Being 'Late For The Train' Is Great!

Introduction

SPEAKER_03 0:05

You're listening. Your gramps just make shit up.

SPEAKER_04 0:08

You should listen to this my gramps.

SPEAKER_03 0:14

How do you turn this thing on? Is this thing on? What the hell? What are those kids doing on my lawn? Hold on.

SPEAKER_11 0:28

Hey, y'all get off my lawn. No. Take your dog with you.

SPEAKER_03 0:38

Thank kids. First, a little housekeeping. If you're in my age group, you may want to turn this thing up. You know why. In the future episodes of Gramps Just Make Shit Up, should there be any future episodes, I'd like to share Americana and folk music, primarily from very talented singer, songwriter, musicians that I've met over the past few years while on my own journey to express myself and entertain the grandkids through songwriting. And we'll also have some fun exploring science-related and historical trivia. That, should you choose to repeat it, will make you even more annoying at family gatherings than you may have been in the past. If you haven't already guessed, this is my very first attempt at a podcast. In spite of the name, I am not making that up. So let's see what damage is caused from this collision between technology and a rambling old man. This next segment is not about making anything up. As a matter of fact, it's totally about truth. And the truth is, I love music. In an effort to be more clever when recording this segment, I decided to look up quotes about music. What a rabbit hole that turned out to be. Turns out that about every human being that's ever been quoted about something also had a quote about music. Of course, you'd expect people like Beethoven to say something like, Music is like a dream, one that I cannot hear. I'm not sure if he was being literal or sardonic. In any case, you'd expect illuminaries to say something profound about music, of course. But Confucius had to weigh in as well, saying, Music produces a kind of pleasure which human nature cannot do without. And even Plato pontificating about music with music gives a soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination, and life to everything. I think he and Bob Marley must have been smoking the same stuff. Bob Marley had a lot of quotes about music, but one of them was one good thing about music when it hits you, you feel no pain. But I'm gonna go with Jean-Louis Lebris de Kerouac, better known as Jack Kerouac, who said the only truth is music. And for those of you that actually speak French, I do apologize. The only French I learned was from Pepe Le Pew. So where am I going with this travelogue down the rabbit hole? Well, in this next segment, I have the opportunity to speak to two singer-songwriter musicians that I greatly admire. I'll let them introduce themselves, but I met them at a singer-songwriter camp that I attended in January of 2019. It was at the Pacific Songwriting Camp held in Cambria, California on the Central Coast, but I'll provide more information about that later. So let's get started. I don't want to be late for the train. Oh, and while Dave and Laura were a total delight to talk with, I have to warn you, Dave peppers his casual language with SAT words. And even though this is an audio only recording, we did this interview via Zoom, so we did get to see one another for the first time in a while.

Late For the Train

SPEAKER_12 3:42

Yeah. Hello, hello. How do you do?

SPEAKER_00 3:45

Nice shirt, man.

SPEAKER_12 3:48

I had to put it on. This is just gonna be audio, right? Should I like put on a put on a no, no, this is definitely just audio.

SPEAKER_02 3:58

You know. Well, you guys look great. I haven't seen you since you went on your adventure to uh Asheville.

SPEAKER_01 4:04

Yeah, wow, that's it was it feels like lifetimes ago.

SPEAKER_02 4:08

How are you doing? I'm doing great. Well, ladies and gentlemen, I'd like to introduce some very talented young people that I met just a few years ago. Collectively, they're known as Late for the Train. Gonna have to ask you about how that name came about. But how about if you introduce yourselves for us?

SPEAKER_09 4:23

Sure. My name is David Pasco. I often go by Dave. I play guitar primarily and sing and occasionally play mandolin in Late for the Train.

SPEAKER_01 4:33

So formal, Dave. Um I'm I'm Laura Benson is my last name. And I in Late for the Train sing and play fiddle. And what was the other question? Sorry. I was distracted by Dave's formality and I lost track of the band. And sometimes we play as a three or a four piece. Really, the other main player is our friend Tom, Thomas Benaducci, who plays stand-up bass with us. And then we had a four-piece band with our old roommate Nick, who played banjo and mandolin. And then then COVID happened, and he is now going to be a first-time father. So we very, you know, we all separated because that obviously is more important, needs to be more important to him. So so we're kind of a trio now. Yeah.

SPEAKER_09 5:24

We we played with another fourth member, Josh Haynes, for a little while.

SPEAKER_01 5:27

But the the name kind of got its start from then all our gigs got canceled when Josh joined the band.

SPEAKER_09 5:32

That's true.

SPEAKER_01 5:32

It's not his fault though.

SPEAKER_09 5:34

We had a kind of laundry list of just fun, mostly quippy stuff when we when we met each other and we were playing music together. We're both youngest siblings. I'm the youngest of three, and Laura's just a little sister of two. And even though I'd say we're both fairly punctual within my perception of punctuality in the world, like I'm always late to my family stuff. And it seems like Laura was always late to her family stuff. And I think that's kind of the curse of the young sibling is that even when you're on time, you feel like you're late to the plan or late to the strategy or late to the being old. So we always got labeled, I think, a little bit tardier than we felt. And so it felt like a kind of way of making fun of ourselves and also leaning into some kind of fun folk imagery. And we both have spent a bunch of times on trains that we really enjoyed, not working or anything, but just traveling and had some fun memories. So it felt like kind of covered all the bases.

SPEAKER_02 6:22

Well, how long have you been together as a band?

SPEAKER_01 6:26

Our first show as a band was as a duo.

SPEAKER_09 6:30

May 14th, May 17th. 2017. Yeah, so we're coming up on we're coming up on four years. Yeah. Three, three and a half, three, three and more than a half. Yeah, our first show was we a friend of ours, a guy named Dennis, who who fronts uh a group called the Hot Mountain Dips. Him and his housemates down in down close to Ocean Beach in San Francisco, they put on a fundraiser show every year. It's an after party for beta breakers. So everybody's in full costume, and they typically raise money for the local the local Surfrider Foundation. They go and you know clean up, clean up the beaches. We only really had a couple of songs that we sang. We were mostly just playing twin fiddles. And with uh another friend of ours, we had just made tutos. So we donned those tutus as our costume and a bunch of other silly clothing, and we were the in-between band for all the other bands throughout the day. So we played like the tweener sets. We played the 15-minute like set up one mic and play fiddle tunes and your tutus, and then strike the mic and the next band's up, and then set up your mic and play fiddle tunes near tutus. So that was officially the first, that was the first time our name was on a thing.

SPEAKER_01 7:37

They put our name on the poster that they made for their backyard party. It was great.

SPEAKER_02 7:41

So it's been almost four years that you've been playing together. How did you find one another?

SPEAKER_09 7:47

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 7:47

Um well, we formed the band about three months after meeting.

SPEAKER_09 7:51

Yeah, yeah, we moved quick.

SPEAKER_01 7:53

Um how did we meet? We met some friends, I guess mutual community musical friends of ours, are a band called the Rainbow Girls. There's three, three women, really great band. Um, they have beautiful, beautiful harmonies and songs. And Dave actually went to college with them collectively. And once a month on Monday nights, they host kind of potluck and sort of song sharing. Like you kind of call it an open mic, but it's at their house. They all live together, and so it's a living room kind of open mic slash poetry or bring your skill night.

SPEAKER_09 8:28

A friend of ours is a is a physical theater actor and uh clown, and she'll do like wordless performance pieces with various props. So you can do whatever you want.

SPEAKER_01 8:38

Someone did like a cooking show, one of the women's a baker, and she taught us how to make meringue. It's great. Um we met at one of their open mic nights. They call it bean night. They call it bean night, yeah.

SPEAKER_09 8:50

When they hosted it back in uh in college or down at UC Santa Barbara, they would have a big pot of beans and rice. They'd encourage everybody to bring a bottle of wine, and everybody would share beans and rice and wine and then start the open mic kind of song share.

SPEAKER_01 9:04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_09 9:04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 9:05

Yeah. So we met we met with that, and it was a Halloween. I don't know if it was Halloween night, actually.

SPEAKER_09 9:11

I think it was Halloween night, actually.

SPEAKER_01 9:12

It was a Halloween B night, and we both had fiddles, which is rare in the folk music scene that you show up and find another fiddle player. So it was kind of just that.

SPEAKER_04 9:25

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 9:26

Like attracts like fiddle players, fiddle players really, really stick together. They they'll find each other.

SPEAKER_02 9:36

Well, so it was meant to be. Yeah. So that takes care of you know, the one question, your origin story. But I was also interested in individually, you have these histories that are available. Thank you, Internet. I was fascinated by your travels there, Laura. It sounded like you were traveling very young internationally, Madrid being one of the schools you attended. How did you find yourself leaving the United States, the safety of the United States?

SPEAKER_01 10:04

Oh, that's a great question. I guess, I guess I did. So my first time going out of the country was with my older sister right out of college or high school, sorry, right after I graduated high school. And that was my first time out of the country. We went to Nicaragua. I'd been studying Spanish. She spoke Spanish. Her best friend from growing up, one of them is Nicaraguan, and her extended family all lived down there. So we went and stayed with them and got to know them and traveled around. And so I don't know. I think of that as not that young, I guess, but but I guess in hindsight, it kind of is. And so that was my first kind of exposure to Spanish language immersion. And then that kept me, and you know, another culture outside of the US. And I was with my older sister, and like I said, it was a very kind of familial connection. She had been there many times, and and her friend Tanya's extended family is just so welcoming and so wonderful. And there were many, many of them. And then I continued to study Spanish throughout college. Um, I got really interested in Latino and Chicano studies and Hispanic studies in general. And when it came to studying abroad, I had the opportunity to do so through my college. They had a program that I guess good or bad, it was basically the same cost. A lot of people went abroad their junior year because it was the same cost to attend school in state as you, you know, a normal year or go abroad. They kind of had that bundled into the tuition. So when I was thinking about going abroad, Spain just really drew me in. And I studied there, actually studied in Granada when I was in school in the South, which is in Andalusia. And then fast forward a year and a half when I graduated college, I really wanted to go to get a degree in a master's degree in acting. And it turns out that master's programs for a degree in acting can be very expensive in New York City. And I was in this moment of being in a lot of college debt and not really being willing to go into, you know, another hundred thousand dollars of debt for very unpredictable degree, I'll say. And so I was kind of like, I don't know what I'm gonna do. But someone at my uh school had mentioned this teaching program where you were basically a language assistant, an English language assistant in classrooms in Spain. That was pretty it was through the Spanish government. It was called auxiliares, uh conversation, auxiliares de conversación, so like conversation leaders. And so I applied to that and got accepted and went to Spain. And I I got placed, you don't get to choose where you go. So one caveat, you can kind of you can request regions, but I got placed in Galicia, which is the northwest of Spain, right above Portugal. And uh I'd never heard of it until I found out I was going to be moving there if I chose to. And then it was just so cool, it was such a good fit because Galicia is actually has a lot of Celtic history, it's one of the seven Celtic nations of the world. It's very different than what you think of with Spain and Spanish culture, and they have their own language, it's very similar to Portuguese and a lot of pub culture and a lot of that Celtic culture. And I played Celtic fiddle growing up, and so it was this really cool connection for me where I could go and sit in a pub and learn tunes from people, and I couldn't really communicate with them necessarily because they were speaking in gallego, um, not Spanish quite often, but it gave me this inroad into the culture. And then the next year I applied again and I got placed in Madrid. So I got to live in Madrid for a year, and that was very different. It was very typical Spain, you know, flamenco dancing and bold. I'd never went to a bullfight, but like Spanish culture. Yeah. So I I felt really fortunate to do that and I really loved it. And then I came back to the US, and it turned out harder to be an adult in the US than it is in Spain.

SPEAKER_02 14:02

Why do you say that?

SPEAKER_01 14:03

Well, okay, well, it's I guess that's not really a fair assessment. It I was deferring my college loans when I was living there. It was it's a lot more affordable, actually. Like cost of living in Spain, food and rent is a lot cheaper. And then I moved when I moved back, I moved to San Francisco, which is the most expensive place. So I just went through a lot of culture shock, reintegrating to the cost of living and the pace of the culture. Spain has this really slow moving culture in a lot of ways, and people really value family and enjoying life and like sitting out and you know, eating tapas and drinking wine until 2 a.m. And a lot of I would say urban US culture is kind of the opposite. Like San Francisco is a good example. The city, I think, goes to bed early and wakes up early and pushes really hard during the day. And it was really the inverse of the culture in Madrid. So it was a big culture shock for me coming back and trying to find, find my way, figure out how I was gonna support myself, be an adult, what America was again, you know, after two years, it was a really different thing.

SPEAKER_09 15:14

I feel like that's a very crescient time for a lot of people, is the freshly graduated phase, and to come back and layer that with some culture transition is is yeah, it's a lot all at once.

SPEAKER_00 15:25

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 15:26

Are both of you from California originally? Okay. So I was gonna say you could have gone to a much less expensive and hard driving economy, right? Right. That's true. Yep, yeah. So David, uh Dave, I'm sorry. Sure, either either word. You introduced yourself so formally.

SPEAKER_01 15:45

I I sort of I know it's David Pascal.

SPEAKER_02 15:49

Yeah, now we're gonna be speaking to David. But you're a California boy, but you ended up on the East Coast there in New England with your uh working on a farm, playing music, I'm guessing, while you were there.

SPEAKER_12 16:01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 16:02

You should tell talk about recording the album.

SPEAKER_09 16:04

Yeah, oh man.

SPEAKER_01 16:06

Let me talk about what the question that we just asked you, but you should talk about yeah.

SPEAKER_09 16:11

So I went to school in uh in Santa Barbara, you see Santa Barbara in California. And around graduation time, I'd been I've been doing a bunch of volunteering at a at a local farm and like sustainability education center there called Fairview Gardens. They grow delicious produce and fruit, and they also are serve as a really cool kind of community hub for school kids to get out and get some gardening time in and just the community in general. And I really wanted to spend some time farming. My dad always kept a really nice garden growing up with my parents, and we'd have at the time, I thought, you know, draconian mandated garden work days, but now I'm so happy that we did planting all sorts of fun stuff and making tomato sauce out of all of our tomatoes and all the apples and all sorts of fun stuff from our yard. So I really wanted to get more time in that. There's a few different programs. Uh, a really well-known one is called Woofing, which is worldwide opportunities on organic farms. And the kind of basic model is hey, you're traveling and you're in you're in Nebraska or you're in Switzerland or you're in Spain, come and stay for free or for cheap and work a full-time job while you're here, or maybe a 10-hour a week job, or whatever the arrangement might be to come and stay on a farm and we'll put you to work. There's a longer form version of that as well that's less well known that I was looking around for different places where I could work a full farm season or maybe a year or two. Who knows? Who knew? Who knows? Who knows? And uh I had, you know, there's a couple spots in the South, and there's one in Connecticut, and there's one up in Washington. And out of the blue, one of my really close friends from college, a guy named Adam Corton, he's an actor. And in high school, he had hosted a local Bay Area, all put on by high school kids, show called Eco Company, that was like an expose of local sustainable efforts, business or community or otherwise. And he had hosted this show for a few years, and we'd all laughed about it in college. He showed us old footage of him hosting the show. And out of the blue, he I was looking at pictures on, I think on their website or on Facebook or something of this farm in Connecticut. And there's my really good friend Adam. And I was wondering, how the hell did Adam end up in Connecticut on at Sun One Organic Farms? My future farm boss, dude, wasn't my boss yet at the time. He's really into a bunch of sustainability practices, and he ended up being a wealth of an education for me when I was out there. But he was the only East Coast viewer of Eco Company. He was watching this high school produce show and geeking out on all of the wonderful things that he saw happening and getting so enthusiastic about it that he contacted the producer and helped coordinate getting everybody out to the East Coast to go film an episode at his farm because he wanted to talk about the sustainability practices he was doing. I called my friend, and it was I was kind of, you know, the way I describe it is like I was picking from a field of random flowers, so might as well pick that one because I had the story behind it. And yeah, I ended up in in Bethlehem, Connecticut, which is very small town close to Watertown, like in between Watertown and Waterbury, kind of central Connecticut, and was my boss who worked as his desk job, but um kind of gave all the direction. And I got to learn a lot from his knowledge and just kind of be more of the the boots on the ground, or rather the barefoot on the ground. Group workers of crops. The year I was there, we planted a bunch of fruit trees. And on the musical note, I when I was out there, I actually recorded my first album, my first solo album, my only solo album in New York City. When I showed up, it was it was March and it was a really cold winter. I'd driven across the country to get out there with a buddy, and we showed up to still about a foot of snow on the ground. My boss had all these ambitions for, you know, in a normal season, that would be the beginning of tilling and prepping and getting ready to plant. Um, but everything was still frozen solid. So I did some, you know, some kind of organizing and getting ready. But he was taking a trip down to New York City and also to DC. And there was a conference in DC where he was going to be attending for a wind farm that he had was kind of doing some work for. Asked a founder to come along. While I was there, I was playing music outside of a train station. I had just gone to the Library of Congress all day and put on headphones. You can check out CDs. I went to the folk art library and I had written down like 40 or so fiddle tunes I wanted to learn from old recordings. And then my fiddle with me, and I was playing music outside of the train station. And cheesy, sappy that I am, there was a young lady that was walked out of the train station and just like instantly started smoking a cigarette aggressively, I'll say. She was aggressively smoking. I'll say angrily smoking. And I just kind of noticed and was like, hey, like, looks like you're having a rough day. Like, mind if I play your song. Long story short, her brother had just gotten his sound engineering degree and was working in New York City. She linked me up with him, and I could go and record at the studio with him. As long as we recorded after midnight, we got half off. My six-day farm day, I'd sell veggies on Saturday morning at the farmer's market. I'd wake up at about five. We'd go and we'd get all the fresh greens because you got to get them as fresh as he can that day, get all the veggies loaded into the truck, drive down to New Haven in southern Connecticut, sell the farmers market, come back home by like four or five, unload the truck, have a nice dinner, take a shower and relax. And then around seven or eight, I'd hop in the car and drive the two or three hours down to New York City. I'd meet up with the engineer, Jake Bulls, at around 9 p.m. We'd get coffee and talk about the game plan for the night and get into the studio a little bit early to start unwrapping cables, track from about midnight to four in the morning, sleep on Jake's couch, and then drive back up Sunday from my workday on Monday. Sorry, that that turned into a long winded answer.

SPEAKER_02 21:43

No, that's that's awesome. It actually leads to a question I didn't put on there that I'll ask in just a little bit, but as far as the drive and the motivation that musicians, singers, songwriters, artists in general have that they'll overcome just. About any obstacle that might be put in front of them to do that. And to me, that's one of the amazing things about what you guys are doing. So the album, what's the name of the album?

SPEAKER_09 22:10

It's called Ordinary Florist. Is that a title of one of the songs? It is, yeah. It's the title of the last track.

SPEAKER_01 22:16

It's a good song.

SPEAKER_09 22:17

The whole album is it's it asks a decent amount of its listener. It's not very, it's not very texturally lush. It's not very sonically rounded. It's basically each track is me singing and either playing fiddle, mandolin, or guitar. I want to layer anything because I wanted to be able to recreate it live.

SPEAKER_07 22:34

I'm not your ordinary floral. I pick my flowers from the ground. If you can find me where I pick them, I'll sell you kisses, kisses by the pound. But the man who bows you violets doesn't look you in the eye when he says that you're the one.

unknown 23:19

I'm just gonna be able to do that.

SPEAKER_09 23:19

Uh but the result is you got a lot of songs that are just a lot of lyrics and fun concepts and stuff. Stuff I'm really proud of. I I don't mean to demean the tone of the album, but I highly recommend it. Just know that you're getting into a deep dive. A lot of wordplay stuff. So uh where is it available? Is it on the usual suspect, Spotify, places like that? You know, it is, and it's funny, it is as of about three days. Oh seven years, but I had only published it on Bandcamp, and I never made physical CDs, and actually, some childhood friends recently they they really dug into me around Christmas and they said, Hey man, I've been I was trying to listen to the song that's about the hills around here turning green. And I don't want to log into Bandcamp. Like, when's this gonna be available? So I haven't announced it anywhere, I haven't made a stink about it. Became available on Spotify and all of the places. Amazon music, all of the the usual streaming suspects, uh also on Bandcamp.

SPEAKER_02 24:08

Well, I just want to make sure we had a plug here, right? There you go. Do your parents approve of what you guys do? Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_09 24:16

I think I think we're we're pretty lucky in that sense.

SPEAKER_02 24:19

Clearly, both of you started learning your instruments and and your craft early in life. How old were you, uh, Laura, when you started playing Celtic fiddle?

SPEAKER_01 24:30

Yeah, I started playing violin. Actually, classical uh Suzuki method is a type of classical training that's really ear training based. Like you learn a lot by ear. And I started that in third grade. I was the first class of uh like a newly formed music program at our school through this woman, Lisa Barkahall, who became a really good family friend. Our family, we have Thanksgiving with them and Christmas time with their extended family still. But yeah, I started, I started at eight years old, I guess third grade, eight years old, playing classical. And then in high school, I did orchestra my freshman year and was taking classical lessons, and I really don't enjoy practicing. Still don't, didn't then, don't now. And and I was playing classical, like I was doing pl classical lessons. I wasn't really motivated to practice, but I was good enough to kind of get by. And my classical teacher at the time confronted me about it where she was like, I just don't really know what to do with you because you have potential, but you don't seem motivated to practice, and it isn't really worth it to either of us. I remember this as being a super big attack, but I'm sure it was a very normal thing to say to a you know, 14-year-old, but I was 14.

SPEAKER_02 25:46

There's a lot going on when you're 14.

SPEAKER_01 25:48

Yeah. And I was like, I don't want to do this anymore. I want to quit. And my mom reasoned with me, or she said, you know, you have been playing violin for a long time. We've put, she laid a little bit of parental guilt on me, but just the right amount. She said, We've put a lot of money into your lessons. Why don't you try fiddle for a year? And if you hate fiddle, you can quit. No problem. But why don't you try fiddle? Because I had we had a very good friend of the family, Pippa, who's English, who always had house concerts at her house and hosted community concerts at like the church, and had Martin Hayes and some really incredible fiddle players come through and other folk musicians from the Celtic tradition and the Copper family, you know, I got to meet when I was young and hear them play. And so I had this connection to folk music and to fiddle music through her, and it was fun. It was like playful. And you go to a fiddle show and people are dancing, you know, it's really different kind of a culture from classical music. And so I said, sure. And I tried it. And then I went to a fiddle camp. The thing that really got me is I went to a fiddle camp for kids and teenagers, I think that year in high school. And I just like I met my people, you know, it was like we all jammed out and put on costumes and ran around in cabins. And it was, it was the community component of music playing that really kept me doing it. And so I started playing fiddle a little bit older, but I'd had music up as a part of my life from a young age. And I did a lot of theater, also, actually. A lot of my musical education was actually in uh musical theater, which I also did growing up as well.

SPEAKER_02 27:24

Yeah, I was looking at your movie credits and dug in with people of the scene. You're very talented. Absolutely. Well hey, um, but some of my listeners are from Georgia, and uh they're gonna ask, well, what's the difference between a fiddle and a violin?

SPEAKER_01 27:43

I have many answers to this question.

SPEAKER_09 27:45

Yeah, there's a good list.

SPEAKER_01 27:47

I think the one that I go with the most often is that a violin has never had beer spilled on it. I like that one.

SPEAKER_09 27:55

I like yeah, you take a shower before you play the violin, but you take a shower after you play the fiddle.

SPEAKER_02 28:04

Very good. Well, I think that'll clear up any confusion. Perfect, perfect. Yeah, well, I've got a couple more questions here before we wrap this up, but I'll be honest with you. I think I'm gonna need a second session here with you guys.

SPEAKER_09 28:18

We're ramblers, sorry.

SPEAKER_02 28:22

This is good. So both of you play multiple stringed instruments. Uh here guitar. Laura, do you play guitar? Sort of.

SPEAKER_09 28:30

Oh that's a that's a firm yes. That was a self-deprecating sort of, but that's a firm yes.

SPEAKER_02 28:35

But you and obviously you play fiddle/slash violin, and Dave, you do as well, correct? I do, yeah. And do you both play mandolin?

SPEAKER_00 28:43

No, I don't play mandolin. Okay.

SPEAKER_09 28:45

I do, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 28:45

Dave plays mandolin.

SPEAKER_02 28:46

Uh ukulele. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 28:48

I don't perform on ukulele.

SPEAKER_09 28:52

I'm I'm passable with ukulele and piano, but guitar, mandolin, and fiddle are the ones that I'd feel pretty comfortable in most scenarios.

SPEAKER_02 28:59

One of my questions is which one do you feel communicates who you are most effectively? In other words, you're one with the instrument, right? Fiddle. Fiddle. Yeah. Laura?

SPEAKER_01 29:12

I mean, for me, it's it's my voice, actually. Like singing, singing is really home for me. And fiddle and fiddle is too, violin is too. It fits my personality and resonates for sure. But yeah, for me, singing is really the thing. I think that counts as an instrument, right?

SPEAKER_02 29:28

Yeah, absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 29:30

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 29:30

And of course, uh, studying mime techniques must have been difficult if your voice is where you go to, right?

SPEAKER_01 29:38

I love that you found this.

unknown 29:42

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 29:43

Yeah. I mean, like I said, I grew up doing a lot of theater. So mime, I can't believe you found mime on my resume somewhere. Oh, it's deep. I dive deep. It's deep. It's a deep cut. Like good word. I saw that on your questions, and I had forgotten that I took mime in college. Like I did it for just a year and a half, and it's not the what you'd, you know, the kind of what you expect out of mime or miming now. Like no striped shirts with face paint, getting out of a box kind of thing. It was really just a study of physicality in theater. And yeah, that was a big part of a big part of my experience growing up, and I got into that. But yeah.

SPEAKER_02 30:25

No, I was gonna say, you know, as I was discovering some of these things, it helped me understand, you know, however much you can by reading about somebody. But having met you in 2019, and then again, we were together in 2020 down there, and getting to know you a little bit more, it just sort of answered a whole lot of questions. Well, how do you get started on something like this? And uh, and what's what are some of the contributing factors, the different aspects of your life that sort of contributed to the music that you create now? And uh so, you know, hearing about your experience, Dave, at the farm makes me understand your latest album a little bit more. Because I'm sure that contributed a lot to the lyrics, right?

SPEAKER_09 31:10

Entirely. You got you got a lot of a lot of time on your hands, and I think a really, a really wonderful way when you're working outside. And yeah, a lot a lot of a lot of the music that I'm most proud of didn't necessarily come in a flurry with an instrument in my hands, came in little bits and pieces, and then I might chew over one couplet in a verse for eight hours, you know, digging rows, and like, oh, actually, that's the word. Yeah, that's the one, and have plenty of time to mull it over and chew it over. So I'd I'd say both in the process and in the themes and the the content, nature is like probably the the heaviest informer of my music.

SPEAKER_01 31:42

Yeah. Well, and for us collectively as a pair, too, with within Late for the Train, the project that we have together, it's we've written a lot of songs on hikes. Like that's actually, I was just reflecting on there's quite a few tunes that we've had. Maybe we had the guitar part already and the melody, and then we kind of worked out the lyrics while we're hiking, but we've written a lot of lyrics on hikes and and I think found some melodies too.

SPEAKER_09 32:10

Totally. And and answered some some just answered some core questions about songs that are, I don't know, if you're a writer, let's say you're writing a book, right? And you're trying to get in your hundred words or 200 words for the day, um, and you're sitting down in front of your computer, you know, typewriter, journal, whatever you're using, it's awfully hard to stop that process and ask bigger, broader questions about the book that you're working on when you're trying to hit that 200 words a day. And I think for musicians, that same kind of conflict can arise when it's time to write a song, or like we're in the midst of it, or something just came to me, and you want to, I want to be hyper-productive in the time that I have in that kind of flow state. Um, and hikes have done hikes, walks, like backpacking trips have done wonders for that. Like, hey, who are the characters? What are they about? What are their families like? And the types of questions that might not show up directly in the music. Maybe it's arrogant to even, you know, make up these stories without presenting them because it's just a song and somebody can hear it however they want. But it's really fun and I think informative to kind of think about some of the layers of your characters and your stories, and then just pick the things that will describe them succinctly or you know, imaginatively, so others can kind of pick up those threads and carry them on.

SPEAKER_02 33:25

And that answers pretty much the question I had. How does your music come to you? And it sounds like you know, your hikes and your work and it comes in other ways. Do you find that your lyrics drive the process, or does a melody show up and you just have to fill in the the words for it? How does that work for you?

SPEAKER_09 33:43

It flips for me. Uh that's a great question. And I am always impressed by people that have a clear, defined answer to that question because that's a question I'm I'm really obsessed with.

SPEAKER_01 33:55

I think I was just trying to think about how. So my my first quick response to that was well, our songs come from arguments that we have or conflicts that we have. I'm stuck at that. Yeah. Um, but I'm trying the the wood flock song. But I was trying to think of how when we're like, like, how did we write Tambor? Did we get home and sit down with a guitar and say, we need to write a song about this because we got in such a big fight? Or was that?

SPEAKER_09 34:23

Oh, that that was that was uh the most it felt like unique or not unique, but just like that felt serendipitous and that we we'd gotten in a big fight actually at a songwriting camp, not the one where we met you, uh, but a different one up near Lassen National Park. Been sick and it didn't rain and then turned into snow and we didn't have heat, and we were the circumstances were were ripe for an argument, and we got in the good one with a heavy, thick silence, and ended up sorting through it and having a wonderful rest of the weekend. But the the kind of way that we sorted through it felt like a new felt like a new solution to an old to an old kind of issue in in our relationship as a couple and also as bandmates, right? Around like how how do we interact through like a heaviness and how do we how do we find words for that? Not to, you know, not to get too deep into who we are, but uh, I think everybody, everybody can have these moments where where maybe they find kind of a little piece to their own puzzle that can help them understand themselves or help them understand how they relate. Um and and long story short, we got home from the weekend, you know, on cloud nine after kind of coming to that resolution and having a wonderful time with the folks there. And I was in the kitchen of our house and Laura was in our her our bedroom and we had unloaded some of our stuff, but our stuff was still kind of strown everywhere. And I started playing a good guitar line and came up with some things, and Laura was in the other room, and then we kind of we checked in with each other and said, Hey, are we both writing the same song right now? And and it just kind of felt like uh a potent enough moment that um I don't know. It was it felt like a lesson learned and it felt like something worth saving. And in that instance, yeah, or in some other instances, music can be a really nice I I'm not particularly religious myself, but uh they're a nice way to kind of maintain your own morality and maintain your own sense of values and what you believe in and and what you want to remind yourself. And if you're gonna sing it, uh it'll probably bring that that feeling back up and maybe kind of whether gently or uh or sometimes a little hard, give you a little kind of tap on the head and say, Hey, don't forget about that.

unknown 36:27

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 36:28

That's that's very wise. And that's uh absolutely wise. And it sounds like uh writing music uh for you, uh maybe that was just that situation, but is uh uh as therapeutic as when people journal. Uh people they're trying to put substance to all this stuff that's going on in their heads, right?

SPEAKER_01 36:48

Yeah, completely. Yeah, absolutely. And actually, each I mean, each song we write is a little bit of a different process, I think, but um it is kind of like a journaling experience for sure. Like the when the song that we wrote together called Feeling Again, um that's on our album. And that was the year that we met you. The year we met you, that was born out of a total journaling experience. Um, we had just taken Rachel Garland's class on phenomenal San Francisco based singers. Yeah. And, you know, and her thing is is right from where you're at and what's around you. And I was at that, at that point, feeling really frustrated with my commute and with work. And I was feeling really exhausted. And we had 40 minutes in between classes where we had time and we snuck away to a little outdoor, you know, whatever seating area, and we're like, let's work on a song. And it wasn't nothing was really connecting because we were trying to do it too much together. And Dave said, you know, why don't you just write out how you're feeling? And I just like threw this poem out on paper that was all of the feelings I was experiencing about work and burnout and all these things. And then Dave went through it with me and kind of sorted through the lyrics and you know, made them a little more poetic and helped kind of like craft it, added and subtracted some things, and then came up with then he started the chord progression and we played around with different ways that we could fit, because it was already written as a poem, like how we could fit that into a melody and then form a song out of it. So I think that's a good kind of indicator of how we co-write, at least. Totally. Um, and sometimes it is just like he's got a melody already in mind and a line, and then we just go back and forth verbally and and play with stuff.

SPEAKER_02 38:42

Right. Does ego show up during those processes much?

SPEAKER_09 38:47

Oh, totally. I'd be, I mean, we'd be I'd be lying through my teeth if I said no. I hopefully it doesn't come up nastily, but there's definitely I think that there's a softness through doing things together that can be really nice, which is like, hey, I'm gonna wear the fully creative and productive hat right now, and you're gonna wear the critiquing hat, and you're gonna say, no, that's stupid, or like, ah, like like Which we never say to each other. We don't, yeah, but like, right, or like I I tend to get I tend to get a little highfalutin in my abstract poetic conceptualness. And there's times where I'll shop out something, and just just through Laura's confusion or or expression, there's a sense of like, nope, that just doesn't land. And Laura's a smart cookie, so I shouldn't try that in general. But I I think that the ego part that can show up is when you have it doesn't happen very often, but you have a moment that, like, hey, no, I really believe in that, and I think it should be this. Or we both have an idea that we think is good, but there's only one line left and it needs to fill it. And I think in general, we do a pretty good job navigating that. I'd say the times that it shows up that power is harnessed the best is when we actually write stuff down, which I am I am horrendous about. I'll write whole songs without writing a single word down, and I have a good memory, which I'm happy about, but I also it's not it's not great for for the collective thing. Uh, but if like if we both have a line we really like, but we only have one slot for it, if we've written everything down, then maybe a week later we'll sing it again and be like, hey, that line in the second verse kind of sucks. Like, why don't we plug in your awesome one and find a way to work in that element of story?

SPEAKER_01 40:20

Yeah, my ego shows up in songwriting in the form of imposter syndrome and self-doubt, which I think is like a you know important thing to share for anyone who's listening. Like it was it's really vulnerable to write a song in general, express any kind of form of art, do anything creative publicly. And it is so vulnerable to co-write something with people. Like I had never co-written anything before um doing so with Dave. And for me, the process of songwriting is typically a really, really private thing. Like, I need to know that no one can hear me, there's no one else in the house. I'm just in my little introvert bubble with my guitar, and then I can just express whatever it is that needs to be expressed. But when you're working on a song with somebody, you can't do that. You can't hide under your rock. Like what you say is available for scrutiny. And so I think that that is where my I've had to like manage my ego because I do think your ego is like that prideful side, but it's also the part of you that harnesses that self-criticism component. So I had to really work with that and under like kind of overcome that and get more comfortable with remembering if a song idea isn't good, that's not me, that's just us working through this messy process of writing a song. So that that definitely has shown up in the co-writing process. That's where I think my ego kind of takes over.

SPEAKER_09 41:48

There can be, I think there can be moments too. Sometimes I'll kind of get on a tear and I'll have most of a tune just kind of done, let's say, in a quick little moment by myself. And there's a really think, I think for most writers this holds true. There's a really intimate, delicate thing, like Laura just described, which is letting other people into your music. And there's kind of for me, this like, all right, I'm three quarters of the way there. So like I'm not going to like sit down and start from scratch and say, hey, Laura, let's do this whole thing together. How are you doing? It's more like, hey, can I get 30 seconds of your time? Because I'd love some input right there. Okay, I'm back in my cave. I'm back in my cave. A little bit of that ego sense of like, it's it's it's not that it's ownership in a proprietary way, but it's a sense of like, hey, I'm I'm trying to catch a ghost right now, and I can't really fill you in on the description. I can't paint the caricature of the ghost. I just have a glimmer of it, and I need you to help me and shine a light right here, and then I'm gonna go catch that ghost. And it's and it's this very ephemeral, but also like really physical, emotional thing that it that feels very fleeting. It's like it's like trying to remember a conversation with a loved one or something where I my my ego will be guarded and be like almost fierce and how I interact because I'm like, just tell me if that makes sense, then I gotta get out of here again.

SPEAKER_02 43:04

Well, it sounds like at least for your last album, it was very productive and uh beautiful end, you know, to that process. But are you uh and of course you never stop writing, you're always writing, that's just who you are, right? So what's next? Is there another album in the works, or are you just getting ready for when things open up and you have the opportunities to play for us again?

SPEAKER_09 43:28

That's a great question.

SPEAKER_02 43:29

Yes, to both of those.

SPEAKER_01 43:30

Yes, yes. We're we've really taken a winter break, I think. Both of us. Yeah, we released the album in September and then you promoted it and played some online shows, and then have really actually kind of stepped back from the driving the band forward stuff.

SPEAKER_09 43:47

Most of which happens nowadays, and especially during COVID on the internet, right?

SPEAKER_01 43:51

Because it's just not it's I mean, the internet is an amazing place and platform for connecting and playing music and all of it, but we really Are looking forward to playing around live people and live people, but like playing live, you know, live shows again and connecting. And I think we're we're folk people. So like the folky vibe is a very in-person vibe. So we've kind of been resting, and that's been great, I would say. And taking, you know, some time. Dave writes a lot of music, but we've kind of been a little more slow in our songwriting. And because there isn't that goal and release date, you know, holding us to anything. So it's been kind of nice to just let things be a little more settled. But yeah, I think we are going to try to do an EP sometime, sometime this year.

SPEAKER_09 44:43

Um I think something that we haven't put our finger on together, but I was chatting with another buddy who uh I play Sideman in his project, a guy named Eric Long. And he was in a very similar situation to us uh around the timing of our album releases, where it was like the album was effectively done. Maybe there's some final kind of polishes to put on it, but you have this thing that you're so proud of that has been the culmination of so much work. And this is not, we're not a unique story in this. I'd say millions of musicians have experienced this this last year. But he he he and I were reflecting on it, and it was like, okay, we did what we had to do because it didn't feel right to sit on a finished thing and wait the maybe one year, maybe two, maybe three years, and then come out with something that's like feels stale in terms of that creative energy you're putting out in the world. So we did what we had to do, but neither of us feel, and I think Laura and I have kind of expressed similarly without the same words, we don't feel inspired to try to release another album just on the internet.

SPEAKER_04 45:40

Yeah.

SPEAKER_09 45:40

I think that that's kind of my cutoff of like, I want to keep on writing. I want to, I want to write another album. I don't want to have it kind of fly from the nest until we can have CDs at the merch booth, and not from a financial place, but just from a place of like there's something really special about being able to hand over a physical thing in a medium that is otherwise so of the moment. You know, live performance and music is such a such a grounding thing in terms of time. It brings you into the present so fully. And it's really bizarre and really wonderful and really empowering to say, yeah, here it is on a CD or on a record. And I so look forward to that experience with the album that we already put out. And I would definitely not want to be in a situation where, yeah, we have three albums, but haven't seen you in two years.

SPEAKER_02 46:27

Well, I suspect you won't have to worry about that. Just that uh brief opportunity we had to see you play down at Casabella here in Sunny Synol. Um everybody that I talked to, the the the owners uh there uh loved you guys. They want to have you back. I don't know if they've reached out to you, but uh, because they're pretty much isolated right now, except for the uh little bistro that's available. And we're looking forward to having you in our backyard uh at a house concert as soon as you're available.

SPEAKER_09 46:55

I mean, you can't wait. Those things feed in our soul so deeply that um yeah, I I really can't wait.

SPEAKER_01 47:02

Yeah, I'm really looking forward to, I think this spring and summer we'll have quite quite a bit of the cozy outdoor house concert series. I'm hoping, you know, because I think that that's a pr a really safe way to have live music. And honestly, that's my favorite type of show to play. Is that yeah, I mean, it's there's just something so special about house concerts. You get to really sink in with people. There's not the um, you're not competing with a loud bar. Like it's a very it's a really wonderful experience and the energy is so good in house concerts. And so, like, I'm really looking forward to that. I'm hoping that the spring and summer we'll have some of those. And yeah, and our album is still kind of new. So hopefully it'll still be new for people if we start doing those. We do have some new songs we'll at least be playing.

SPEAKER_09 47:52

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 47:52

We're we're even if not recorded officially.

SPEAKER_09 47:55

We'll see if we get around to doing this. But we did flip the idea with some of our new material of um trying to get a bunch of friends to come and do a collaborative album. Uh, not like as one set group, but like, you know, collaborate with this bandmate from another project on this tune, and then maybe do and a try try to kind of pull from our musical community because it this time has really made us realize how much we miss them and just also how, excuse my French, but how badass everybody we know are. So yeah, it'd be kind of fun to put everybody in, if not the same room, at least kind of the same headspace and see what happens.

SPEAKER_02 48:25

Well, trust me, I won't uh be deleting that, I won't be bleeping out badass. The title of this podcast again, ladies and gentlemen, is Gramps Just Make Shit Up.

SPEAKER_04 48:35

This is true.

SPEAKER_02 48:37

We may have to have some follow-up conversation, but I want to thank you for your time and hope to see you guys in person very, very soon.

SPEAKER_09 48:45

Thank you so much for having us here. It's it's it's really an honor to get to do something like this and to get to talk about stuff that really feeds us. And it's quite ticklish that it seems to feed you too. You would you would invite us to do something like this. Absolutely. Yeah. Uh so thank you so much for having us.

SPEAKER_02 49:00

All right, guys. Well, d tell me your names again and the name of your group.

SPEAKER_09 49:05

My name is Dave.

SPEAKER_00 49:06

And I'm Laura.

SPEAKER_09 49:07

And we play in late for the train.

unknown 49:09

Set me free.

SPEAKER_06 49:12

Push a couple of buttons, stand alone in the buttons. Wish the walls were a window. Feel your stomach dry. Walk out to that skyline. The first act has begun.

SPEAKER_05 49:32

Got an old trim floor play, but I still can't feel the sun. But if I can be the best one, then maybe they'll see.

SPEAKER_06 49:47

I'll finally stop in the motion, and I'll take some time for me.

SPEAKER_08 49:57

Heaven is not a place to go to it is right within your soul each moment's case. Let up the go hold on to this. Feelin' again. Feelin' again.

SPEAKER_06 50:31

Scrabble notes at the meeting.

SPEAKER_03 50:35

I don't remember what's that beautiful music was just a sample of the album that Laura and Dave were just talking about. They released it in September of 2020, and it sure made that year a little easier to deal with. The title of the album is Plant It or Build It, and the song is called Feeling Again. Their intricate lyrics and their beautiful harmonies always draw me in and hold me there. But you really got to see these guys live if you have the opportunity. You can find their music anywhere that streams, but I recommend going to their very cool website. You can find it at LateForthein Band, all one word.com. LateForthe TrainBand.com. They also have a lot of fun merch there as well. Check them out. Technology

Phone Call to 1969 Lou (Gramps)

SPEAKER_03 51:22

here in 2021 is pretty amazing. As a matter of fact, I just learned that it's possible to make telephone calls to the past. Gotta have a special telephone, and you have to know the number of the person that you're calling. Well, fortunately, I know the number because I'm gonna call me. Yep, that's what I said. I'm gonna call me. I'm gonna call me when I was 18 years old. That seemed to be a pretty exciting year, 1969. Let's see if we can't get in touch with 18-year-old Lou. And I just happen to have one of these special telephones. It's one of those old rotary phones that uh we used back in 1969. Let's see if we can't make this thing work. Bear with me, this might take just a second. This is you, Lou, calling from your future.

unknown 52:36

Right.

SPEAKER_03 52:39

No, really, this is you in the year twenty twenty-one. No, wait, wait, hold on just a minute. I'm actually calling you from the future from twenty twenty-one. We have the technology to do that. What year is it there? 1969, right?

unknown 52:58

Yeah. 1969.

SPEAKER_03 53:00

And you're 18 years old, right? You just turned 18. Happy birthday.

unknown 53:07

Who is this really?

SPEAKER_03 53:09

Geez, it's you, Lou, calling from 2021. Trust much? Listen, I'm calling because we got the technology, and I just thought it would be interesting, especially for your grandchildren, to uh learn a little bit more directly from you. Plus, if I'm being honest, my memory's not all that great, so I thought I'd check in with you now that we have this ability and uh see if I can't get the straight scoop. Well, I'm just checking to see how you're doing. You just register for the drive, right? And uh seems like there'll be a lot more is gonna be going on for a while. How do you feel? Uh that's not exactly how this whole thing works. Sorry. Okay, kids,

Wombat Trivia

SPEAKER_03 55:03

listen up. It's time for Gramps to share a little bit of trivia. Feel free to share with your family the next time you're at the dinner table. Gramps is gonna tell you about one of his favorite animals, the wombat. Yeah, the wombat spelled W-O-M-B-A-T. Wombat is a marsupial, and no, I'm not gonna tell you what that is because I want you to go look it up. These little animals are found in Australia, so the next time you're in Australia you may want to go check them out. So let me tell you a few things about the wombat that I think you might find interesting. These wombats can actually grow to be about 40 inches long, and when you do look it up to see what a marsupial is, you'll notice that they look a little bit like a koala bear. Now these little suckers have long claws and they can dig. They are diggers, they actually create tunnels, sort of like a groundhog. And because they're diggers, one of their defense mechanisms is a really tough rump. You heard me right? A really tough rump. Why, you may ask? Well, I suspect it's evolutionary. Remember, I said they were diggers, they have these network of tunnels, so if something's chasing them, even though they can run twenty-five miles an hour, something might be able to run a little faster, and as they're diving into their hole, whatever that was that was chasing them might try to grab them. Well, don't worry about it, kids. They got a tough rump. Now, when you do go to Australia, and I hope you do someday, and you see these wombats around, uh just make sure that you understand that they're not as helpless as they look. Yeah, they look like koala bears. Koala bears look cuddly, but you really don't want to hug them either. These cute looking wombats have been known to hurt people. They have claws that can scratch you, their teeth can bite you really badly, and you might even be bowled over by a bunch of charging wombats. So remember I said they can run 25 miles an hour, so if you find yourself being charged by a bunch of charging wombats, well, I don't know what to tell you. Hey, but here's the most interesting thing I found about these wombats. They are the only animal whose poop comes out in little cubes. Yep, looks sort of like dice. And no, they don't have a square butthole. Their butthole is round just like everybody else's. It turns out that the shape of the wombat poop is actually formed in the last 17% of the colon. Researchers believe that this distinctive cube shape is caused by the unique muscular contractions and it forms the uniform size in the corners of the poop. They're extracting every bit of nutrients and moisture out of everything that they eat. See, I told you you'd want to share this at the next dinner table conversation. You're welcome.

SPEAKER_07 57:36

Oh, Gramps, did you make that up?

SPEAKER_03 57:39

This

Thank You

SPEAKER_03 57:40

is the part where I say thank you to Laura and Dave, my late for the train guests, and for Dave's permission to use some of his magical fiddle notes for my podcast opening. I suspect I should probably get that in writing. Well, that's all there is for this episode of Gramps Just Make Shit Up. Thank you for checking it out. I hope you check back for future episodes, and we'll wait and see if the Federal Communications Commission raises their regulatory eyebrows. Oh, and just so you know, any health benefit claims made in this episode have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. This podcast is rated W for Why Are You Listening? I have to go now. It's time for my nap.