Our friends + longtime collaborators at Pel asked us recently to team up with them on their second digital bakesale.

As you might recall, Mary + Paul of Pel first announced the bakesale in January as an ongoing fundraising campaign to support the work of progressive grassroots organizations. The inaugural event involved two shirts they designed that read ‘AMERICAN’ + ‘PEACE’ in Arabic.

For their second bakesale, they’ve released two coffee mugs—an Otherwild-endorsed ‘THE  FUTURE IS FEMALE’ design and one that takes up what became a battlecry when Senator Mitch McConnell silenced Senator Elizabeth Warren in senate, later explaining ‘Sen. Warren was giving a lengthy speech. She had appeared to violate the rule. She was warned. She was given an explanation. NEVERTHELESS, SHE PERSISTED.’ We designed the latter mug, but encourage you to purchase both as all sales Planned Parenthood will benefit and the good work hey do to support the health of women nationwide.

As Mary + Paul wrote earlier this month:

“With your help, we raised over $1,400 earlier this year in our inaugural Digital Bakesale for The Sikh Coalition and Muslim Community Network. This time around, we are fundraising for Planned Parenthood with two awesome coffee mugs. Paying homage to 1970s feminism, one reads THE FUTURE IS FEMALE, which was originally designed by Labyris Books and re-introduced recently by Otherwild. The other, designed by our friends at raven + crow studio, is a shout-out to Senator Elizabeth Warren…because…NEVERTHELESS, SHE PERSISTED! 100% of profits will go to Planned Parenthood and your donation is greatly appreciated. Feel free to share this with friends, co-workers, relatives and anyone else who might want to help actually Make America Great Again. $25 each, or better yet, $40 for two.”

You can see and purchase both via their digital bakesale page and read more (and share with your friends) via their Facebook page.

Thank you all for your support!

This year’s very first mixtape featured a track from Amsterdam artist Luwten, a song we stumbled across at random and immediately fell in love with. We recently reached out to the band to find out more about them and their music, taking some time for a quick interview with Luwten founder, song-writer, and front woman Tessa Doustra. Read on and listen to more below.

raven + crow: Alright, apologies, Tessa, but we know very little about the band—can you tell us about Luwten? Did it start off as a solo project or has it been a full band from the beginning?

Tessa Douwstra: No problem at all. Luwten started in my mind only but I always wanted to play this music with a band. There’re a couple of musicians I’ve been working with for years now and I don’t feel like I can do this without them.

I feel like many of the bands I love—especially electronic ones—are ones that are built out from solo endeavors. I think I’d read that you were in a couple bands previously—how does what you’re doing in Luwten differ from what you did in those bands?

I think that in my former bands the writing or arranging was more of a joint effort. For Luwten I did almost all of the writing and arranging myself. Also I wanted to start anew, without dealing with genres or music I made before.

Now, I did manage to figure out that “luwten” seems to translate from Dutch as “lied”—is that correct?

That’s not true actually. Where can I find that translating machine?!

WHAT‽ Damn you, Google Translate! You were so good to us in Japan! Or were you…? Alright then, what does “luwten” mean then?

Luwten is a Dutch word for “places without wind”. Similar to “under the lee” I think?

Oh, yeah, I like that much more than “lied”.

So, the first track we heard from you all was “Go Honey”, which, again, we really love. Can you talk a little bit about the inspiration for that song?

It was inspired by a friend of mine who was about to move abroad. I wrote the chorus on a little goodbye card when she left and later it turned into this song that’s also about a lot of other things. But this event planted the seed for the song, I guess.

I feel like that speaks to the bittersweet mood of the song. Both that song and “Indifference” pair your softer vocals with equally subtle-but-beautiful rhythms and instrumentation. Is most of that electronic-based or analog or both?

Both! I love both! I like the iciness and steadiness of electronics and the more human touch of analog instruments. I love guitars but I also like playing with the way it sounds so that it’s not even recognizable anymore.

Totally agree. I feel like strictly electronic music sounds somewhat…flat or one-dimensional or cold to me most times, especially when it’s lacking analog percussion. So what’s your song-writing process like? Are you the type that usually writes vocal + single instrument and then builds from there?

A lot of times the song-writing starts with a sentence or an idea. I think I start with lyrics more often than I start with music. After that I like to create a vibe by building a loop out of instruments and vocals and start singing over them. When I feel like the songs needs an extra bit, I make a new part for the song. Sometimes the writing of a song can also start with just guitar and vocals. It depends.

Cool. Word on the street is that you’ll be releasing a full album some time this spring—can you tell us anything more at this point? Track listings, when to expect it this spring, maybe how some of the other songs might differ from or expand on what we’ve heard to date?

Yes, that was the plan but it’s been quite difficult to decide what would be the best way to release it so we had to postpone it. It will be soon though! I think there’re going to be a lot of sounds on the album you’ve already heard with the first two songs we released, but some songs and sounds are a bit more electronic, some a bit more experimental, some a bit more traditional. But they all have the same cautiousness and consciousness over them, I think.

Can’t wait to hear more.

We really love that image of you that you’ve been using for PR, where you seem to be floating above an upside-down ceiling. Can you tell us how that was created and who did it? It’s really striking. Does it tie into the band/album name and translation at all?

Thanks! I love how it turned out. I worked together with two friends of mine Sonja van Hamel (graphic designer) and Eddo Hartmann (photographer). They have been doing stuff together for years and I love the things they come up with. It always looks a bit out of this world, in both the literal and figurative sense. The three of us worked on the idea for the photo together. We wanted it to be something you have to look at a couple of times in order to see what’s really going on. The floating creates a sense of stillness I really like. In that way it ties to the idea of the album: to take time to look at things from different sides and also to not be afraid to take time to work in the “luwten”.

Nice. What’s the music scene like in Amsterdam right now? I hear your noise + indie scenes are strong, but, other than Klangstof and (yeeeeears back) Bettie Serveert, I can’t say that I know many bands from your neck of the woods. Who are some artists you like?

Wow, good question! Bettie Serveert is still going strong by the way. And the band members live just around the corner here! There are a couple of bands and artists I really like. Pitou is someone I really look forward to releasing more music. Her voice, ideas, and vocal arrangements I really like. I’m also looking forward to Nana Adjoa and Sofie Winterson‘s new stuff. I can make you a list of songs by Dutch bands and artists you could listen to if you like!

Oh, man, I’d actually love that!

I’ve never visited Amsterdam but hear great things—what are some things you love about the city or places you love or things you’d recommend doing for anyone planning to visit?

I never really get attached to the place where I live. I think I like the idea of always being able to go somewhere else. But of course I love lots of things about this city. I love being able to go everywhere by bike, I love the museums we have here and the diversity of the city. But what I would recommend most is just to sit on a café’s terrace (like Festina Lente or L’Affiche), order a coffee and just look at people. It’s a great place to go to just look at people.

That sounds lovely.

Apologies for veering to politics and the state of the world, but I’m curious about the Dutch perspective of what’s been going on here over the past few months?

I think most of us were pretty shocked when Trump got elected as president. It didn’t feel like it was possible and still it did happen. I like that you brought it up. I think it’s good to talk about this and to keep each other posted on what’s going on and how to best deal with it. Even when there’s an ocean in between.

Are you all pretty left-leaning over there or do you have similar experiences to this whole conservative, fear-of-the-other trend that we seem to be experiencing here and in places like France, Germany…honestly way too many places lately?

We do have similar experiences over here. Last March the most right-winged party became the second largest party of our country. I’m afraid it’s everywhere but I’ve been trying to remind myself that the number of people looking for a connection is way bigger than the number of people trying to create this division.

Beautiful point and definitely something we all need to remember.

I know from speaking with other artists over the years that it can be tough to get to the states and make touring profitable, but, nonetheless, any plans to make the trek to the US?

We’d love to come to the US! No concrete plans yet but I’ll keep you posted!

Please do! And thanks again for taking the time to talk.

A few weeks back, we were sitting in a very hard-to-find-yet-awesome bar in the Shibuya ward of Tokyo when a local and his friend pointed across the bar to me and said ‘Sonic Youth?’ in a very confused manner, gesturing at the shirt I was wearing (pictured above).

Turns out the two guys—both sporting the ubiquitous post-work Tokyo salary man look (suit, no tie, collar open)—both worked for the Japanese beverage giant Suntory, who’s largely responsible for the Japanese whisky boom of today. But the one guy—Shin—used to work for years at the gigantic Tower Records down the street from us and was a big indie music fan. I responded that I was grateful that he got the reference to the cover of Sonic Youth’s seminal album, Goo. A lot of people just think it’s a weird Taylor Swift shirt. Don’t get me wrong—Taylor Swift’s fine, I’m more Team Sonic Youth.

And Team Scissorsaurus, who created the shirt and illustration in the first place, and whose work I’ve been meaning for a while now to call out here.

Scissorsaurus is Leeds-based artist Katie Nicholls. I came across her current work while free-falling through the web, researching her old work as the drummer in one of my favorite mid- to late-2000s bands, ¡Forward, Russia!, a wonderful art-punk band that I miss to this day. These days, judging by what little I can find on the internet, Nicholls spends the lion’s share of her time working in Huddersfield New College’s design department and creating awesome new shirts, totes, aprons, and cards for Scissorsaurus, all of which you can check out on her store.

Also, that shirt led to some great stories + recs from our friends at Suntory, so thanks, Scissorsaurus!

For those looking to up their grilling game this summer, we have some post-Memorial-Day suggestions.

First: Homemade pickles.
Despite what many of us think, quick pickles are super-easy—and, as the name would suggest—quick to make at home. We wrote up a detailed bread + butter pickle recipe a bit back that you can essentially follow using any vegetable you want pickled (green beans, peppers, red onions, the golden beets you see above). You’d just up or lower the sugar used depending on how sweet (if at all) you want the end product and vary spices + herbs used for variety. But, essentially, all you need to do is put some fresh, raw vegetables in a glass container with said spices/herbs, boil some vinegar, and carefully pour it over the vegetables until covered, leaving at room temperature for an hour or two. That’s it. And it’s an awesome way to add visual interest to just about any dish; or, say, vegan hot dogs.

You can also make pickled vegetables without store-bought vinegar, using sea salt to coat vegetables like onions, slivered carrots, radish, red cabbage, or greens (like the beet greens you see below) and letting them stand for a couple hours. This breaks down the cellular structure of the vegetables and releases liquid, essentially creating a salty natural vinegar in the process. Then just rinse with water (or don’t if you like the saltier taste) and serve.

Second: Bun variety.
Let’s face it—buns are just a necessary vehicle for the dogs + toppings. And they can get really old if you chose buns that are too bread-y or you’re having more than one hot dog. So get a couple types of buns to add variety to your next grilling extravaganza. Milwaukee’s Miller Baking Company makes a great line of totally vegan pretzel buns for dogs + sandwiches that we LOVE. Between that and a nice, soft generic hoagie roll that’s dairy-free, it’s easy maximize your vegan-hot-dog eating without getting all ho-hum about the bread. And both options are great in the stand-up arena, which is superb for allowing a ton of toppings (the real star of any hot dog party in our opinions).

Third: Get creative.
A classic ketchup + mustard dog is great sometimes, but we’ve had a lot of fun planning out more ambitious, less traditional flavor combinations with our toppings. Think out some flavors that work well in other foods and figure out if they might translate well to your next vegan hot dog.

This past Memorial Day we ended up with:
Homemade vegan chili with homemade cashew cheese, salt-cured beet greens, crunchy fried shallots (the kind you find at Asian markets), vegan mayo, and pickled golden beets on grilled white hoagie bun;
Sweet Earth vegan bacon with homemade Korean chili flake bread + butter pickles, homemade pub cheese, sautéed onions, vegan mayo, and salt-cured red cabbage on grilled pretzel bun (both pictured above);
And, with a tenuous analog to the wonderful world of bagels, a vegan cream cheese-slathered pretzel bun with salt-cured beet greens, pickled red onions, and Sriracha (pictured below along with the bacon variant on white bun with pickled peppers).

For the vegan dogs themselves, we tend to like the old-school soy-based ones or the more vegan sausage-like ones—less the really high-gluten ones that make you feel like you’re eating a bread sandwich—or even sous-vide carrots. But, really, it’s about the toppings, man. The toppings.

First off, we’re back from Japan and, yes, it was an amazing, life-affirming/-altering experience we’d highly recommend to everyone. We’ll be using these pages in the coming weeks to outline a kind of guide for vegan-friendly, fun-friendly travel in Tokyo, Kyoto, and in between, but, in the meantime, we wanted to let you know that we’ve got a new batch of our Kindness Collection shirts that we’ve just released.

The shirts—first announced a year and a half back—are our holistic answer to animal-friendly messaging in the all-too-welcome but often over-saturated pro-vegan marketplace of today. When we first considered designing creating a line of shirts, we decided we couldn’t in good conscience simply slap some illustrations and slogans on the cheapest shirt we could find (which, admittedly, would be the most lucrative move) and ignore work conditions and environmental impact while espousing the rights of animals. It seemed like a narrow-minded approach at this point in our lives and the life of our company; in short, we would have felt like hypocrites.

So we sought out a local apparel-maker here in Los Angeles—one with an eye on minimizing environmental impact while supporting its workers—and we found Groceries Apparel.  Groceries is not only committed to a fair workplace and eco-friendly materials and production, they also have an eye on quality and a deep catalog of products to choose from. What’s more, they’re a small, locally run business, like ours, with similar values that just mesh well with our own.

This run of shirts—like the last—is made of non-GMO, organic cotton and/or poly that’s produced by processing recycled plastic bottles and it’s all cut and sewn just south of downtown LA, in a central factory that also serves as Groceries’ HQ and offices. We also have the shirts screen-printed locally, just south of the 10.

All of this means more expensive shirts…but it also means producing something that we can stand behind with clear hearts. None of this is meant to disparage others in the same field doing things differently at all—again, the marketplace is so huge right now, there’s room for all kinds of approaches; this is just the one we feel most comfortable taking.

So we encourage you—if you’re local to LA or NYC—to swing by MooShoes, who carries the shirts, to check them out (give us a few days to get them over to New York; we’re tagging and sending as soon as we finish these next few paragraphs) or take a look at them over at mooshoes.com.

Also, how did we get through this whole post without mentioning our reverence for Skate or Die!?

I think we’ve said as much in the past, but this really is one of our favorite mixes.

(Related side-note, if you’re interested in hearing our past monthly mixtapes, which we’ve been doing for a little over two years now, you can search ‘mixtape’ on this site or, for the more recent ones and ongoing, listen and explore via our Mixcloud page.)

But, with one foot out the door as we head for our first visit to Japan ٩(◕‿◕)۶ we give you our May 2017 mix.

We’re starting off with a really lovely song from Brooklyn newcomer Kate Kay Es (wait for the horns). Next we feature our favorite track off Future Island‘s new album and a driving new single from Portland, Oregon’s Grace Mitchell (one of a few post-Coachella finds) before hitting an Australian rock block with two new favorites of ours—Golden Vessel out of Brisbane + Vallis Alps out of Sydney (who happens to be playing Lightening in a Bottle up the coast at the end of the month and are fucking awesome). Next, a great, upbeat track from French producer Kidswaste; a hella catchy song from London duo Oh Wonder (another Coachella find); one of our favorite tracks from English singer-songwriter, Shura (ditto on the Coachella); a cool, quirkily beautiful new single by Sleep Party People (AKA, Copenhagen’s Brian Batz); a great introduction to the new album from California’s own Kacey Johansing (album out June 2); a catchy electronic number from Brooklyn duo Beacon; a great, vocal-centric new one from Salt Lake City/Chapel Hill’s Mideau, who we interviewed back in 2014; the welcome new single from LCD Soundsystem; and ending out with a beautiful, dreamy track from DC’s Humble Fire that melts into a haunting new song by New Zealand artist Aldous Harding. Throwing in the very cool video Humble Fire did for their track below our playlist too just because we like it so much.

Enjoy and また近いうちにお会いしましょう!

This new reality we’ve all been living since January 20th has resulted in many firsts. Regardless of political leanings, we’re all being pushed into new realms, it seems; some of us who’ve chronically felt unheard and under-represented by our government have someone who claims to hold their interests close to heart in power of our country’s highest seat; others feel causes we believe in strongly as core to our identity as Americans are now under threat. In that latter category, many groups and individuals have been moved to find creative ways to support these endangered causes—community fund-raising events, apparel with positive messaging that go to benefit non-profits, prints and posters that do the same.

Now the people that brought us indie record label Secretly Canadian and the team behind 30 Songs, 30 Days have brought us Our First 100 Days, a project that brought together 100 artists, releasing one rare, unreleased, or exclusive song each with the goal “to raise funds and awareness for organizations supporting causes that are under threat by the proposed policies of a Trump administration.”

As they say:

“For a minimum contribution of $30, supporters will be able to access all 100 songs in the project, including new music from Angel Olsen, How To Dress Well, Toro Y Moi, The Range and many more. All profits raised from Our First 100 Days will go directly to organizations working on the front lines of climate, women’s rights, immigration and fairness.”

And the artists involved aren’t skimping. From totally heretofore unheard of original tracks to covers to live recordings to rare b-sides, with 100 artists and groups involved, chances are someone you love is doing something awesome on here. And you can get it all at a cool 3o bucks, all while helping worthy causes.

You can view more information about the six specific organizations the project is supporting on their website and listen to the whole thing below. The stream starts with the compilation’s final track by default—Phosphorescent‘s version of “This Land is Your Land”—but you can start from the beginning with Angel Olsen‘s beautiful intro song once that’s played through.

Our First 100 Days by Our First 100 Days

Pepper rieason is nearly upon us in Southern California—planting begins in January in the southern desert valleys and begin production and cultivation as early as late April and harvest can continue to be production through November on the Central Coast and in the Central Valley.

For us, that means dedicating a large portion of our refrigerator shelves to hot sauces; specifically homemade fermented hot sauces.

We came across recipes for two different fermented hot sauces via Tasting Table last year, each with their own distinct tastes, one a short fermentation, one longer. After initially following each recipe by the book, we started experimenting, playing with different kinds of peppers for each, which gave us even more play in the heat and flavors that each recipe produced and the ability to go along with what’s in season week-to-week at our local farmers’ market.

You can view the original recipes for a Pickled Fresno Chile Vinegar from The Meatball Shop‘s Daniel Holzman and a Chile Vinegar Sauce from Michael Hung of LA’s Faith + Flower at Tasting Table. Below, we have our looser, altered recipes allowing for more flexibility on the peppers used.

Both recipes are great—the first is fermented longer, giving more of that tangy funk you’d associated with pickles or the like and can be a bit thinner; the second is more along the lines of a fermented Sriracha and takes less time to make. Both recipes originally call for white vinegar, but we tend to usually use apple cider vinegar simply because we like the taste more—white vinegar’s more neutral, but it’s also a little astringent and harsh. Rice vinegar also works well, so your call. As for the peppers used, we’d recommend doing what we did—make the recipes by the book first if you’ve got the ingredients, then experiment with other peppers, lowering or upping the heat by using different peppers and, for the second recipe, keep like colors together to make, essentially, green Srirachas with green bells + jalapeños, red with red bells + red Fresnos out the like, yellow with yellow bells + yellow manzanos, which one Hollywood Farmers Market vendor regularly has and which makes for a great, hot, fruity sauce. As you can see from some of the labels we made, we also started to play with other ingredients like fresh herbs and other spices.

Five Week Fermented Chili Vinegar

2 cups boiling water

½ cup, plus 2 tablespoons, vinegar, divided

6 tablespoons sea salt, divided

8 ounces chiles (7 large peppers each), chopped into large pieces

5 garlic cloves, smashed + peeled

In a medium pop, boil water and add 2 tablespoons of vinegar and 2 tablespoons of salt. Stir until dissolved and then let cool. Once cool, add the chiles and the garlic to a glass jar, pour vinegar solution over, and loosely cover with the lid, making sure the chiles are completely submerged; if they’re not, add a little more vinegar + water. Let ferment at room temperature for 4 weeks (maybe set a reminder, just in case).

Once fermented, drain the chiles and garlic, reserving ½ cup of the pickling liquid. Transfer the chiles, garlic and reserved pickling liquid to a blender with the remaining ½ cup of vinegar and ¼ cup of salt (note—if you’re salt averse, totally fine to omit this salting and/or lower the overall salt included in the recipe). Blend until smooth. Return to the glass container and seal. Let sit at room temperature for another week, shaking every day until homogenous.

Keep in the refrigerator for up to 3 months, using as desired.

Aged Sriracha

1 dried chile, stemmed, seeded (keep the seeds if you’re into extra heat)

1 large fresh chile, sliced ¼-inch thick

½ bell pepper, sliced ¼-inch thick

2 tablespoons roughly chopped garlic

¼ cup finely diced shallot

1 cup vinegar

2 tablespoons sea salt

Preheat the oven to 350°F and then roast the dried chile on a sheet tray until lightly toasted, about a minute. For an added char taste, we like to also partially blacken the fresh peppers we use on the stove’s open flame.

Combine all of the ingredients in a non-reactive mixing bowl and allow to marinate for an hour.

Transfer the mixture to a blender and purée on high speed until smooth. Place the purée in a nonreactive bowl or glass container and cover tightly with one layer of cheesecloth or a lose-fitting lid. Allow the sauce to sit at room temperature for 3 to 5 days until the sauce takes on a natural fermented aroma. Once finished, transfer the sauce to an airtight container. Keep chilled in the refrigerator. The Sriracha will last for a few months.

We just posted our April mixtape over the weekend and it’s got some great new work on it, both from longtime favorites of ours and from newcomers.

Starting things off with the latter in the form of an excellent single from Brooklyn-Toronto duo ginla before moving on to a track from an interesting, crowd-funded album by Sheffield’s Diagrams (AKA Sam Genders), Dorothy (out May 12), a project on which Genders collaborated with 90-year-old Orca Island poet Dorothy Trogdon.

Next up, a great track from a band we haven’t heard from for a little while, San Francisco duo, Cathedrals; then we feature an experimentally bombastic track from Iceland’s JFDR (AKA Jófríður Ákadóttir), who just opened the LA Phil’s Reykjavik Festival on Friday; some slacker hip hop from Wicca Phase Springs Eternal; the triumphant return of Canadian super-group, Broken Social Scene; another very welcome return from yet another wonderful Canadian indie band that’s been on hiatus for years now, Land of Talk; new music from Danish indie-prog rockers, Mew; a new one from a favorite electronic artist of ours, Chad Valley; a new, seemingly pro-refugee track from Marnie, formerly of Ladytron (remember Ladytron‽); an excellent song from Seattle’s Perfume Genius (AKA Mike Hadreas); a track from Dublin’s Bonzai that effortlessly moves from quiet glitch to roof-raising chorus; a nice one from Perth’s Our Man in Berlin; some catchy as hell self-empowered rock by London trio Dream Wife; and ending out by following up on a band we first featured this time last year, Brooklyn six-piece Arthur Moon, who craft darkly beautiful, introspective art-pop.

Enjoy! And if you hear something you like, check the track list and please do buy songs/albums and supports these great artists’ work.

We’ve said as much on these pages before, but we’re lucky to have crossed paths and kept up with a lot of wonderful, creative people over the years. One such person is Ravi Krishnaswami, whom we first knew as the guitarist + song-writer in the excellent pop band, Charming. And yes, that is an illustration Katie posed for on the art for band’s final album in 2006.

Since Charming, Ravi’s gone on to work with many other artists and start his own company, COPILOT, which writes music for the media, video, and gaming worlds. He also started a kick-ass Morrissey/Smiths tribute band. After years of writing music for others, Ravi’s recently started writing and putting out his own music again under the moniker Hybird.

We took a few minutes to catch up with Ravi to talk over his new project, the nuts + bolts of re-starting a musical career, the boons of slowing life down, and the eye-opening experience of playing Barbie’s guitar. We’ve also got  video premier for Hybird’s new song, “Half Life.”

(Photo cred: Fernando Da Silva)

raven + crow: Alright, let’s talk Hybird—this is the first original work you’ve done since Charming, right?

Ravi Krishnaswami: Yes, that’s right! After Charming’s third album in 2006, we were all in different cities and called it quits. I was spending most of my energy writing music for ads, TV, and eventually games. I missed performing but filled that void by starting a Smiths tribute band called The Sons & Heirs. We’re pretty legit now—we’re playing the Bowery Ballroom on April 1st!.

Over that time I had some interesting experiences as a producer and engineer. I worked with The Magnetic Fields on songs for I and Pieces of April. I produced and played guitar on an album for my friend’s shoe-gazey band called Black Swan Green. I even worked on a couple of advertising projects with Sharon Jones. I wrote songs here and there for other projects, but I really hadn’t put much time into material that was purely my vision.

Man, to this day, I have Black Swan Green songs that remain mainstays on playlists—I loved that album.

But—not to make this about me—I feel like I’ve always had in mind that I’d do something musically again on my own, but that thought’s been there and remained on the fringes for years now, constantly getting knocked down on the priority list. For you, what sparked this project or pushed you from the theoretical into the actual?

Well first, I should say, dude, you should get back to it! We’re not getting younger!

Fair enough.

To answer your question, a few things dovetailed at the right time for me. I’d been teaching composition at Vermont College of Fine Arts for a few years and tried to give a lecture on songwriting. I felt it was unteachable, but putting together that talk got me thinking about what I loved about my favorite songs. I was left with this feeling like, I wonder if I could do that myself?

Around that time my wife was diagnosed with multiple myeloma—a blood cancer—and had a stem cell transplant. It was obviously a gut punch and an immediate perspective-shift. I slowed down and halted work trips for a while. I also cut out beer/wine with dinner on weeknights, mostly so I wouldn’t let the stress get that out of hand. Sounds silly, but all of a sudden I had alot of time at home and I was wide awake at night, for the first time in years. There were two albums that I’d recently come across that really hit me hard… Sufjan Steven’s Carrie & Lowell and Grimes’ Art Angels. They’re very different records, but both are hyper-creative DIY productions. All of that stuff swirling around, plus a general mid-life sense that I’d spent a chunk of my life writing for other people, got me messing around again. And I really went at it with no sense it was going anywhere, just as a sort of break from making music on a deadline. It felt like my high school, just holed up in my room running on instinct with a four track and a notebook.

How does someone who holds down a full-time gig and has a family make time for something like that?

I think when you get to this stage of your life, the key word is “make.” As in, I don’t really “have” the time to do this, but I’m making it a priority. I’m watching less TV. I’m spending less time at night mindlessly on the computer. You just get to an age where you realize you can’t put it off any longer. Luckily my family and my business partner recognize this is something I should be doing and give me some leeway! It’s happened in fits and starts, and I’ve just tried to keep momentum going without it feeling like another obligation.

Do you feel like living in smaller, slower community than, say, New York, helps with that?

Yeah, absolutely. I really love New Haven. I’ve been here five years now. It’s a creative place and it’s easy to get a handle on what’s happening here and easy to get to know people with similar tastes. When I lived there, I always felt NYC was overwhelming as a music scene. Each genre was its own world, and that bred a more competitive atmosphere. Plus, there’s a million other things to do every night. New Haven reminds me of Charlottesville in the 90’s.

I can’t say that New Haven really knows about Hybird yet, outside of my social circle, but I was lucky enough to become friends with Jonny Rodgers (Cindertalk), and his brother Steve, who were in a pretty well known band from the 90’s called Mighty Purple. Steve runs a great venue here called The Space. Jonny’s label Off Atlas is releasing my album, and I’ll be previewing it on local radio, WNHH, next week, with Brian Slattery, a friend and a real staple of the music scene, both as a musician and writer. So far I’ve felt welcomed and proud to talk up this underrated town.

That’s great to hear. And inspiring, honestly. But, I mean, even if you live in the middle of nowhere these days, you can still remain so plugged in and spread thin in a way with the way we’ve structured our virtual lives. I feel like that’s kind of what your song “Distracted” is speaking to, right?

Yeah, for sure. It’s great. It’s totally changed the business of music for media. I’ve been able to move to Vermont and now Connecticut while remaining in close contact with clients and collaborators.

“Distracted” is more about the downside of this technological immediacy, though. The pull of the smart phone, and the addictiveness of social media. Ten years ago, you just walked down the street and looked straight ahead. Now you pull your phone out one minute and feel connected to people. The next minute, you’ve posted something and gotten no feedback so you feel rejected. It’s like a constant battle to slow yourself down enough to think clearly and not just be driven day to night by the stream of information. The song seems even more relevant now that the Trump presidency has all our news notifications maxed out on a daily basis. I think when I was trying to lecture on songwriting I realized I really valued a song if it somehow found something new to say. Smart phone addiction doesn’t have centuries of songs written about it yet, but I think it’s something a lot of folks are dealing with every day.

Can you talk about how Hybird relates creatively to what you do with Copilot? Do you feel like those come from two different parts of your brain or creative force?

I feel like Hybird is a spiritual rebuttal to my work at Copilot. At Copilot, I’m often telling someone else’s story and deferring to someone else’s final opinion on what’s good. It felt really important to me all of a sudden to regain my own voice, to be able to trust my own gut again about when something was done or needed more work. Poor Jason (my partner at Copilot)… he’s the most diplomatic person you could ever get feedback from, but my first conversation about Hybird involved me telling him he’d have no input on any of this material.

It’s interesting though, because the actual name, Hybird, and to some extent the whole aesthetic framework, really started on a pro-bono project for World Wildlife Fund. I’d had scored a beautiful iPad app, and the developers encouraged me to turn the score into a full song and release it, given the interest. That song “Together” is really where I started to discover my sound as a solo artist. And when I put it out, I thought it was important to give myself an identity outside of the “jack of all trades” composer that I’ve been over the years.

Makes sense. Talk about “Half Life” if you don’t mind—what’s the song about?

Middle age, which is scary, but brings a whole lot of wisdom. Becoming a parent gives you a completely new perspective on your own parents and your childhood, and all the things like birth order, or how your parents communicated (or didn’t communicate) that turned you into what you are now. But the flip side is that you can get to this point in your life and have all the same insecurities and fears that you had as a kid. Writing and singing my own songs without a band, in secret, was where I started, in middle and high school. Before I even had a four track cassette studio, I was overdubbing on a double cassette boombox. Returning to this kind of writing, I felt like I was having a conversation with that kid, checking in, seeing what had changed and what had stayed the same. And it’s interesting because the lyrics came after the music, and were somewhat inspired by how I put that track together. My daughter Willa had gotten this toy Barbie guitar that played chords and riffs depending on which button you hit. I was sitting in her room one morning just playing a little sequence of chords and I was like… wait…that’s a song. So I went upstairs and recorded the chords, pitched them correctly (they were a little flat for some reason), chopped them up and resampled them. I eventually got Willa to add some children’s chorus at the very end. I just wanted the song to really feel like this conversation between adult and kid versions of me.

Does that theme or similar themes weave through your other new work—growing older, reflecting on self and family and these bigger life changes?

Yeah. I have a song called “Gemini,” which is the title of the record, and that’s also about being a parent, and about having two conflicting things going on, feeling sort of trapped inside this very responsible routine of raising your kid, while daydreaming about being a twenty-something criss-crossing the country in a van on tour. It’s the feeling of playing to 500 screaming people at the Bell House and then dropping your kid off at school the next morning, and feeling like you’re totally undercover as a rock star, if the other parents only knew! And there’s a song called “Portland” which is about the dream of moving to a new city so you can rewrite your story and move on from old narratives. It’s a really personal record at times, and a lot of it is about accepting certain things and rejecting certain things, but sort of arriving at a moment of clarity that allows for that kind of resolution to take place finally. The beauty of songs is that they don’t have to always work purely literally. They can work on an emotional level with just the scaffolding of storytelling, which is what happens on a number of these songs.

What did you want the video for “Half Life” to communicate, in addition to the song’s weight itself?

It’s funny. I’m learning about making videos as part of this project. I feel like it’s hard to get attention for your music without some video material these days. I’ve been playing with different DIY approaches. For the ‘Half Life’ video, since it’s very much about returning to the bedroom studio of high school, I wanted to somehow communicate what it feels like and looks like to be in the moment, recording every part on a new song, when you can kind of hear all the parts at once as you’re working. It seemed natural to include the Yamaha four-track to communicate that I’m still an insecure high school kid inside, writing these songs. I mean in reality, I record to Digital Performer now.

With a, like, Yamaha four-track filter, I assume. That’s awesome. Do you envision performing as Hybird live at any point or is that something you don’t really have an interest in? Or is it more a matter of not yet knowing what that’d look like?

I think I’ve got a several hurdles to performing. It’s a different time commitment than just recording, and I’m still active performing with The Sons & Heirs. I’ve found my voice in the studio, but can I find it on stage? And yeah, I haven’t really figured out what kind of ensemble, if any, would be most compelling. I’d want to do it right. I don’t want to be the whiney singer/songwriter guy that’s hopefully only got another song or two in his set. I recognize there’s a point at which I have to back up these songs with performances if I care about them, but I’m procrastinating. I did perform one song at Vermont College with a couple students adding guitars. That wasn’t a complete disaster, so maybe I’ll get it together.

Cool, man. As always, great to speak with you. And let’s hang out when you’re back on the west coast again.

I’m so grateful. We’ve known each other a long time and I’ve always been such a fan of your work here on the blog and you know I’ve loved your design work for years. I’m really honored to be here!

You’re too kind!