Switching gears to Rubblebucket and your solo band, Tōth, what’s in store for you, musically, in the foreseeable future?

Basically, Kal and I finished the bulk of the Sun Machine club shows—we did a couple rounds in the US—and then we did some festivals, Bonnaroo, Firefly and Central Park SummerStage, and I think we’re gonna continue to do occasional festivals and whatnot as they come up, but for the better part of the next year, Kal and I are going to be focusing on our other projects, Kalbells and Tōth.

The Tōth project is unlike anything I’ve ever done in a number of ways, and it’s really exciting to take what I’ve learned over 10 years in Rubblebucket as a performer and then see how can I integrate that into different permutations of Tōth, including a solo setup with stereo loops, then seeing what sort of movement-based stuff and visual stuff I can do to make a duo or trio show work. I’m gonna be going to Europe, and I did some shows in Japan. It’s just a totally new thing, which means there’s some growing pains where I’m like, “Oh this doesn’t feel the same way as being on stage with a bunch of people and a juggernaut live band that’s been together for 10 years. This is really weird and I’m singing these sad songs.”

But other times it’s incredibly powerful and it’s this totally unique thing. I’m just figuring it out, and I feel like it’s quickly evolving. We have more space for projects over the next year, so it’s very quickly evolving in how I present it. I’m really excited to get that record out there; it’s only been out for three or four months. I’m also gonna go down to this beach house that my friends have all been recording at in Long Island in a couple weeks with the band, the Tōth trio, which is two dudes from Rubblebucket. Ryan Dugreplays bass—he’s the guitar player in Rubblebucket—and he’s actually from Holyoke, Mass. His family’s had a diner there called Lucky Strike for like 50 years or something

Oh that’s cool—so Dream Picnic like a hometown show for him.

Yeah, we went to his Dad’s diner last time we were there—totally classic-diner vibes. And then Jeremy Gustin, Rubblebucket’s drummer, is the other one in the trio. We’re gonna go lay down a bunch of songs. I’m just trying to keep the momentum going and see how far it can take us this year.

Simultaneously, Kal and I are passing music back and forth—we’re working on songs together for Rubblebucket and, hopefully, sometime in 2020 we’ll get in the studio and record another Rubblebucket record. For me, deciding to have a year off of Rubblebucket, without setting a fixed date to it, has something to do with this realization that I have come to via doing lots of meditation—meditation being a response to my anxiety and me being a high-strung person. And I’m sober, so I’m throwing myself deeply into that without drugs and alcohol. In the process of doing that, when you stay out of your own way, you allow things to arise, versus try to grasp at them. I don’t know, there’s something for me musically that, when you give yourself the space to allow things to arise, it just feels so much more powerful and deep. It’s a natural thing.

Kal and I are intense, emotional, high-frequency people or whatever—there’s a lot of vibration. I think the idea of allowing the next music to come is a really beautiful thing. It’s kind of what happened in a lot of ways with Sun Machine—we took time on that, and it’s our favorite work that we’ve made, so we wanna continue that vibe, which is why I think it’s cool to have our other projects rocking. The other cool thing about that is that three songs on Sun Machine were products of me writing what I thought would be for Tōth. It just keeps generating creative energy.

Would you call that inspiration?

I guess that’s a word for it. I think, as the years go on, you learn you can’t really wait around for inspiration. The way the Tōth record came about was through a song-a-day process, which started around Rubblebucket’s Survival Sounds. I’m not writing a song every single day, but most days, when I’m home, I’ll at least be writing like a 30-second birthday song to somebody or a funny text message song, if not a full song a day. So, before Kal and my breakup, I was writing, and then we broke up and I was still writing. If you’re always connected and have a practice of it, there’s a creative momentum there. Then, if different things happen in your life, it’s just like different waves passing through you. There was a period of time, the post-breakup wave, and I just continued writing—I was writing before, after, during it. I guess that’s inspiration, in a way, but it’s also just giving yourself the space and structuring your life in a way, if you can, to be present and show up for the craft. And sometimes a wind blows through that has something extra to it or has more weight—and you’re there. Paul McCartney, I think, talked about that

, just showing up every day. You could go in every once in a while—and maybe your chances are just as good if you only show up when you get that feeling in your chest—but for me, if I show up everyday, the chances are much greater.

You mentioned writing songs without knowing exactly what project they were for. Was that the case with “Down for the Count,” which appears on both Sun Machine as well as Practice Magic and Seek Professional Help When Necessary?

Yeah. It seems like I’m a person of threes—it helps me to have three things cooking at once, and if I focus too closely on one thing, I can lose perspective I guess. I start to get too involved—and by “I,” I mean my ego or my intellectual mind gets its hands too dirty in the thing. But if I’m moving between things and changing my gaze from here to here to here, it allows breath into all of them and doesn’t give my weird neuroses any time to really take hold.

[When “Down for the Count” began to form,] Tōth didn’t even exist yet—I was writing with Kimbra, and Kimbra was the one who told me, “Hey, you should make a record of this stuff.” We had been working on a version of “Down for the Count,” which was from an old seed made for Rubblebucket that never materialized. I was also working on a couple other things with Kimbra, and I wasn’t sure if they were gonna be Kimbra or Rubblebucket or whatever this new solo project would be.

That’s also how “Lemonade” ended up with Rubblebucket. With “Down for the Count,” I really wasn’t sure—like, “Is this okay? Can you have the same song, basically, for both things?” I played some things for Kal, and she was like, “Yeah, let’s do this one,” so then I figured out a way to arrange it. At first, I didn’t know how to finish the song in a Rubblebucket context. I couldn’t have finished it with the same beat there. It made sense to me on the acoustic guitar. It totally worked as this sparse acoustic-guitar song, and once I finished the song in that context, then I knew how to arrange it for Rubblebucket. I just couldn’t finish it as a Rubblebucket song. That’s something I’ve learned over and over again with the songwriting process—if I strip away all of the beats and everything like that, and if I can just write the core song in a simple way, then I can present it in a lot of different ways,. Just make sure you’ve got the song first.

Thanks for taking time to talk with us today. And best of luck with the third Dream Picnic.

Thanks, I’m definitely excited for this one. It just feels like a cool summary of Kal and my life’s work. We’ve got our friends there, we’ve got Rubblebucket in its prime form with our favorite show yet, with our favorite record yet, and then our new projects, Tōth and Kalbells, rockin’ in there. It’s got all the visual aspects and all the ways we love interacting with human beings and space. It’s just a great representation of the whole picture.

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