the point, who is this guy? I'll tell you who he is, he's one of the best most promising artists in music. He's musically wise beyond his years, he writes like someone who's lived a few different versions of himself from a few different decades. He's clever, humorous, self-deprecating, and through all of the alter egos, honest. Whether you've wanted to be his Sally or his fan or his co-writer, this man with the new rules is a future, best new artist nominee, and The Writer is Romata La La La. Before we even started rolling out the album, we were talking about what do you want to do for press and all these things, and how do you feel about podcasts, I was like well, we do a lot of fun podcasts where we get to like, be silly and fun, but I actually kind of want to do some, I feel like I never talk about music, and it's very important to me. A lot of people who have personas, social media personas, they struggle getting people to spot a fire, to Apple, to stream music, but it doesn't feel that way, it feels like you've done a good job integrating your music with your social media personas. Do anything? I do. I do. I agree. Find line and you can't go too far overboard with it, and it's a fine line. Where does that line cross? Have you ever crossed that line? I don't think so. Did Harry Styles ever come out of you and be like, what beef do we have? No. Have you ever met him? Not that know of. I haven't met him. He's lovely. He is lovely. He's also not online at all, so I think he's a bovisto, which is great, because I can like say all these things and go on a year long rant about how we're at war, and he has no idea. I love that. Are you envious of artists who can be musicians without being online? Yeah, I guess that's the dream. I always used to think like when my label or people were first starting to like try and get me on TikTok, and I was still in the like no way, era, I don't know what year that was. I remember thinking back to like Mac Miller and like odd future, we're on Vine fully doing that thing. I've like, it had nothing to do with their music, it was just them showing personality and being like funny and stupid on Vine. And then I would be like, okay, if they weren't too cool for that, then maybe I'm not too cool for TikTok and then I want to do that. Here we are. I mean, Vine is this weird thing, because that was, you know, the same thing. What was your relationship with Mac? How did you meet him? How did he meet you? It was short. When I was in Pittsburgh, I had put out my first EP, it was called Arizona in the summer. And it was kind of gaining traction like on Spotify and stuff and it got some little playlists and everything. And then I don't know where his manager Q had, Deandre Man was like, hey, Mac really likes this EP, loves this song Stolen Car, off of it. And it was all I needed because things weren't really working. And I was like, I had no money and I was failing school and kind of had to tell my parents that I was either going to be dropping out or I was going to have to stay in school in extra couple years. And so I needed that. And then one thing went to another, I like, they flew me out. I thought it was solely for the purpose of like, meeting and working with Mac. And that did happen and it was amazing and I fell in love with Malcolm through that and then I had found out like a couple weeks later that he had a label. And I think they were like starting to want to make a roster. And I was just told the wait and everything so that didn't happen. But then he, even though I wasn't like, yes, I'll sign, he kept inviting me back and like, I got to hang with him and we had a few like cool memories. And then he passed, I don't know how many months later, it was from when I first met him, but it was like pretty quick. So it was a small window. When that's your one window into the business at that time, how did you, you know, that for all the emotional reasons is so heavy. So how do you bounce back from that as an artist when, you know, here you are in Pittsburgh with flying out to work with somebody who then passes away months within that relationship, how did you, how did you cope with that as an artist? I had already, I had dropped out at that point. Literally, I like, used that experience, they flew me out for like three or four days and I had used that experience to like tell my parents, hey, there's hope here. I could make money off of this. Here's like a little number that they did send me of like, if you wanted to sign, here's this. I like had something to show them. And they're like, all right, go for it, do your thing. And so my manager at the time helped me get an Airbnb out there for a couple months out here and that was the time when he had passed. So I did make it out of Pittsburgh. I think if I was still stuck in that like rut and Malcolm had passed during that, it would have, that would have been really crushing in like a different way. I think I maybe would have not had the spark to keep going. But him noticing me had sparked something in the industry in a small way where it was like labels were paying attention. The thing I loved about him is he just like loved all music and tried everything like and he also is known for having a different persona and doing like the Larry Fisherman thing and I think he helped me see that there's like, it's not just one path of music that you have to do and you can try all these things. And I remember like my early albums are like EPs. It was very much that there were like five songs on an EP of different genres of music. And I think he helped me feel confident to do that because he was so good at that. And one thing you do really well that's that's so impressive and it makes me wonder where you learn some of these things. But I don't know any other people who when they play shows purposefully say the wrong band or the wrong city or whatever. Is that just you being quirky or did you see somebody else do that? I don't know. I just never liked when people introduced themselves on stage. It like always gives me the egg. I don't know why. And it's not like it's such a normal thing like obviously say your name, especially if you're opening for someone, say your fucking name so that people know who you are. But I just don't think I don't know. I like performing. I didn't really, when I was opening, I didn't feel pressure to like steal their fan base. It was just like a cool opportunity to be on stage. So I would have fun and do stupid things. No, you had like, you can have like the whole background could be like, I'd just ed you in the middle of the day with like, where am I, but don't ever explain it, don't ever acknowledge it. That's great. What do you do music in the first place? It's a good question. I guess my intro to just to music in general was music videos and I was very into film, went to school for film, studied it for a little bit. But always with the goal of making, I wanted to make music videos, I grew up watching MTV hits and MTV Jams, which is just like a cycle of music videos all day. And I think that was my intro. And then at a certain point when I was in school. I came from Maine, and then went to school with this tiny little school in Pittsburgh, and for the first time was introduced to people like making their own CDs and mixed tapes and like doing it in a dorm like this with just a mic and a laptop and I just that wasn't that crazy. I just hadn't seen it before. Um, and it just looked fun and I just wanted to try it and they were like you should try it and they gave me their equipment for a week and I figured everything out on YouTube and found love with it. It was just like a happy accent that kind of shot me into this canon of like I have I had a lot of hobbies going out, but things would stick for a week or things would stick for a couple of months and then I would get over it and this was the one thing that was like it's never died down ever, which is tell me about your childhood. Let's go from the beginning. Let's let's start. You were born. I was born. I love where I'm from. Like it's a little town and it's the best place on earth. Um, it's called Cape Elizabeth and it's you have the ocean and you have farms and you have the mountains and you have ponds and lakes and they're all within like a bike ride of each other and it's like you think do you live in LA now? I live in LA. Can you live in Maine and be a professional artist? I don't think full-time. I don't think it would work that well, but um, ideally, uh, I would be bycoast or at some point in my life when I'm making the big, big, big bucks. Yeah. How much is big, big bucks? I don't know. Sounds big. I don't know. Whatever that is. Yeah, I don't know. However much that cost to be bycoast. I don't know. What kind of music did you guys grow up with? I mean, like listening to the influences from your albums, it feels like I can guess on some of, but I'm curious what. For sure. It's like if there was a music scene in Maine, it's like folk and bluegrass and that's kind of it. Obviously now it's changed and I think when SoundCloud came around, it was this. I got to like kind of see little pockets of Portland Maine where I'm from and I think that helped and I think there probably is a music scene there now. I'm not fully aware. But um, at just growing up there, it's like bars, ski lodges and like it's just old dudes playing folk music and bluegrass and so that's what you grow up on. My mom was obsessed with Jackson Brown, um, Neil Young and Van Morrison and also like Nora Jones. And I just, as a kid, you just hate the music your parents play, early-sided and then at a certain age you come back to it and you become a little homesick and you you start to kind of listen to everything they listen to probably to adjust out of nostalgia and then now I think that has seeped into my music in the past for three or four years, I guess. Isn't it weird that you know, um, when do you start playing music? When do you start thinking I'm going to actually, you know, when did you write poetry? When it was the first time you have, was it really Pittsburgh that the first time you ever wrote music? Yeah. So it never really crossed your mind growing up. I liked writing and like, short stories kind of thing or what? Yeah. And I guess I did do poetry. I took poetry classes in college. I've like blocked a lot of those years out of my memory. So this is right now, slowly coming in. But yeah, I liked writing and I was also like the one thing I was good at in high school and then the one thing that I wasn't failing in college. And I just had never thought to like write songs. And so when you get the CD, when I meet the people in the people, yeah, and in Pittsburgh, they're like, hey, this is how you can record music. It was rap music. And they were using beats on YouTube. So that was my interest. I would get beats or things on YouTube or like guitar loops on YouTube, rip it, bring it into logic, and then just like write things on my little notes. What's the first song that you wrote? I don't know. You don't know? If I knew, I wouldn't say about I do not know. Did you scrub the internet all of a sudden? What point did you scrub? I did my best. When did I do that? Was it recent that you did that? Why not? I have done that. I don't know. Why did you do that? Because I was embarrassed of it. There's stuff now that I would scrub of my stuff. That was in the last. Yeah. I've been actually wanting to talk to my label about that. For real? There's things I want to just get scrubbed. Why? I would love, I don't know, I hate it. It's embarrassing. And it was like, if I was talking to Zayn Low right now, he'd be like, but that was like a piece of you. That's like, that was a chapter of your life. I don't know how to do it. I know I'm not even going to try that. That was not that deep. I love my first EP under Romana. It was Arizona in the summer. It's not great, but I love it because I made it in my closet by myself. And it was just like, and it's like, there's cool parts of it that I still admire about myself. And like, choices that I made. But there's other stuff that I just am not proud of. And I'm like, that I was not being myself. I was like trying to impress a label. And I was like, it started getting out of my hands. Like, now I was suddenly, I had moved to LA and there was people in the studio engineering for me. And like, recording me. And it was just weird. It was like, things taken out of my hands. And I just made shitty music. So if we get scrubbed, we'll talk about it. I don't know. Definitely keeping that in, regardless of what you want. I'm just, no, no, you can't. I was saying what I'm going to talk about it with them. So when does Tucker become role model? Well, I changed my name on SoundCloud at some point in 2017 or 2017 maybe. So right before the EP came out, I kept a secret from them. I kept the music thing a secret from them for a while. And then they found out at like a high school hockey game because a parent had come up to them and like, your son's making music now. And they were like, sorry, is it film school? And they're like, now he's putting out music. And they found out a little bit later. But they've always been supportive. Even when they found out they're like, that's cool. Just like keep your grades up. But like, that's cool. When was the first time you showed people music? Or was it just you started uploading music and people discovered it? Did you show your roommate the people that were showing you were like, hey, check this out. Did you get feedback at all? I showed my roommates. I think at a certain point, I just stopped because I liked the idea of like putting on the internet and not having like that felt safer to me than showing people in real time. It was cool that you could just put this out on SoundCloud and people don't really know who you are, but they can listen to it. And it was cool. When's the first time you discovered that somebody knew who role model was? I don't know. I had put out a song called Cocaine Babe and that was my first thing on SoundCloud that like took off. And it was like people were coming up to me. They weren't like your role models. Like they already knew me, but they'd be like, hey, your song is doing well. I congrats. The song is like blowing up. Why Arizona in the summer and not Pittsburgh in the summer? Because I really wanted to get out. And it's, I love Pittsburgh, but and I was just talking about this with someone who is from Pittsburgh, but it just, it's a grim city. Like out of everywhere I've been, I think those seasons like really beat you down. Those were like the darkest times for me. Which is probably why I was hiding in my closet making music, but it's like a grim city. What parts of Arizona in the summer resonate with you now? And you're saying you're really proud of that album are the EP? What parts of that resonate most with you now? I liked, I liked it because I didn't know what I was doing and I didn't know anything about song structure or melodic structure or anything. And I liked like that song stolen car has, it's the weirdest structure and nothing makes sense. And I just, like that part of it. And the production was like cool to me. It was one like the low five bedroom pop era. I was like really, I remember really looking up to Joe G when he like first started putting out. I can't remember that EP that he put out, but there's this cool like dark low five bedroom pop world at the time. And it was when like Clareau maybe started popping up, Gustav Bruton, Boy Pablo, Cucco is in that world at the time. And it was I was proud because it was felt of that time, but it also felt like I was kind of doing my own version of that. Do you think too much now, are you right? Now I think I think now song structure is like ingrained in me now. And that can be hard to get out of. But I feel like I still don't have a ton of knowledge on like melodically like what notes you should be hitting to like raise a chorus or to like what harmonies do what and like where like I don't know that stuff. I don't have a grasp on which I definitely didn't back then. But I think structure wise, that's ingrained in my brain now, which is fine because like I label myself as like a pop artist and I kind of like some of my songs fitting in this like pop world. I think it's kind of funny and cool. Yeah, it's weird. If listening to your music, I wouldn't know that's the journey is that you didn't know song structure and you didn't know what was going on because these songs feel clear who teaches you song structure. I think I've just learned just listening to music. I think it just ingrained something in your brain. I don't know. But also the producers I've worked with now like with Kansas anymore, I was no a conrad and now with the new album It's Mason Stoops and Taylor Mackle and like they have helped me a lot in different ways. NMPA is our lead sponsor yet again. What is the National Music Publishers Association? What do publishers have to do with songwriters anyway? Well unlike artists who can be unsigned artists, there is no such thing as an unsigned writer. You can be a self-published, a co-published or a publisher writer. Publishers only make money if songwriters make money. So NMPA goes and fights for you. They go to congress, they go and support the community, they fight DSPs to get you paid more. That's what they do. They fight for you and they fight for this podcast. So thank you for fighting for songwriters NMPA. Thank you for fighting for us too. Let me tell you about splices, sounds, plugin. It brings millions of royalty free high quality samples right into your DAW making it easier to search preview and drag and drop sounds all over within your project in any DAW, FL Studio, Logic Pro, you know how it works. I've been testing out a new tool called Variations that lets producers create new versions of any splice sample that adjusts structure. Key and BPM while preserving the sounds core characteristics. That's because every sample in splices license catalog of more than 3 million is traceable to its original creator. The original sample creator is compensated each time their sound is used as a source and each time the variation is downloaded. This means that there are more opportunities to use the samples you already love and more ways for creators to get paid. Variations is available to try now in splices, sounds, plugin, check it out. Thank you for sponsoring and the writer is. Tell me about the day you write stolen car. I remember, so the kid that produced that EP, I found him, he was this like 16 year old kid from my hometown that had just like, I don't remember how I found him, maybe I found his soundcloud and it happened to say that he was from Portland, and I was like holy shit. But he was uploading instrumentals and weird low five things in that world and I was like, would you want to work with me and make something? I think that was one of the first things he sent and it was literally structured how it is in the song that I uploaded. He sent it to me and then in that same night, I started my computer and I wrote and recorded it and kind of went like line by line and sent it back to him and he was like dude, this is a song we should make three more of these or four more of these and make an EP and I was like yeah, that'd be great. And we just did that over email every day. We never like talked to each other in person. Still to this day? No, we have now, now he's a sweetest boy and then I got to like meet him, whatever, a few months later I guess. But yeah, Owen, Ardell, you started getting calls from major labels, how does that feel? I mean the Mac thing was first and that like literally sent me like running up and down my dorm hallways like freaking out. And then it's kind of that him reaching out started a little bit like a chain reaction and labels started reaching out as an ours and I just never like. I was very vulnerable. I was like sitting alone in Pittsburgh being like yeah, oh thank you so much. You like my song like yeah, I'd love to come out the LA and like I was type you have no fingers. You're just like a sitting like an animated version of yeah. And then good cat. And I'd found and then this kid reached out to me who it was like. It was a lot of a and R's. But then I was in this kid who's a manager who was my age reached out. I was like hey. You're killing it. Do you want help through this thing that's happening? And I was like yes. And then he came along and we talked every day twice a day and he would kind of help me filter through the emails and everything and like the label part of it. But did it start to change how you write being like oh shit, these people are now interested or does it make you double down on the way? No, who you are. The only time I switched is when I was like after I signed and when I had access to nice studios and it just like it fucks you because if you make music like this with a mic in front of you in a laptop, it like just keep doing that because I think getting taken out of your element and you all of a sudden are in these studios where someone else is recording your vocals. I know there's other ways to do it, but it's just my experience was someone who's recording your vocals and then you had like an A&R, my A&R at the time who was like kind of in your ear being like do it this way or blah blah and it's you you end up making music that's like very far from you and it's a tough thing to do. The EP comes out and you know how soon after doing oh how perfect are you working on our little angel? Are you doing those together? Are you like we're writing recording them at the same time? I just sort of know these are the years these are the years that I blocked out. I think why is it be why do you block it out? I just I don't know I don't think about I don't think about those two albums or EPs at all and I know some people love them and they have a place of people's heart but I don't remember even like making that music so crazy. Did you ever by being in LA? Did you ever feel like you had to write for other people? Did you write with other artists? Did you ever try to pitch songs? I don't think so I think it was always something I said I wanted to do but never happened for me and now I'm at a point where I think I don't want to do that I don't think I want to write and like we did a lot of songs that didn't make this album and I don't think I would pitch any of them. I don't have fun like that. I think that's a hard thing to do because you actually have a unique perspective so unless there's an artist who wants to sound just like you and then you want to give them your other songs that's going to be tough. Yeah it feels good. I have to write in this world of write this on then maybe an artist shows up someday that sounds like that. Pitch. No. I think the only way it would make sense to me is if I went in and like works with them to like find I don't know help them. How did you change the you know I know COVID happens right during all this stuff. It seems like that's sort of the beginning have a lot of you're like social media. I guess that was pretty funny. front-facing during COVID. As soon as I like, I was chopped in Maine for a little bit and then got back to LA. And I remember people being like, you got to like show face, like you should do live streams. Everyone's doing these live streams, like you should do these things and like keep engagement going and blah, blah. And I just stuff like that, I guess. And then life went back to normal, but I guess that was like the start of it. With Kansas anymore, I took like a two year break before that came out to write that and to do that. And I think so when we returned with that, it was like, okay, I really need to like bring people back because I've been gone for a little bit and I need to show my face and remind people. - Coming through a couple EPs that aren't necessarily defining who you are as an artist. RX is, you know, it's all in this world of like, it's a different thing. How does an artist like role model pivot so substantially? - Yeah, it's interesting. Like RX, I lumped that in with those other two that we named and then a Tord RX, it went great, the Tord was awesome. And as far as like making music and touring, I had taken that break and then I had gone through a breakup. And a lot of these things that were just dragging this process out and it took me a long time to just like figure out what to do next. And it was just a lot of like searching and throwing paint at the wall. I remember at one point I was like, let's do like a full 80s album. I wanna do like synth pop and like, we tried that for two months and I remember scrapping everything and being like, this does not, like nothing was coming out organically and everything was forced and feeling wrong. And so we scrapped all of that and then who's we? I had started that process with someone else in New York, a different producer. And that person was like helping me through all of this like soul searching, figuring out what I wanted to do. And then at some point I was like, I need to step back from it. I was going home a lot, spending time in Maine. And then also I was like, maybe I wanna try working with another producer and I had got set up with Noah Conrad, clicked really well with him. And we kind of like tested him by giving him an old song that I had made and be like, could you bring this into this world of these like folk Americana palette? Like one of the synth pop songs that he then reimagined or was he like, the song called Super Glue on Kansas anymore. And we had brought this old version of it and we're like, could you Americana this up a little bit? Like no sense, no drum machines, nothing. Just like organic palette version of this. And he did and he crushed it. And so I ended up starting to work with him and was explaining like, my music taste was changing. I was like very homesick. So I was listening to a lot of folk in Americana and a lot of stuff that we talked about earlier that my mom was listening to a lot of the Van Morrison Neil Young, Petty, all of that. And he kind of helped me figure out that sound. How does that change the way you write when you find a collaborator, does it open up doors? You're like, oh wow, I could go to this kind of that kind and how does it change everything? I think me going home and just like getting to step away from making music for a few months helped me get clarity. It helped me like fall in love with where I'm from, which was like a big part of that album. And it helps me like, I don't know, like my music taste was starting to go back to what my parents liked, like what I was talking about earlier. And so I got to like go in with Noah with a more clarity finally and be like, this is the general sound. I had like some playlists and things and I was like, I just don't want to use program drums in no sense. Those are like my two rules. I would start ideas or write full songs on guitar at home over boring cowboy chords and then bring it to him and be like, can we turn this into something a little bit more exciting? When you say it, it seems so obvious, but it's really brave. It was a huge departure, but it never in my head felt like it. The only person that made me doubt that was my mom because I had told her like the direction at one point and was like, yeah, it's kind of starting to sound like some of the stuff you used to listen to and like there's little hints of country and she was like, there's country in it and she would like, kind of make me doubt it and she was like, your fans are gonna hate that. Like are you sure this is the right move and like she was making me doubt it? But it never felt like it was the wrong move for some reason. I felt confident in it. I don't know why. - But you know, you have this public relationship that ends you right a lot about it. Does that, do you think that being so honest in your lyrics helps or hurts your personal life? - I don't know. That's a good question. I don't know if I have an answer for it. I think if I was making like fuck you songs and like don't ever talk to me type of songs, then yeah, that's one thing that would probably ruin my personal life, but it wasn't that. It was an album kind of beating myself up about everything and my decisions. So I don't think it was kind of how I am now pretty self-deprecating. You know, the success of the album is obviously changes everything. But you know, having a lead single like, I guess I don't know if it was the lead single, but certainly the most prominent single. At least what I discovered you is through Sally. - Yeah. - How does that change you as a person? It doesn't as a person, but it helps my career. I was on the road when we put that out 'cause I had just toured. I just finished touring Kansas anymore. And then Sally was on the deluxe. It was the single for the deluxe. And so we put out deluxe in a week later, went back on tour. So I was just in touring while that song was exploding. And that was a cool way to experience it 'cause people would just adhere it from the crowd every night. But I wasn't, like my life was not changing before my eyes. I wasn't, you know, 'cause you were already in process. - Yeah, we were just, I was in touring months. I didn't, I don't know. - Tell me, hey, wrote Sally. - We were doing, so Sally was on the deluxe version of Kansas anymore. And I had brought in Onika Bennett and Harrison Whitford to Noah's house to come and do, who were both are like amazing musicians, but also amazing writers. Harrison did a lot on this, my new album. And we were, I had them come in to do backing vocals on another song on the deluxe. And then I was thinking that was gonna take all day and it didn't, it took 30 minutes. And so we were all just kind of sitting there like maybe we should make another song, like just write a song as for 'cause usually that's not how those songs start, usually I'll bring in something, but we're like, we're here. Let's just like fuck around and Sally's born like that. And this was like, it was, it's just a silly song about newly being single and experiencing the dating scene, I guess, for the first time in a while, like finding a spark again. And then it became something else. - Hey guys, if you ever wanted to get further in the world of "And the Writer Is," if you ever want to sit in that seat across from me, well guess what, you can now join the conversation. That's right 'cause we just launched our Patreon. You'll get access to our monthly Zoom hangs where we'll listen to demos, get feedback, you can hang with us directly and we can hang with you too. Look, occasionally we'll bring on some guests that will chat with our community and maybe most importantly to me, you are going to have access to our 200 archived audio episodes. That's episodes of Charlie Xiex and Sabrina Carpenter and Lynn Manuel Miranda and Shania Twain and Babyface so much, so many great interviews that you can get, amazing insight and knowledge from. So come and check it out in the description below. There's a link for you to join us on Patreon. [BLANK_AUDIO] Did you start feeling like that was a new bar that you had to reach? Did you watch any of the success of it in a streaming number sort of way? No. And also like, it's streamed really well, but this wasn't like a. I don't know. It's not smash hit. It wasn't like all over the radio or anything. It never seemed like something that we had to go catch up to. Which like, thank God, because that would be stressful. But I never saw it as something to like a bar. It was more like, "Oh, this is really exciting." I feel like I found this really cool lane of like bringing some of these American influences onto like pop radio. I was like, "This is amazing, and it got me really hungry to make the next album, so." Tell me about some protector, you know, it's a viral hit. You know, how does that song come about? That one I wrote at home and. How did that come along? I don't know. I wrote it on my couch. Do you have anything on TV when you're ready? No, I don't have a TV. I haven't had a TV in a long time. Like five years. What do you do watch any such thing? I watch things on my phone if I'm going to watch something. What do you do? Well, I'm ready. I have never watched something while I'm ready. Are you. Do you give yourself a chance to be bored? What do you do with your. When those moments were like, "I'm not going to watch anything." I just lay. I lay on my couch. Do you? Sometimes I do. But I don't know. You read. I watch things on my phone, I wish I read, but I still go on Netflix and stuff. I just. One of those annoying people who does it on their phone. This new place that we're in, Chuck Timely. Tell me about Chuck. Well, I came up with Chuck after writing the album and we were. I would say like three-quarters of the way through making the album and I had come up with the name Chuck Timely in the Hourglass and brought it to the boys Mason and Taylor and then Harrison and I was like, "What do you think?" Yeah, but like who is Chuck and I was like. And after that every single day in the studio, all we would do is talk about Chuck and we'd like make these stories and like create this person to like represent the themes on album. A lot of them. If there's one thread through all the songs, it would be like time and the most general sense, wanting to go back in time, wanting time to slow down, whatever, time flying by, everything seemed a lot of waiting for like my life to change, a lot of whatever. And so I wanted this Chuck guy to represent the themes on the album, but also the way we went about like producing it was taking little things through all these eras that we loved and through the eras and we're like, "This is perfect." Yeah, the organic aspect to your productions on this album seemed to be even. I mean, it can't get more organic than an organic album, but it feels like there's just even. There's richness to the album. It could sound a little bit better. What does that mean? I said it earlier a little bit, but like I am really bad at. I'm really good at knowing exactly what I want something to sound like, but I don't always have the knowledge. Like the musical history and the musical knowledge to be referencing all these artists that could perfectly describe what I am describing. Mason and Taylor are really amazing with that, and I'm sure they've studied it and they have the knowledge of all those things, and so I learned a lot through them how they go about recording things to make it feel more of the time that we're referencing sometimes. I think we learned together, and then I brought what I learned to Mason and Taylor, and then they taught me like a lot. What's your favorite song on the new album? I think I'm going to have to do. I guess I have to have two answers. My favorite song is Joy. The song I'm most proud of is Good Thing. Why are you most proud of it? Because we were just talking about nailing the recording to fully lean into the era that we were referencing. The good thing that was something that took us months of rerecording and figuring it out. That one I'm just really proud of. It's a big, willing, else survives, but valid and power-ability of the time, and I'm just proud of how we recorded that. Define a good song. I don't know. Can you anymore? I don't know. That's a fair answer. I mean, it's a way out. I don't know. It's hard to ask another question just to get out of it. That's how you interview an interviewer. I slept it. Can I actually ask you that? I'm curious what your answer would be. Every line learically pulls you to the next. Every melody feels new in the song, and there's no pandering. There's no. I think you audience member is going to like this if we go, "Hey, hey, hey, hey." You repeat after me. You can make. When you perform, it's really helpful to tour to be a Good Songwriter, because you have some idea of like, "Oh, this will. you need to give some space for this person to sing along and understand what you're singing and all these things." I think a Good Song. The basic answer is that. and this will piss off a lot of people, so fine. But I think a Good Song is that when you're done listening to it, you know what the song is called. Interesting. Now, there's the pandering part of it where I can say, "I tied it over and over again," and he's like, "Yeah, I got it." That's the pandering part. So the asterisk is like, "You can do it," but I tend to feel like if you need a post-chorus, you have to repeat the title 10 times and you didn't write a chorus well. Or maybe you want to play it again. But that's a well-written song if you do that. Yeah, that's a good. That's a great definition, because you listen to it once and you want to play it again, is a great definition of. That's a by-product of quality composition. But I mean, I've written a lot of songs that I think are good songs that are not out and no one will ever cut them. But I know like I'm sitting on something that's compositionally sound. And when people are like, "Hey, play me songs that are available," I play the same songs for like 15 years, because this song's sick. I love it. I love somebody will cut this someday. Especially if it's organic, then it's like you can live in any era and then you're not chasing whatever that synth sounds that was cool in 2026. It's not going to be the synth sound that's cool in 2041. But I feel like the new album, I love that. I love that. I love that. I love that. I love that that willy-nelson references and it feels like it's in that space. It goes all over the place. Do you see it as a concept album? No. I've been pretty clear about that. To me, a concept album is like, it's like fictional. You're writing stories that aren't yours or about experiences that aren't yours. Maybe create a character and write about experiences for these fictional characters. To me, that's a concept album. Redhead is a stranger or something like that. Sure. That's not what happened. I wrote an album and then came up with a title and then that became a character. What music inspires you besides the ones that you grew up with? I mean, a lot. As soon as we wrap the album, I discovered the band, the water boys, discovered them. As soon as we wrap the album, I was like, I want to make a deluxe right now. It's amazing. We tried and then we had a week set for the deluxe and then I ended up spending that fixing stuff on the album. You mentioned, Sally didn't really get the radio play that I think that I which is hard to understand as somebody, I feel like I know that song so well that it feels like it was a radio smash. I don't think I have a voice or make music for radio personally. Sometimes I will listen to the new music and like try and imagine it on the radio and I can't, but if it happens and that's an amazing thing with Sally it was like, that was not something I expected to happen and it did and so it's just like a bonus but I would never like, I've never made music or how to feeling that something would hit radio or like hit in a huge way. I mean, you're on tours to some pretty big pop sites right now that would, you know, it feels like you're leaning towards this world where people are going to know you more and more and it's popular music. It really shouldn't be something that's defined by a specific genre or it will have already been done. I mean, yeah, I mean, I don't even really understand what pop music is. I just like to call my music pop music. But I just, yeah, I don't even know. It's just, it's popular music and I think the challenge, I think the challenge is fun of like taking these musicians that we've talked about and making something that's digestible for pop is fun. I'll see some rapid fire. Oh, shit. Okay. Who's on your Mount Rushmore of pop artists? Current pop artists. I didn't write down one or the other. It just says Mount Rushmore of artists. I don't want to think this is your interview. Not my Charlie XCX. Apple. It's a small one. I just love, maybe it's all of her eras. Oh, yeah. I love her. I love her. She's a lovely person, very smart business person. Super smart. Also the coolest person ever. Are you happy with Tucker Pillsbury? My name? I love my name. I like your name, but like as a, like are you sure? That's a good answer. Do you like your name? I love my name. As I'm slowly getting more and more discovered, people make fun of my name all the time, but I love my name. Are you gonna be an actor? I acted. I am in a movie. What's the movie? It's going to come out next year. I can't do more of that. I don't know. I don't know. I can't tell if I like it or not. We'll see. I loved my experience doing it. I don't know if I want to do it more. Got it. What would you tell Tucker who just moved to Pittsburgh to study music videos? I don't think I'd tell him anything, because it worked. If I'd time travel back, I'd probably just stand there. I wouldn't do nothing. I'd stand behind a pole or something. What would you say to Mack if you had a chance to talk to him right now? I think I would just think him. I think I would think him. He gave me kind of my first ever burst of confidence in my music, and without that I think I would have went back to film school and tried to make that work. Tell me the story about writing's on the wall. It's literally two chords on a acoustic, and so I wrote the verses over those two chords. My friend Brandon had showed me a piece of this chorus that he made. He makes like, at the time, I don't know, but at the time he made hyperpop music, and he showed me this chorus that he made. I was like, melodically, there's something really cool here, and also there were a couple cool lyrics. He had my dad's on the phone, and there's something about the war or something. I loved it, and I was like, can I try and form this into a chorus for the song that I have and blah, blah, blah. That was the weirdest, probably Frankenstein-y moment on that album. That wasn't like fluid, it was like a weird Frankenstein-moment. Tell me about "Look at that woman." Most of those aren't the most exciting stories. I wrote that on my couch, but I will say there was like 10 different versions of that song before. Really? It became the one that came out. The first ever chorus was a joke, and it was me and Anika in a room with this kid, Jonah, and we were fucking around, being like, "Oh, look at that trying to make like a funny pop song." That was like, "I feel like this is actually a good chorus in some dimension," and made like 100 versions of that song, and then, I finally took a good part. That's when good songs are written when you're in that-- Fluid sound. Fluid sound. I like to be a writer on that song. It's a little late, but you can add me to it if you want me to. We actually just interviewed Jesse Alexander, who wrote The Climb. Oh, really? Yeah. Which I covered a long time ago. You covered? Yeah, I don't ever talk about that because I don't want to embarrass him, but, yeah, that was back when I knew Mike, and yeah, he produced that. Let's move on. I don't want to embarrass him. I don't think he wants the world to know about that. He's too cool for that now. I fell in love with that album like everybody else did Kansas anymore, and that album is one of those things where, as a songwriter, you're allowed to do this, and it's your journey that got you there, but it helps bring an entire community to give license to, all right, we are going to need analog. We're going to need real instruments, we're going to need real songwriting and storytelling and real melodies, and it's natural to you, but it seems really brave to me, and it was such a relief to hear that, and it's a reminder of like, oh, yeah, I want to do now, I'm like that. The same way that you felt about water boys or whatever they were called, you know, like that thing of like, oh, yeah, I come on and write something like that, you know, I like all those guys that are in this area, but the lyrics are current. It feels now, and it's just pulling from a lot of healthy places to pull from, but it sounds original because of how you're doing it. And then the way you present it on social media, man, you're doing what you're supposed to do. If you're going to pursue this as a career, you need to be all the way in and you're doing it so well. I'm thinking about pursuing it as a career, considering it's not enough to be by coastal yet. No, no, yeah. But hang in there, man. I appreciate that. That's been nice. Thank you. You're killing it. Thank you. I can't wait till we do this on the flip side of this album. Yeah. Yeah. I can't wait. There you go.