Nest Sessions: Medium Build on Being a Sperm Donor Kid

so the very simple question i'm going to turn this off um just tell us your name and what it is that you do i am nick that's what my mom calls me i make music under the name medium build and i write little emo journal entry songs and drive around the country yelling them at people does anyone call you nicholas or is it always nick when i was in high school i changed my facebook name to nicholas so that i would know or maybe college so that i would know when people didn't know me because then when strangers come up and they're like nicholas i'm like oh you only know me online it's a trap right it's a trap it's a trap honey trapped yeah and so i'm nick is my like nick is my friends what my friends call me but then now i also have like people will call me nicky c like that's a like a joke someone started calling me nicky c and so then i kind of leaned into it so then fans will be like nicky c oh i'm like oh it's okay it's like it's just one little barrier but i call it medium build so that people wouldn't know i'm i'm always trying to obscure people knowing the vision of me yeah but then hilariously telling all of my dirt in song form so really you're really fucking up there yeah yeah where did the name medium build come from i feel like you don't have a medium bills you're a tall bull it's got a pretty medium but what is you're a tall what is medium yeah what is medium bills i feel like it came to me through like crime dramas like in like csi or law and order they're like the perp or like the dead body is always like yeah like six one medium build or whatever and i just loved that it's such a vague concept yeah like who who is that i've never been uh lucky enough to be able to wear a medium shirt you know i'm i'm always in the xl large in america i've gone from l to xl yeah which is very humiliating from our food yeah i think from food yeah from your portions being so big i just you put on an extra layer the processing in it too probably doesn't help yeah yeah and also i'm getting older so i think you just keep more weight on well the xl is cool it's like xl feels like a it's cool i feel like it's becoming more fashionable now so maybe that's part of it yeah i feel like it's becoming more fashionable now so maybe that's partially what's happening is oversized is cool also i feel like band merch when you buy it we're talking about this kumo 99 shirt i'm wearing earlier i feel like different sizes and merch now xl is a different in different brands it gets very confusing it is a terrifying thing confidently ordering merch and then it's you know you go home and you get it out and you're like oh fuck you're not putting it on in that queue are you you've got people lining up behind you imagine but you guys aren't you i'm not taking it you put it you do the classic like hold it up and your friend is like perfect or the merch person is like it looks amazing get the fuck out of my life you know and then you get home and it's it's like a haynes beefy tea and it turns into an l yeah the next day yeah and you're spending a lot of money on them you know it's expensive those teas and if you get a hoodie my god it's 110 just gone i sell that shit i'm mortified by the prices what brand are you using for your t-shirts we are i'm obsessed with trying to get the quality of the merch up you know you start dog shit because you it's all you can haynes and gildan yeah and then we'll comfort colors was my favorite but comfort colors got bought by gildan and it the quality has gone down i don't know if you know that comfort colors used to be its own thing yeah i love the colors six years ago they maybe five maybe it was covid they they got bought by gildan so now they're a little bit not it so there's new other ring spun type of like that woven kind of thicket and stuff like that and then you get the quality of the merch up and weakness okay if i'm gonna charge you like we just went on tour with mumford and sons and when you're opening for a big band you have to they call it price match so you have to sell your shit for the same price as them so you can't undercut them some plebe doesn't show up and go i'll take the cheaper one it's like no one's ever going to be like in line for mumford and sons merch and then accidentally walk away with a medium build i never thought about that though that's so funny yeah to be the same same cost i am like a thrifty person might stand in line and be like i wanted a month for instance but that medium build one's 20 cheaper give me that i've never even heard of them those fuckers but i i just can't resist a fucking bargain it's insane yeah wait how did that tour go because it's a that's a huge tour and also you've got this interesting thing where an audience some people are coming for you a lot of people are coming for the opener and so you've got this audience there that you some there for you some they're not for most not right like and we we did this is we're like two years since we put out a record and so most of the past year we've been doing these big support slots opening for pop bands country bands folk bands americana like we've done them all and it's a weird feeling you get really good at sort of nobody expecting anything and then like you know you're out watching the set later and someone comes up you guys are the best warm-up band i've ever seen you got wow you know i never heard of you and i expected you to be dog shit but you guys are pretty good i've had so many people tell me keep going i was at the airport in brisbane i just opened an arena the night before and this little girly at the airport was like um have you ever done your own shows like just you and i was like yeah no i for about decade yeah i've been she's like oh that well good luck keep going like i hadn't just won an award like a contest to support this guy the night before radio show award just pluck some american guy off the street they're like get him into brisbane get him out there i feel like airports are probably the most mortifying place sometimes to meet people because you're kind of stuck in this in-between zone yeah and everyone's there oh i've done that with that i've gone to see bands play that i'm a fan of and suddenly they're in the airport and it's awful yeah it's an awful experience oh and you if you say anything you're at the gate and you you know or like you give them a nod and then you guys are in the queue together getting on the plane and then you give them a nod again like you walk past their row hey it's like sorry hey i saw you play last night amazing show are you trying i mean people try to be so cool yeah someone like write me a note and just hand it to me on the plane that's kind of sweet that's cute the notes notes are sweet it's depending on what they say in it how vulgar it is but i'm curious about how coachella went last year coachella was great was it a blast yeah two weekends of crazy yeah i'm not the biggest fan of festivals and coachella is not it's i'd say it's right there in the middle of like really good time and really shit time you get a little trailer don't you with your name on it that's nice yeah little golf buggy yeah you can like whistle for a golf buggy it's like a cab in the 80s in new york you know he's kind of like like some like 20 year old like interning is like come on um coachella's great we did all the big ones last year we did um lala and coachella and bonnaroo and austin city limits what was your favorite well i grew up in the south so i grew up going to bonnaroo that was the sort of the hometown one and i've never been to have you been to bonnaroo no i've only done lala it's very humid yeah you you're from chicago so you've been a lot of lala bunch never i don't want to do the desert coachella yeah they're too hot yeah not there's not a single one you know the only one that we played it was a nice temperature was outside lands in san francisco huh yeah beautiful even sounds pleasing outside lands is such a beautiful name and it's san francisco in august so it's like 65 degrees it's perfect but generally they're all too hot did you do sasquatch ever haven't no that was the seattle one yeah that's what i've always wanted to do you like out in george yeah yeah no that's amazing coachella was nice i don't know if you have this sort of bitterness between in george yeah i don't know if you have this sort of bitterness between in george and san francisco enjoying the lifestyle that we've all kind of accidentally fallen into in the la and the and then also really resenting it i have like class shame so sometimes i'm at something and i'm like oh rivers cuomo is here that's cool and i'm like who have i become yeah no absolutely i think la comes with that i mean coachella comes loaded with so much right like yeah it's become such a scene of influencer culture as well as music fans and i think that's a strange clash plus a beer costs about thirty dollars each when you're a fan it gets a little bit crazy yeah i think that's a strange clash plus a beer costs about thirty dollars each when you're a fan it gets a little bit crazy yeah i think that's a strange clash plus a beer costs about thirty dollars each when you're a fan it gets a little bit crazy but getting to see kumo 99 and underscores in the air conditioning tent that those two shows were so life-changing i love that we were both in that tent at the same time we didn't know isn't that a small world yeah i was in a dance tent that's never happened before what the hell was up with that that was that was the best room though yeah i mean not just because the air con but yeah it felt good yeah i feel like we could talk about a lot i think we could i think we have a lot it's just you're the first um kumo fan i've ever met in the wild not at a kumo show sign does anyone listen to this if you haven't listened to kumo 99 as well as listening to this man also yeah in the vin diagram of medium build invent and i don't think you love this episode for you a very different style of music yeah i don't really like listening to shit that i make i don't even know if i like my stuff you know like i think it's become um it is a catharsis tool like i sit down and i what what happens again growing up in the church the first like genre of music that was given to me was basically like 80s singer songwriter right all of our church tunes are just these like god come and open up my heart you are my king it's a lot of rhythm right yeah yeah and like shout to the lord like darlina jack like all that like hillsong shit that was like it i could hear that blasting out of my mom's room every morning while she got ready was that your intro to music in the church would you say music yeah yeah it's like the first thing you hear in the most my like my parents were missionaries before i was born and then they sort of like left this sort of certain sect and like relaxed okay so they were pretty intense when you were growing up oh yeah yeah right yeah yeah yeah very just classic non-denominational no witchcraft harry potter's out yeah well harry potter they like softened on because my mom read the book and she was like it's actually really good yeah but no they were just like so uh anti anything that involved spirits or magic like i remember even trying to watch like sabrina the teenage witch on on tv and she was like no same with my folks yeah anything about witchy or dungeons and dragons he was all out did you perform in the church is that we first picked like got into music performing yeah so it's kind of a good seems to be the one like a lot of musicians do come out of the church and that seems like the one good thing you because they have so much money they can give you these instruments right it's a great education like learning to play in a band yeah and performance perform it yeah because you can't stop and be like that was a bad one you know you because you're you're the conduit to god and so if you stop playing everyone stops like vibrating right so you if you can't stop and that's really good practice it's the same as like playing in a cover band like a bar band if you stop playing people stop drinking and it kind of felt the same thing as a teenager playing in church it's like if you stop playing they stop paying you know like we need these people tithing so keep it up keep doing yeah and then i learned to like yell because church amplifiers are always so shitty like you kind of end up singing into a basketball gymnasium for 100 people or like we go on mission trips and so now it's like you're playing in an orphanage for 100 kids like sing really loud and then i just like inherited this big voice yeah and i didn't really know what to do with it and like 18 19 20 like when i started losing my faith you just start writing church tunes that are not about are about drinking or about hating god like as much as i like wanted to be tom york and it was like loved you know system of down and like all the things that like kind of led me out of faith as soon as i sat down on the piano it's like god here i am i'm just writing these fucking bummer tunes does that still play in your mind like that association or are you kind of through that now i actually think i'm more aware of it now i think for the first couple years i really thought i was cooking and then someone was like you make worship music for like like alcoholic atheists and i was like fuck me i thought i was so advanced that's a good log line though yeah i am me i look at my crowd and it's just a bunch of 35 year old dudes with mustaches that are like oh you know like really questioning their sexuality like well i guess i found my people talk about it enough they'll they'll show up i don't want to get into this too much because i feel like we already talk about it too much on the show but what was your passage way out of that religious system was it just like growing up meeting other people was it the scene music it was definitely leaving the fold um it's like physically leaving like proximity um when i was 18 i moved to alaska my older brother had left the faith and i don't know if you remember the feeling when someone leaves and it's all like we have to pray oh yeah and so i was like we were intercessing for jack for years like please jack come back we're like anointing things like his clothes and shit like hoping that he'll just fall into a bible you know oh god oh fuck you know like just trip into like the arms of a pastor and baptized again and so when i was 18 i moved out and went to go live with him and that was the end of everything he he was like here's a beer here's cigarettes i started we started working i'd only worked at the church yeah it was just life it was being physically out of that world yeah got a real job met like non-believers who had done things that i thought were like kind of unforgivable sins and they were okay and they were great people yeah and then uh you know and then you like find drugs and sex and you're like what this seems good yeah and then like somebody gave me like a mountain goat cd and like and i was like what am i doing i need i need to be making this you know yeah so how way how is alaska i feel like alaska in my mind is just a big blank it's sort of this mysterious place yeah it pops up on my social media feeds like the other day i was watching and there's some mysterious valley where there's apparently like uh they've got their own boogeyman and everyone's too scared to fly across it that's in alaska you're a lot of bears i don't even know that sounds amazing yeah i've saved the real okay yeah stay tuned for more flightless bird we'll be right back back after a word from our sponsors are you from the northern island or southern island i'm from north okay yeah so but i have an accent like i'm from the south island i roll my eyes because my best friend at school was from the south island and i copied his voice love that but i'm from the north okay well supposedly alaska is a lot like the south like just the tectonic the the mountains a little bit of the isolation i've never been to the south island i've been in the north but i i think the culture is similar in the way that it's isolated people who are very communal and it's sort of like if we can make it through this but then also a lot of weirdos a lot of people who are trying to get away from society especially being the american arm yeah people that are dropping off the radar a little bit people that are like i got stories like fucking gary indiana and i'm trying to get the fuck out of this place i'm gonna go to alaska and i'm gonna change my name and i'm gonna be somebody else yeah so there's that and then there's it's kind of a military experience or like the whole state is just the military like americans just like well we're gonna put two military bases there because after um pearl harbor they're like we need to have more force near russia and japan so you feel that you you see that in the in the town a lot of bi's a lot of you know a lot of just like people who were like i'm gonna go get a bag and serve my country so there's like hippies that love like skiing and smoking weed and then there's like the military people who are just like getting that like stipend and serving the country and then there's like the rastabouts you know like the fucking out the people who maybe are there kind of the horseshoe of like uh we're left and like secede from the country like you know like don't love this my guns people and the like off-grid libertarian like rfk types it's it's super left and super right yes connect yes at some point how long were you there for i was there for about 10 years my brother has lived there since 2009 and so for me to sort of have that relationship with him i've i was visiting so i did like six months then i moved back south i tried to plug back into church after my little uh did you yeah i like spent six months like doing drugs and and doing all the things and i came back and i was like just kidding god uh and i love it and that lasted about six months i was like wait i just missed my friends yeah because that was my social world was church so i wanted to be plugged back in of course but it just it just wasn't going to work again long term you tasted sin you can't really yeah i just needed better friends you know there's there's drinking buddies that suck and then there's drinking buddies that are great i wonder if any of your old friends in that church are still praying for you and anointing your old clothes and your old pew and not trying to get you back in or if they've given up i think maybe one or two i'll get i'll get messages every once in a while from people saying they're praying for me especially now that i've sort of like found success yeah in a yeah like a secular world yeah yeah secular it's nice though because ultimately those people are so i find them so annoying but also at the end of the day you have to remember they don't want you to go to hell they say you want to help they want to help right it's fucking annoying though if they weren't doing that it would be sort of insulting right because they'd be okay with you going to hell forever the god of the universe if like the creator of all things is trying to send you a message you would be really urgent about that you'd have you'd be like yo yo yo please like yeah stop what you're doing i have to let you know exactly that's a good lens i've tried to soften yeah it just makes me feel a bit more gentle about it all right uh the other thing i was curious about to talk to you about which is i maybe have a specific american lens on it but as far as um sperm and sperm that's sperm that's american i wanted to talk about america so come yeah come what do you guys what's the what do you guys call it what do you guys call it it's like the kiwi slang for no come come yeah come jizz um any other weird ones i'm trying i'm sure there are then they're not in my mind now but no generally come and jizz i feel that's universal in the English speaking world. - Yeah. - Yeah. - Oh, have you thought about all those there's a lot of uh come c-o-m-e in worship songs there was one we always used to sing come yeah now is the time to worship yeah come jesus just as you are oh god and the it ended in a like four stanzas of come come and i as a kid i remember being like i love this one yeah and in high school i was like whoa who blind spot whoever wrote this well there's also that thing where so many worship songs are just love songs to jesus yeah so if you think of them out of that context it takes on a whole different light and yeah come is a whole different level he's my mom's boyfriend it still is yeah i think my like that is very much the relationship she has with him it's somewhere between like daddy dom and boyfriend and i don't i think i actually like that i i would prefer jesus as the boyfriend character than the savior yeah or the or the judge the judge but it's a bit less weird isn't it it's more on even ground yeah as opposed to like someone up on a big old throne he's just he's just like a boyfriend that's never gonna leave you and loves you unconditionally like that's i fuck with that yeah like we all need examples of pure love and if that's the source you're getting and then you can give that out yeah also just so people don't think i'm insane talking about come all of a sudden yeah transition in is uh we're talking about jesus now we're talking about calm i'm finally on a podcast so sorry i really hope my parents don't listen this one when i was 22 uh my brother and i were told that we were sperm donor kids so uh my parents had a trouble conceiving just classic normal shit like everyone goes through that sort of stuff but it was the 80s and so it was very i don't know it was wrapped around like shame and fear did that have to do with them leaving the sect of church they were because yeah sperm donors and god you know what was crazy is that they were in their little southern baptist world and it was so secret but someone at the church paid for them to go do all the fertility stuff it was like an old man at the church nice yeah right what a nice it's nice when when jesus people like throw their money around for stuff that can you that would never happen now can you imagine like all of the weird politicized stuff about vaccines not completely you might get a blood of someone from palestine yeah you know like all the weird political racism and like genetic fear mongering purity all that shit right but at the time my parents were just like we want to be parents we want to my mom is one of six my dad was from a litter of children and i was like i don't want to be a parent i want to be a parent i want to have kids and they were just like we want to have kids so they got this donated sperm and it worked and that's how my brother was born he was born in 84 um and then i don't know if it was financial or just the times but they waited six years and then went back and this they still had same guy same they still had files from this guy okay this guy was a prolific donor he wasn't the old guy that no gave them the money to do that crossed my mind as well isn't that yeah i know i was like and don't you wish your your boyfriend jesus could have just left someone you know did you growing up did you ever suspect was there any sort of no no you yeah you and your biologically 100 brothers okay and your mom carried yes okay so we are my moms we're just not my dads biologically and when you watch the tape back hindsight you see it you're like tape the tape just the tape of my life oh i see right it's not who is this tape no for a second that part of my brain was like whoa what do we stumbled into here this church watch the tape oh my god okay when you think when you play it back uh sorry that's like my like language they're like play the tape through you know right do you want to go if you fall off i had my documentary brain on where i was like we need that you know weird is going on i don't know i'm seven inches taller than my dad maybe you know like something like that um our skin looks different he can grow a beard i can't like stuff like that but no i never thought about it yeah okay and they already they had all these weird jokes like we were tall kids my brother and i and they said oh we put we put their feet in fertilizer at you know at church people are like your boys are so big they're like we put their feet in fertilizer very quickly responding yeah i was like i just thought it was so funny yeah they had little bits for that what do you think what was it like hearing that was it a big um shaking moment or was it did it feel small or big so the drama of it was that um my brother had a child and he was having his first kid my mom told him in secret oh because when you're getting the hospital wants all the data of each line right and so my brother's girlfriend at the time who was pregnant it was like coming to my mom being like yo i need you know i need the facts on you and dad and so my mom cracks and she tells my brother in secret and then she says don't tell your dad or nick that i told you how's it going and i'm like oh my god i'm like oh my god i'm like oh my god i'm like oh my god how old is your brother he's like 25 i'm 19 18 or whatever 19 yeah and so he carries it for two years huh this crushing secret yeah that's a lot to put on yeah and then like but so for like two years he's like vague texting me like every time he gets drunk he's like sending me like spotify links that he thinks are gonna reveal this secret you know podcast episodes yeah like just like or like he was obsessed with that bony bear track blood bank you know this song yeah and look stacked on top of your brothers and look how that was like he he thought that that song was the closest thing he could do to like a little easter egg yeah and so for years he just carried it until finally one day he like pushed back called my mom was like get this off of me i need you to tell them so she told dad dad was all embarrassed he thought we were going to reject him right you're not my real dad right just crazy it was like you paid for my entire life you raised me you didn't you were you were present he wasn't like deadbeat he showed up you trusted science something they don't do anymore right and so i they sat me down i thought they were gonna tell me they were dying they were like because they i was visiting from college and they're like we need to talk to you oh yeah so see that you know that's a serious one yeah that's like a death or a disease yeah yeah someone's dying you guys are getting divorced like way too late yeah i want after all the shit we went through you're gonna do it now after i leave the house and so they just yeah we we all cried i was like i don't care i love you good to know great but what's what the thing starts is this weird curiosity in my head of who did i come out of what am i heading towards what am i going to look like what diseases am i going to have all that shit so the years maybe eight years i spend in this sort of like every time i get drunk i'm like who am i and i would get online there's like donor websites where you can try to yeah what come did i come from you're singing those church songs again about come but they mean something different exactly and so my brother and i spent like eight years in this sort of curious place until one time a girlfriend of mine would like get drunk and wonder about it that she just bought the 23 and me and so it showed up spit in the tube two weeks later i'm linked with some guy on facebook half brother he's like hey man like some like cowboy from louisiana he's like hey guy and i was like oh you must be happy he's like good thing you already know he's like i've met a lot of people on here that didn't know and i'm like i'm like oh my god what a crazy thing he links me to like 10 others oh wow and i i already did a bunch of deep dive and i found the donor do you want to see him so now literally i spit in the tube and two weeks later i'm looking at the facebook profile of bio donor guy wow yeah holy shit did he live up oh honestly let's talk about bio donor dad he was disappointing i kind of wanted him to be hot i wanted him to be so hot and so cool he was just it's just a dude he's just like my dad just like white white suburban guy like like picture of him like he he's a little cool like he owns a cycle shop and he loves to bike wait have you did have you reached out or he's just a profile page at this point when i find it i know i just am like i wanted to see his profile i didn't want anything else since a lot of the donor kids have reached out we've actually made contact with him and then his actual daughters the ones he had intentionally and raised they found out about us and then now all the siblings have meetups and they're like oh my god i'm so happy to be here i'm so happy to be here i'm so happy to be here and they'll come to medium build about this yeah meetups at medium build we've touched on this on another episode really like the siblings who find each other yeah do you credit together that to the rise of your music just all these meetups at your show yeah i i credit that with um 200 people feeling even more anxious at my own shows than i already do yeah or having new new ones show up all the time there's like 20 of us now are you in like a like a whatsapp group yeah or uh yeah it's a group but yeah stay tuned for more flightless bird we'll be right back after a word from our sponsors any idea how prolific because back then the rules were a little bit different as well he was out there they kept things a bit more now i think yeah to decrease the risk of like inbreeding and stuff right no this guy was he was prolific because there's so many people out there who are like oh my god i'm gonna be like oh my god i'm gonna be like oh some of us are mid 40s and some of us are like 30. wow what a trip there was a time period where his shit was just working i guess but all of us have like there's all of us are a little fucked like it's it's kind of like i don't think they were doing checks on kind of bigger or like outer ring mental illnesses because we all have a bit of mania and we're like oh my god i'm gonna be like oh my god i'm gonna be like oh my god i'm gonna be like oh my god i'm gonna be like oh my god i'm gonna be like oh my god i'm gonna be like oh my god i'm gonna be like oh my god i'm gonna be like oh my god like my brother and i both are bipolar and when i've talked to his daughters they're like yeah he was fucking insane like he'd show up like he'd be like oh i'm gonna do a thousand mile bike ride today and then he'd just be gone for a week or he'd like walk into the room he's like girls we're going skiing we're flying to colorado today and then like ghost for a week does it kind of feel good to have that knowledge of like why you are the way you are a little bit like kind of a reason oh my god it's so my dad my real dad he when he found out all this he was like oh my god he's like i thought we just spanked y'all too much riddled with guilt yeah they're like well maybe you shouldn't have spanked an 18 but it's not that's not why we're crazy it might have been the fertilizer y'all put our feet that's incredible it's nuts and it's sweet some of the kids in the group uh didn't have really and so they look to the group for like community i think i'm a bit overdosed on people knowing me and i'm i was a social kid like i've always kind of had too many people yeah i've needed to shrink my world several times more people flooding in necessarily i definitely didn't need 20 people who feel like they are my sibling yeah yeah because essentially they're strangers and they've all got their own lives different experiences at first i was really resistant and now i've kind of started it as a sort of beautiful connective thing and i'm no longer i think for a while i was in this like fuck everyone fuck god fuck church and now i'm kind of back into this softening of like uh a non-theistic but an open-minded connective like we're all kind of the non-dualism thing like we i am you you are me we are trees we are whatever and so i'm like that's kind of beautiful these cats and i we're all crazy we're all all sort of struggle with weight we all are struggle with like food and alcohol addiction like a lot of alcoholics in the in the squad huh so fun fun to have data fun to have you know someone you're like oh we we smell similar like it's yeah it's a little fucked up but i i don't know i think it's really special like it's really unique and really special yeah what's the culture of that in new zealand do they do that obviously they have yeah they do it's similar so i actually to be honest i don't know the extent of it there's certainly um sperm donors and there's certainly um it's it's a difficult system to get into sometimes even um but i don't know when you're in new zealand that's had the same experience of like meeting their biological siblings later i don't know anyone personally that's done that i imagine it would have to be so much more strenuous or smaller we've only got five million people right so you'd have to we're already inbred enough really careful about where the sperm goes completely you know i think there's a lot more rules and but certainly it was a lot looser in the u.s when you're in the u.s and it's a lot more complicated to how there's more rules now but then a various state to state as well but i have heard of other people in similar situations we touched on it in an earlier episode where yeah people had met their dad and now they have these like weird get-togethers yeah with all these people that are biologically close and some emotionally are some aren't but i like that it gives you answers to things i think that's really incredible and plus you've got some potential new fans there as well you can throw it away to your show 10 people that are asking for yesless spots yeah that's what it is yeah that was immediately what i and their friends yeah yeah um yeah you know what is funny like i when during those like eight years of wandering through the wilderness of my mind not knowing who i could have been related to i worried about inbreeding i was like what if i start dating someone finds out none of them are attractive to me i think there is some sort of biological there's a little you know i was like oh you guys all look stupid as hell i'm like yeah it's all built in yeah it's good you're all repulsed by each other yeah yeah physically so did you meet your dad your biological dad then i've not a couple of them have made it as far as to go have like a lunch with him i'm not he he hates it he did he was not he didn't sign up for that no 23 and me it was gonna exist in 20 years no imagine he's like in his 20s and he's like going jerking off getting paid like 60 bucks to jerk off like once a week for probably like 10 years when i asked his daughters i was like oh was he did he was he broken like no he he didn't he came from like rich family he just got off for fun yeah you're not knowing this this responsibility that would come later in his life to have dialogue coming that not later how much yeah can you come okay i think we should steer out of this now um wait i have i have a a video for you i'm gonna play really quickly okay you do have a tape this is the tape roll the tape okay i just wanted to say that i'm such a huge fan i feel like such a nerd doing this in my pajamas uh but rob told me that you were gonna be on flightless bird and that's awesome and um i just love your music so much and i think you're so talented so i just wanted to say that i'm a really big fan friend of the podcast uh wanted to send you a message that's rachel bilson holy shit from the oc from the oc and for some reason it says thursday on the top of her video and she sent it she made it she made it last night i like reclining in bed loves loves your music are you guys tight yeah you guys do the podcast i did i did a show with her for a little while then we did an oc episode recently on here she knows who i am wow um it is nice to get you get old enough and you start making stuff enough and then people that you were obsessed with dm you you know and i i think that's nice it's sort of a more even playing field almost that's really nice do you get that how do you feel about i love getting older and that it's less freaky to talk to people that you admired growing up right like it becomes more normal yeah yeah and i mean i think that's a good one good thing with social media is that you do get to chat to people who you wouldn't normally get to i think ever yeah i like that do you feel like your exposure of yourself through podcast and documentary world has opened up too much people knowing you no i've got right now i've got the perfect level like this show is in such a sweet spot where it has like a lovely big audience but it's not like freakish yeah so no i feel like i'm in this wonderful sweet spot where most of the people that reach out are lovely and some really nice people like rachel you know that like what we do and like what you do is it's not it's nice david has a very specific persona for this show that's different than who he is in real life so he he protects him people don't know the real you well like emily emily texted me he was like he's not a hugger by the way don't hug him and i was like that's good to know do you want to expand on that a little i mean i think we all know yeah no rob and i have i've been i sometimes i like how fine you are no thank you no this is to be this is mostly me i do have a tendency sometimes where i get incredibly grumpy over little things that wasn't what i was referring to i was just giving you shit oh wow i took it very seriously took it very seriously no i'm mostly me but i do there are times in anything i do any work i do a project where if something i perceive isn't going my way or i feel like i'm being dictated to too much i get really shitty and i think it's from my history of in the church of like structure and i don't want anyone telling me what to do so i'm not going to do that i'm going to do it and if i feel like someone's telling me what to do or something's not going my way i get very grumpy i feel like i've perceived that from consuming you for the past whatever eight years okay so not real me like like where there's parts where you're just like hey i was frustrated about this part of the process like you you don't hide no good no i try not to yeah it's like that but even worse i'm more of a cunt behind the scenes i didn't assume you were a teddy bear but i also don't think you're a dickhead yeah no i don't think i'm a dickhead yeah am i am i a dickhead no you're not a dickhead thank you i really i wondered if i thought you were a dickhead - I thought that maybe Rachel was gonna say she's one of my half siblings that would have been great and then i then that would have broken my thing because i had such a crush on her when i was a young boy watching oc and that would have fucked up my yeah you just said you weren't attracted to your siblings right now i don't need to we don't have to rule that out yeah well yeah she hasn't done a 23 and me that we know of we can get her to do one if you want yeah um you're you're very kindly going to play us some some tunes yeah and i wondered if you could just speak to a little bit about what you're going to play for us yeah i need to give too much away but just a little yeah no i'm gonna the first tune i'm gonna play is called perceived which is hilarious i just asked you about whether you feel overexposed i i don't know if this also is from church but like i feeling like part of my childhood was the goal was that you were invisible right like uh evangelical parents church parents i feel like really told their kids like be of service you're there shut up yeah be seen not hurt right have your hair right shake people's hands yes ma'am yes sir and then like yeah get the fuck out of the way it's and everything points to god which is really money so everything points to commerce and exchanging of hands and being a good boy and so there's this part of me that since five years old it's like just wants to be seen right and wants to be noticed and once my parents say good boy and there's all that weird shit and all the ways i've even ethical i've like performed being a good person publicly and then there's the part of you that kind of catches the car and now people like fuck with you and they like you and they send you weird dms and they notice you and they say hi to you at airports that wants to put on the harry potter invisibility cloak and they and you know tattoo my face and like really you get when you see the child actors that have you get it i'm like i don't want anyone to know me or like me and so yeah i'm gonna play this song about uh turning my life into a product thank you for coming in thanks for having me the opon girls are talking shit on twitter the gay cooks are backfiring up a dart after all it's been a decent winner i've been laying low working on my heart but the crippling weight of my own thoughts keeps me up at night trying to decide whether i'm a decent guy he's got me not so nice he's got me thinking twice and i don't want to be right i don't want to be wrong no i don't want to be anything at all and i don't want to be here and i don't want to be gone no i don't want to be perceived at all so i turned my private life into entertainment i commodified all the thoughts i'd ever had had a mid-tb on stage on tour in europe yeah but all my friends say nick you can't be that bad yeah now the obsessive need to turn this thing off burns like a spider bite but the guilty i can't feed my parents mask got me out all night dancing for you in the new york light and i don't want to be right i don't want to be wrong no i don't want to be anything at all I don't want to be here i don't want to be anything at all and i don't want to be here and i don't want to be home and i don't want to be anything at all and i don't want to be anything at all and i don't want to be anything at all I don't wanna be gone No, I don't wanna be perceived at all Nothing's changed when I stop looking When I quit keeping score No one's worried about you, baby All of us are bored We're so bored that we're just talking shit on Twitter We're so dead that we're just firing up the dark And I don't wanna be right And I don't wanna be wrong No, I don't wanna be anything at all I don't wanna be here But I don't wanna be gone No, I don't wanna be perceived, no, I don't wanna be perceived, no, I don't wanna be perceived, no. I'm sittin' in the car, my mom's inside, she's pickin' up prescriptions, I don't know where I am. But I know I'm alright and I'm hopin', so take me through the drive-thru, when she gets back, drive-thru, so we can get a little snack, just us two, before we go home and feed the boys. Gotta feed the boys, but for now, it's just me and mom. And we're always runnin' late. But that doesn't stop us from hangin' to the radio. And mom knows all the ways to cut through the traffic, a laugh, a honk, some magic, and we're at the drive-thru. One little treat at the drive-thru, don't say a peep, it's just us two, before we go home and feed the boys. Gotta feed the boys. Alright, last but not least, Bird Woman. Bird Woman. There's a woman in the park, fishin' east. And movin' slow, bringin' her fists into her gut, like she's pullin' a protein. There's a mockin' bird goin' hog wild, singin' every song he's ever known. A show-off, no doubt, just tryin' to get laid. And how I wanna be the woman. But I'm really just the bird. Yeah, I wanna be the one. I held him in the hotel room, like a half pint of Hennessy. He came and told me all the plans he'd made for us And when she comes home from the city And they share a bed again He'll find the reasons plans must be delayed And how I want to be the woman But I'm really just a bird Yeah, I want to be the woman But I'm really just a bird Thank you. Thank you.