[SPEAKER_00]: Hi and welcome to the Working Songwriter.
[SPEAKER_00]: This show where today's best songwriters come to talk shop.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm your host, Joe Pug.
[SPEAKER_00]: Each episode here, we host a distinguished guest and we ask them to go deep on their inspiration on their process, on the general ups and downs of making a life in music.
[SPEAKER_00]: So, whether you're a grizzled veteran,
[SPEAKER_00]: Collecting $25,000 vintage guitars, or else a scrappy upstart, just trying to purchase a single made in China Epiphone.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is your show, because ultimately it is what every writer seeks most and iron-clad excuse to put off actually writing.
[SPEAKER_00]: Hey everyone, it's the first Friday of August, 2026, and I thank you for being here.
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[SPEAKER_00]: I hope that you enjoy this week's episode.
[SPEAKER_00]: Our guest this week hails from a small mountain town in California, but his music has now made it across the world.
[SPEAKER_00]: J. Buchanan got his start in the early 2000s with a solo project before joining ranks with a rock band informing rival sons.
[SPEAKER_00]: Since 2008, that group has built a remarkable fan base and beloved discography.
[SPEAKER_00]: Rival Suns has shared stages with an astonishing list of artists, including Black Sabbath, The Rolling Stones, ACDC, Guns and Roses, Queens of the Stone Age, Metallica, and Lenny Cravits.
[SPEAKER_00]: They've appeared on the Late Late Show with James Corden, Jimmy Kimmel Live, later with Jules Holland in Francis, Lugrand, Journal.
[SPEAKER_00]: The Bandron 2 Grammy nominations in 2020 for Best Rock album for Farrell Roots and Best Rock Performance for Too Bad.
[SPEAKER_00]: The Guardian called Buchanan a Revelation and a mesmerizing presence throughout.
[SPEAKER_00]: revolver called him an undeniable vocal force.
[SPEAKER_00]: And classic rock praised his 2026 solo debut weapons of beauty as a remarkable journey through soul music, country rock, southern gothic, and gospel.
[SPEAKER_00]: I got a chance to catch up with him a few weeks ago to hear about that solo album and his remarkable musical journey so far.
[SPEAKER_00]: J. Buchanan of rival sons and of your own solo work.
[SPEAKER_00]: Thanks so much for being a part of the working songwriter.
[SPEAKER_00]: You grew up in California, but not just, you know, standard 1970s, 80s and 90s, kind of suburban California.
[SPEAKER_00]: I was checking you out today.
[SPEAKER_00]: You grew up in kind of a more rural part of California right wood.
[SPEAKER_00]: Is that where it was from?
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, right with my hometown.
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, I grew up when I was a really young child I lived in Fontana, which is like a recovering steel town in the inland empire like San Bernardino County.
[SPEAKER_00]: He's steel town in California.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I don't want to.
[SPEAKER_01]: By the time when I was a little kid, the a lot of the factory jobs and everything were drying up as happens in steel towns.
[SPEAKER_01]: No steel town lasts forever.
[SPEAKER_01]: So no.
[SPEAKER_01]: Um, but then that's when I was a really young kid and then my parents moved us up to the woods up in right wood and from there it was just a lot of outdoor living hiking really dangerous stuff.
[SPEAKER_01]: Pretty isolated, man, and but it was a great way to grow up.
[SPEAKER_00]: It sounds like it was very isolated.
[SPEAKER_00]: What kind of cultural stuff was making it to you?
[SPEAKER_00]: Were you just kind of in contact with the outside world via TV and radio?
[SPEAKER_00]: Were you listening to records for, or what?
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, I mean, I went to school, you know, and you had to take a bus, walk all the way out on that detector road out to the highway.
[SPEAKER_01]: And then we would get on a bus and I don't know, it'd be like 40 minute, 45 minute bus ride down to the desert.
[SPEAKER_01]: And go to school.
[SPEAKER_01]: But in terms of culture, just the regular stuff, man.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's like skateboarding, of course, at that time, and snowboarding in the winter time.
[SPEAKER_01]: Sure.
[SPEAKER_01]: If that was a very young sport at that time.
[SPEAKER_01]: snowboarding was but my popwood because he was at like a master welder he would take jobs at the local hill in exchange for us to have season passes so he would work on weekends
[SPEAKER_01]: in order for us to be able to get passes because, you know, skiing or snowboarding stuff is pretty expensive and we didn't have a little bread that I was really thankful that he did all of that so that we can hang with and be on the hill with some of our more affluent friends and neighbors, you know.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: So what kind of music came along with that kind of skateboarding
[SPEAKER_01]: terrible music for the most part just no effects and yeah it was just you know I mean you know that there was DC hardcore and there was and there was like you know the descendants and you know on the half pipes and all of that there would be always Metallica and
[SPEAKER_01]: I just, I could never really match the energy for this music, you know, melody and all of this stuff.
[SPEAKER_01]: I was the dork that like, you know, when, if I brought tapes to the, there is like, you know, the free will of Bob Dylan or Tracy Chapman and it's like, everybody there, I was like, turn that shit off.
[SPEAKER_00]: Don't let Jay put any music on.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: And, you know, that sort of thing, but this, the really aggressive nature, like hard core and all of that, it was fun.
[SPEAKER_01]: But ultimately, for me, it was novelty.
[SPEAKER_01]: And it was really more like that's what my friends were into, you know.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I liked, I was really into songwriting from a really young age and lyrics mattered a lot.
[SPEAKER_01]: And yeah, they did end up, but so for me talking, you know, if you want to get to like the origins of music for me and like that tab room, it's comprised of, I guess.
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, blues music, you know, like that Robert Johnson collection did everybody had and we had those cassettes when I was a little kid, but even beyond that, you know, it was like my parents had a huge record collection when I was really young.
[SPEAKER_01]: and then they got religion right about the time I was five years old.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so from zero to five, it was records and parties and live music, you know, on the weekends and jam sessions and all of that.
[SPEAKER_01]: And then the record collection went away and it was just got off a worship music.
[SPEAKER_01]: and it was, you know, and it was just kind of like, well, where did that other stuff go?
[SPEAKER_01]: And at that time, the idea of like secular music, it just seemed so weird, I remember, even I just, I couldn't bring myself to think that that music was wrong, or that there was anything wrong with it, because
[SPEAKER_01]: I had already identified with so much of it.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: The Johny Mitchell and the Jimmy Hendrix and all of these different records, you know, that they just seemed like those were the cartoons I wanted to watch.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so then as it often does that brand of, you know,
[SPEAKER_01]: that style of religion that swept through the United States and the late 70s, just in time for Reagan to just pick that ripe fruit off the tree.
[SPEAKER_01]: 1980.
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, that evangelical sweep that was obviously a huge response to the excess of the 70s.
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, I think that these kids that had been raised in the Eisenhower era were repenting in some strange way, you know, wanting to get back to simpler times because they lacked the gumption to follow through with this mystic ideology, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: music trickled back in as I got a little bit older.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I would spend all of any allowance or, you know, I'd go in motelons for neighbors and things like that or just do whatever chores.
[SPEAKER_01]: I could all of my music went to cassette tapes.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: And, um, because that's where it was at.
[SPEAKER_01]: So I would sit and listen to these tapes.
[SPEAKER_01]: I would sit and listen.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'd go to my Aunt Knuckles houses.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'd borrow
[SPEAKER_01]: And anytime I made new friends it was like do your parents listen to records your parents have music So I want to go and they'd be like too.
[SPEAKER_01]: Let's go outside and like
[SPEAKER_01]: play army or just do whatever.
[SPEAKER_01]: Let's go skate.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'd be like, no, I want to let's just can we just sit and listen to your parents records for like 40 minutes or something like that and then we'll go out.
[SPEAKER_01]: And of course, I've developed very sticky fingers around around those fruits, you know.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so I would I would nick tapes and things like that and I would bring them home and I would
[SPEAKER_00]: And just that add to my collection, man.
[SPEAKER_01]: And there was a lot of that, you know, it was the singer songwriter I spoke to, I think, Dylan was a huge one, but by the time I was about 11 or 12, I had a literature teacher who he could see like all I cared about was records and music.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so he started, he started dubbing vinyl that he had at home, and he gave me the entire, he started me off chronologically on Bob Dylan's stuff.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I had remembered all of the Bob Dylan from what I was a kid.
[SPEAKER_01]: So he did that, and then he also gave me Jimmy Hendrix chronologically.
[SPEAKER_01]: And you know, and then you, oh, just writing, same thing chronologically, and that was a huge one for me, but yes, singer song where I just met, that's really where it was at.
[SPEAKER_00]: You mentioned that songwriting itself came very early on.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's kind of unique because many people will come onto this show and they'll describe listening to music at this age and then they'll be like, and then 15 years later, when I was 23, I decided to try to write a song by self.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's less common than you would think for the songwriting to start early.
[SPEAKER_00]: What form was that taking at such a young age?
[SPEAKER_00]: How are you doing it?
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, I try to play guitar.
[SPEAKER_01]: We always had a guitar laying around the house, you know, because my pop music is a fantastic guitarist and he would play in church.
[SPEAKER_01]: My mom would sing in church and stuff.
[SPEAKER_01]: So for me, I would always try to play guitar, but like man,
[SPEAKER_01]: you know, a high-action beat-up acoustic guitar with just torn-to-shet steel strings.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, you got to have some grabbers to be able to navigate any of that.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so I had to wait for my hands to develop before I could even really play guitar.
[SPEAKER_01]: Otherwise, I would just sit there and I would play bass notes on the low E or A string and
[SPEAKER_01]: But by the time I could actually form chords, I mean, 12 years old, and I had been trying to play.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so I started by the only thing my pop told me showed me how to play was a few of the box chords.
[SPEAKER_01]: I remember like G major was like the first one.
[SPEAKER_01]: And then, you know, A and things like that and he showed me, he listened to fast car from Johnny mentioned goes, or it might be something, well, here's how the chorus goes.
[SPEAKER_01]: And then I taught myself, I had to play the rest of the song.
[SPEAKER_01]: And but he just showed me those couple of box cords.
[SPEAKER_01]: And immediately as soon as I had a couple of cords, I just started writing.
[SPEAKER_01]: And boy, I wrote some real terrible music for about 10 years.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yep.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's how it goes.
[SPEAKER_01]: Just really, really bad.
[SPEAKER_01]: Isn't it interesting when you grow up and you're whole your collection, like your encyclopedia Britannica?
[SPEAKER_01]: everything that you know and the way that you view what life is and the way adults are comes through the lyrics of these scored lovers or these dope addicts and you know with and all of this experience that these songwriters are singing about.
[SPEAKER_01]: And it was like, that's how I thought everything was always getting cheated on or failed relationship or you know like all of this stuff like that that was living and so for me as a little kid.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm trying to write about like, all these grown-up experiences, you know, right, all of this like CD living and I didn't know what the fuck I was talking about.
[SPEAKER_01]: I had no idea about it, but you write about this stuff.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, because that's what they, that's what all of the, your heroes wrote about, you know?
[SPEAKER_00]: I can't, you know, I can remember being that age and starting trying to write and realizing that all the artists that I loved had horrible relationships with their father.
[SPEAKER_00]: Exactly.
[SPEAKER_00]: But I had a great relationship and exactly, so I had a very similar, it took till about my mid-20s where it was like, no, you can actually just write about your own experience and actually that's the only thing that you can write about and maybe that'll work for you or it won't, but that's really the only thing that's going to be authentic.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, yeah, it is it is very interesting.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so I just writing about all of that stuff and then busking and I paid my hardcore dues for about two years because the only kids, you know, the only people up in my tiny mountain town that wanted to play music at all, they wanted to play hardcore, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: Power cords and energy and like, you know, I definitely understood that.
[SPEAKER_01]: But then I would try to bring like an acoustic guitar in, try to actually write melodic songs.
[SPEAKER_01]: And that was problematic.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so I just found it easier to just play on my own.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so when did you, did you know at that time, like, man, this is gonna be a path for me.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm going to music route or was it just something that you were doing that you dug as a kid and could have gone many different directions?
[SPEAKER_01]: I think it works like this, man.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, first of all, kids, we don't even understand path.
[SPEAKER_01]: Right, you know, like we,
[SPEAKER_01]: We understand now, you know, that's how things work for kids and plan and all that.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, you lack the patience, you know, it's like when somebody with they talk to you about going like, okay, well, as soon as you graduate, you're going to go off and go to college for a few years and you're like, four years, oh my God, why would I go anywhere
[SPEAKER_01]: What I did know was that the idea of doing anything else with my life just felt like jail.
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, like it just seemed like jail.
[SPEAKER_01]: I would watch my pop, come home from the steel mill.
[SPEAKER_01]: And he'd play as guitar.
[SPEAKER_01]: If he was working a day shift, you know, he'd come home in the evening.
[SPEAKER_01]: They're the afternoon and he would take a shower and everything.
[SPEAKER_01]: And he would sit and he'd play his guitar for an hour, 40 minutes and I'd watch him play.
[SPEAKER_01]: And there was always this like there was always this like caged bird mentality that his music sounded like.
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, and I would tell him when he would come home, I would say, because my pops and name is Jay as well.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I would say, so when you go to work, you're job J.
[SPEAKER_01]: And then when you come home, you're home J.
[SPEAKER_01]: And it'd be like, yep, and it'd be like, so you never bring job J home.
[SPEAKER_01]: It'd be like, not if I can help it, you know.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I would watch home J sitting plays guitar, you know.
[SPEAKER_01]: And because he played in bands and all that stuff.
[SPEAKER_01]: And in so many ways,
[SPEAKER_01]: My desire to tap into all of this I think was just to live out my parents un-requited dreams, you know, there was my love for music, but there was also like, I got my love and I got everything I have from my lineage, you know, both of my grandmother's saying had fantastic voices, my mother has a fantastic voice and music is in my family and I
[SPEAKER_01]: Um, I felt like I needed to become successful enough to get the big record deal.
[SPEAKER_01]: Mind you, this is like in the 90s when big record deals existed and I'm sure, but my dream was to, to get enough money in my pocket to walk to that steel mill and tell my pop like let's go.
[SPEAKER_01]: You're never coming back.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's all I wanted.
[SPEAKER_01]: That was all I wanted at that young age.
[SPEAKER_01]: But writing from, you know, watching that, watching people and watching adults.
[SPEAKER_01]: be so unhappy and talk about their jobs and watching these teachers and having these instructors and these teachers that were obviously rife with unrequited everything.
[SPEAKER_01]: It just told me like, you might as well play music, music is, you know, I didn't want to be connected to anything else.
[SPEAKER_01]: Music was like the sacred language that was the one where you had to tell the truth.
[SPEAKER_01]: You had to tell the truth if you're singing.
[SPEAKER_01]: You had to tell the truth.
[SPEAKER_01]: Because if you're not telling the truth, you sound like it sounds like a sales pitch.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: And you kid off, you know, as a little kid, you could always spot the sales pitch.
[SPEAKER_01]: And it's like, well, don't be one of those.
[SPEAKER_01]: Just be one of these other guys.
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, just singing about your feelings or whatever.
[SPEAKER_00]: I know you had, I know you started performing from a young age and you had several bands that you formed in your teens and early 20s, but your first crack, it really basically that dream of yours of like, I want to get a deal and I want to be successful here because it back in the day, the deal was the only way to do it.
[SPEAKER_00]: That would obviously come, actually, I think you had a deal before rival sons, even, what was that band?
[SPEAKER_01]: the name of the band was Buchanan.
[SPEAKER_01]: I had had my, okay, so side quest here.
[SPEAKER_01]: Side quest.
[SPEAKER_01]: I had turned 20.
[SPEAKER_01]: I was living in San Bernardino with a girlfriend across from the university over there and she was going and finishing up her masters and I was just working
[SPEAKER_01]: and I was miserable.
[SPEAKER_01]: So I sold everything I had and I went and I did the thing I went back back through Alaska.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I wanted to find my country.
[SPEAKER_01]: I was all hopped up on the beat poets.
[SPEAKER_01]: Jack London and like the whole thing and just going like I'm going to go out there and he had tried and lived like a bag of bonds for a few months and like do the thing.
[SPEAKER_01]: So I went and I did that and I grew up and I went out there a couple of buddies came with me and
[SPEAKER_01]: Um, and when I came home, it was like, okay, I just went and I moved down into the city, because you can't make a career living in the woods.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's for sure.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I moved down to the city down to Orange County, um, and just started riding.
[SPEAKER_01]: I didn't know anybody didn't have any friends.
[SPEAKER_01]: And next thing I know, um, I'm with a gal.
[SPEAKER_01]: and we would gather for about a month, find out we're gonna be parents.
[SPEAKER_01]: Wow, let's get married.
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay, let's try this out.
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, we were in love.
[SPEAKER_01]: even though we hadn't been dating for very long.
[SPEAKER_01]: I got as soon as the baby came, it was like, okay, I had already started writing what would become like my very first record.
[SPEAKER_01]: So that was a 22 then.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I didn't have an audience.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so I just was writing these songs.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so I just started hitting open mics, open mics, you know.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I hate a few of those and people started really reacting so that I saw that and I thought, you know, I don't want to wait for an open mic night.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so I started doing this thing of throwing a small acoustic amp that you could plug the microphone into.
[SPEAKER_01]: You know that those SWR working bands are not the working band, but the California
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, they made the strawberry blonde, but at that time, the California blonde was the best acoustic amp.
[SPEAKER_01]: I could get my hands on.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so I would go with that with a like a 50 foot extension cord.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I would wouldn't ask.
[SPEAKER_01]: I would just set up a microphone and an amp and play until I got kicked out.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I would sell burned copies of my CDs.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I did that and I called them guerrilla gigs and then I got a buddy of mine on guitar to start coming with me and we'd hit like seven, eight places, sometimes ten places and I anywhere people were if there was a movie premiere, whatever.
[SPEAKER_01]: So I did that and then before I mean you know within three months of doing that I was on the cover of the local rag.
[SPEAKER_01]: And then, you know, a couple months later, manager got a full band together.
[SPEAKER_01]: And like within a year, I was on top of the Capitol Records building.
[SPEAKER_01]: Wow.
[SPEAKER_01]: And that's right when, like, AOL, bought water out, and that was that first huge merge in 99.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so I ended up going with an independent,
[SPEAKER_01]: label, um, ultimatum.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I had a band.
[SPEAKER_01]: I, I reframed the band, and it was called Buchanan, because I felt weird about being, uh, calling the band J. Buchanan, because it was a band.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so I cheated by just naming it my last name, how clever.
[SPEAKER_01]: And, uh, made an album called all understood.
[SPEAKER_01]: And toured coast coast, you know, I did that toured coast to coast and put out independently, two more albums with that band, the true levee pee.
[SPEAKER_01]: Her note was just the true levee pee.
[SPEAKER_01]: And then broke the band up in 06.
[SPEAKER_01]: broke the band up in 06 and you know we'd had a lot of success but it was the classic thing of waking up one day and not liking anything I had done and listening to my creative output and just going this isn't what I want to do.
[SPEAKER_01]: There's too much going on.
[SPEAKER_01]: I had seen Andrew Bird over at Largo when he was doing like the finger links albums that if you haven't heard this.
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, everybody knows Andrew Bird and he's fantastic, you know, but he put out these live recordings where it's just him and his loop station, his violin guitar.
[SPEAKER_01]: Fingerlings 1 and 2 are exquisite, fantastic songwriting and just a singular presence that I hadn't seen before.
[SPEAKER_01]: So I saw this guy and it really wrecked me.
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, and this was in 06.
[SPEAKER_01]: It really, really destroyed me.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I thought, well, that is a hell of a lot closer to what I want to do than what I'm doing.
[SPEAKER_01]: So I got to stop what I'm doing.
[SPEAKER_01]: So I broke that band up and took a construction job.
[SPEAKER_01]: And took the hard drive with the band's email list and all of our physical stuff.
[SPEAKER_01]: Took the, what was that?
[SPEAKER_01]: My space took the my space page, dumped it, and it's just completely broke everything so hard that it couldn't be fixed.
[SPEAKER_00]: What did that feel like at the time did it feel like failure or did it feel like a new beginning?
[SPEAKER_01]: Yes.
[UNKNOWN]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, it felt like failure and a new beginning.
[SPEAKER_01]: It was one of those things where I knew something was inside me that I hadn't been saying and I knew that there was a approach.
[SPEAKER_01]: There was an approach that was more mature or that was just closer to
[SPEAKER_01]: It was closer to who I was at that point, as opposed to being part of a band and needing to identify with the people I was playing with and like all of that.
[SPEAKER_01]: So, everybody told me it was career suicide and they scattered.
[SPEAKER_01]: And in the meantime, I worked construction and kept writing.
[SPEAKER_01]: And then, within a year, I had a batch of songs I went in and recorded them.
[SPEAKER_01]: and began working on what was an album called Locust and Wild Honey, and this was to be my rebirth as an artist and recorded the album felt really good about it, and then I took on a side project with a rock and roll band, and I figured it'll be fun to have some drinks and play some gigs around town, and why not?
[SPEAKER_01]: I had never really, I had never done rock and roll
[SPEAKER_01]: I actually had kind of an aversion to it.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I thought, why not?
[SPEAKER_01]: Why not, you know, I didn't take it seriously.
[SPEAKER_01]: And that took off like a rocket.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so that magnum opus of locus and wild honey sits unreleased to this day.
[SPEAKER_00]: It'll get out one day.
[SPEAKER_00]: It'll get out.
[SPEAKER_00]: Do you think there was something to the fact that you quote unquote didn't take it seriously
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, I think that perhaps that was, I think that was just the universe hitting me and poking me in a soft spot, in a certain way, like, oh, you don't take this seriously, well, watch this.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: Because when we got together in jammed, I had no intention of
[SPEAKER_01]: doing it at all because I knew the drummer Michael Miley and he had played in my band for just a little bit in Buchanan.
[SPEAKER_01]: But he said, you know, my guitar player Scott is really convinced that we need to play together.
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, and he said, well, you just call Scott so he'll get off my back and I said, sure, and Scott's a really great talker.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I had grown up on the blues, I had grown up on blues music and so we talked and I just figured like okay well let's get together and jam.
[SPEAKER_01]: The energy in the room when we finally got together was such that it was like man I don't need this right now.
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't have time for this.
[SPEAKER_01]: I have a whole thing that I'm trying to do and I'm really excited about it.
[SPEAKER_01]: But the energy was there and so it was really like I can't not do this.
[SPEAKER_01]: So let's try it
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, and it sounds like it was kind of a gift because you had been doing, you had been creating for long enough at that point to know that when an energy like that is present, it's a very rare thing and it's certainly not one that you let go by lightly.
[SPEAKER_00]: to not let that I mean maybe if it had happened to you when you were 22 you would have thought oh yeah well this sounds great and then the next project I do a song great and the next one and it just simply didn't work like that.
[SPEAKER_01]: No it never comes like any great story um it's the beggar on the roadside that the protagonist interfaces with you know that it's going to end up being a teacher.
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, it's the little green man in Star Wars.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's going to teach Luke the Goods and the Force.
[SPEAKER_01]: And it was a very unlikely education.
[SPEAKER_01]: I think perhaps the greatest thing that I've learned by collaborating and putting myself in this genre that I'd never had any intention of being in,
[SPEAKER_01]: enjoying is is compromise is putting myself in a position to okay we're going to be a band I'm not going to leave I'm going to stick it out.
[SPEAKER_01]: and looking at it and just going, okay, I am going to compromise here.
[SPEAKER_01]: We're a band.
[SPEAKER_01]: So as much as I wanted to do this, or I wanted the music to be this way, we're still a band and there are other identities here.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's not just mine.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so I have to Cape.
[SPEAKER_01]: I have to keep
[SPEAKER_01]: These people in mind, and I have to make sure when I'm writing a song to leave enough room to not do their job, to not do my guitar players' job, or you know.
[SPEAKER_01]: And to think of the think of the overall identity, you know, instead of just mine.
[SPEAKER_01]: So what my job is is all of the lyrics and, you know, primary songwriting and everything, I'll do my job.
[SPEAKER_01]: But everybody else's job is just up to them and I think that that is the power of collaboration that gives you something that's ultimately greater than the sum of its parts.
[SPEAKER_01]: On a good day.
[SPEAKER_00]: Did you find it then easier to write songs because the whole burden wasn't on your shoulders or was it actually strangely more difficult because even though you didn't have all that weight on your shoulders, compromise can be very hard especially if you've been used to creating for several decades on your own?
[SPEAKER_01]: I think I found it insanely more difficult.
[SPEAKER_01]: Because,
[SPEAKER_01]: Suddenly, um, if I'm handed a song, if I'm handed this music, it's like, man, bombastic drums, screaming guitar riffs, high energy.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's like, well, that's not, okay.
[SPEAKER_01]: So I need to get into this mindset, and I'm going to, I need to live in this mindset, I, am I going to live in a permanent midnight on a Saturday, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: is this where I'm at, this is everything gonna be high octane?
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh my God, and next thing I know, I'm screaming on every song.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm competing with these loud volumes to be an instrument within this wall of sound.
[SPEAKER_01]: And initially it was, it was more of one of these things I can't I do this?
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm gonna do this.
[SPEAKER_01]: Watch, hold my beer.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm gonna, you know, I'm gonna do this thing.
[SPEAKER_01]: and I think that initially it was very much like that until I was able to establish myself and understand myself within the genre and understand that look I don't have to play to these unrequited dreams of these rock journalists like this dumb shit lifestyle that doesn't have to be me.
[SPEAKER_01]: I can just be myself amidst all of these things and just focus on that, just focus on, like attempt to stay myself and you know, try to write about things that are important to me, even though the music is doing this, I can still try to do this.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I would do that every now and again, that's not to say that I don't understand the
[SPEAKER_01]: Who baby, who baby, who baby, you baby.
[SPEAKER_01]: Right.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like I know, like sometimes I need that.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I think that this education and understanding and getting the value of sometimes I'm going to write songs where it's just more about the energy.
[SPEAKER_01]: And it's not about the lyrics.
[SPEAKER_01]: What?
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, it's actually true.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's all right, man.
[SPEAKER_00]: Louay, Louay.
[SPEAKER_01]: Right now.
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, that marriage that you're talking about right there that you had to put together, I would have to guess.
[SPEAKER_00]: I will hazard a guess that, you know, if George Martin was the fifth beatle Dave Cobb has obviously played that role with you guys, how did he, how did Dave help with that marriage between what you're doing, lyrically, and spiritually, frankly, and what the band is doing musically?
[SPEAKER_01]: Dave is, um,
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't know.
[SPEAKER_01]: I feel like Dave might be my evil twin.
[SPEAKER_01]: And in some ways, but we're like, he, I trust Dave, you know, and he, from the very beginning, he's got just has a fantastic ear.
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, everybody knows that Dave is insanely talented.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's really good at what he does.
[SPEAKER_01]: producer.
[SPEAKER_01]: He's just looking for, he's looking for the straight dope.
[SPEAKER_01]: And that's it.
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, from any time you're in the studio.
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, he said everybody knows, but at the time when you first started working with him, not everybody knew that.
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, you know, everybody knows now.
[SPEAKER_00]: They know now, but not back then.
[SPEAKER_01]: Everybody knows now.
[SPEAKER_01]: All I knew was he had a very discerning ear.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I didn't like doing a bunch of takes.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I wanted to sound as live as possible.
[SPEAKER_01]: And Dave was right in line with that ethos.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so we would make our records that way.
[SPEAKER_01]: We would go in with nothing.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I would just chain myself to the desk and have a nervous breakdown for a week, having to write and write and write and write.
[SPEAKER_01]: and and record a song as soon as it's written the second it's ready just go in there and do it in front of everybody
[SPEAKER_01]: And it was a hair-raising experience, but we did that record after record, and it certainly shaped me and it gave me, it allowed me by putting myself in that sort of a situation.
[SPEAKER_01]: It allowed me an opportunity to sharpen and develop instinct in that regard.
[SPEAKER_01]: You know?
[SPEAKER_00]: When you say develop instinct, do you mean it allowed you to just make decisions a lot faster and trust those decisions or what do you mean exactly?
[SPEAKER_01]: And to improvise, and to improvise, and to write on the spot, and to just improvise and not take it, not be too precious, and to kill your darlings, and to fully employ
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm about to offend people in certain states, but to fully employ creative abortion.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, just give me the things that are holding you back.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yes, create the things that, well, the things, it's not the things that are holding you back necessarily, but you consider songs and consider works of art.
[SPEAKER_01]: Sometimes it may not be strong enough to live in the world, and live in the wild without you.
[SPEAKER_01]: And if it isn't kill it, you know, and keep a try to keep a very healthy flock that way, if it's limping around and if it's a song that isn't strong enough, just let it go, let it go, even if you really like it, will can you make it work?
[SPEAKER_01]: Can you make it work?
[SPEAKER_01]: will then get rid of it because everything that lives here has got to be healthy and it's got to be strong and it has to be able to survive in the ring otherwise just get rid of it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, and there's also just, there's limited resources when you're working on a creative project.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I find it's like, well, I can spend four hours making this kind of crappy song, slightly less crappy, or I can spend four hours with an entirely new idea and actually have a chance at a good song.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I just couldn't agree with you more.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, I have no interest in polishing turrets.
[SPEAKER_00]: I used to when I was younger waste a lot of time polishing turrets.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's a weird form of procrastination, I think.
[SPEAKER_00]: Um, and yeah, I'm kind of more with your ethos that you're describing there.
[SPEAKER_01]: Now, I get it and, um, and moving on, moving on and hitting just pulling the lever on that creative slot machine again.
[SPEAKER_00]: How that's to see.
[SPEAKER_01]: You might get, you might get all cherries, man.
[SPEAKER_00]: You don't know.
[SPEAKER_01]: But if you, if you stay focused on something that is not working,
[SPEAKER_01]: Often times it'll be a puzzle that reveals itself.
[SPEAKER_01]: But then other times you're actually just groping it someone who doesn't want to be groped at all.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: so talk to me about so this most recent record that you just sent me weapons of beauty which I love this this sounds like you know what you mentioned uh what was it the record that never came out locused and honey was that it locused and while the honey locused this sounds like uh now that I've listened to this record this record sounds like what you described that that record that never came out as is it would that be a good guess well
[SPEAKER_01]: That album sits, I'll probably release that Lucas Maldon honey next year, or, I don't know, before too long, but I needed to establish myself as a solo artist before letting that album get out there.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so I went, I went into the desert, you know, on some off time, and from, I guess, January to April of 25,
[SPEAKER_01]: I just lived in an underground bunker for a few months and had to try to find that solo writer, that doesn't need to compromise or collaborate.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, um, and, you know, and develop the discipline to finish us all and to stay with it, um, but this, you know, this album weapons are beauty.
[SPEAKER_01]: It was really just, it's the sound of me just opening the bird cage and waiting for the bird to fly out, you know, because it took a long time.
[SPEAKER_01]: It took a lot of staring at the wall in this underground bunker in the desert.
[SPEAKER_01]: It took a lot of just waiting.
[SPEAKER_01]: And waiting to be inspired and wasting time and sleeping on a cot and eating from a camping stove and living a getting electricity from a little gas generator I brought up there.
[SPEAKER_01]: But I think it was the sound of me trying to find myself and grab permission for that bird
[SPEAKER_01]: for that part of myself to get out of the cage and start walking around.
[SPEAKER_00]: Did you have to disconnect from digital technology as well at that time to be able to just let yourself get bored?
[SPEAKER_01]: No, I didn't.
[SPEAKER_01]: I didn't have to because
[SPEAKER_01]: But for me, like, I'm a father and a husband.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so for me, like, my cell phone didn't work down in the bunker.
[SPEAKER_01]: But I worked and recorded everything.
[SPEAKER_01]: I would demo on my computer under there and I'd have to flip the generator on and set it up and do all of that.
[SPEAKER_01]: But I think the training myself as I'm there
[SPEAKER_01]: training myself to be all right with wasting time instead of like just staying there with my hand on my fishing pole like there's could there could be a tug on the line any any second stay there stay there.
[SPEAKER_01]: I think being okay with wasting my time became very important.
[SPEAKER_01]: It became a very important lesson because you don't know.
[SPEAKER_01]: You don't know the time is really yours unless you can waste it.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's one of your time.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I think that being okay with going out and going for a hike, or walking around in the gold mines that were over there I was at.
[SPEAKER_01]: And doing that sort of thing, you can't always be living this romantic, oh, I'm so inspired and poetic, ethos when you're out there.
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, you can have all of the kutramon.
[SPEAKER_01]: and you can have the right books, and you can have your journals, you know, the right kind of scotch or just the right everything, and that doesn't mean the muse is gonna show up at all.
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, it's like you can, there's no such thing as a successful rein dance when it comes to these sort of things that I've ever found.
[SPEAKER_01]: And it's about,
[SPEAKER_01]: I think the accumulative exposure might have been the greatest asset of all in staying there and remembering that of what I'm there to do because I would come back I would come back from staying out there at seven eight nights I'd come home to to be with my family for two nights and my wife would be like hey so how did it go and be like I didn't write a goddamn thing
[SPEAKER_01]: I didn't write anything and you talk about feeling like a failure, you know.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like a, you know, here I'm a 49 year old father out there, nothing.
[SPEAKER_01]: I got nothing and you feel frustrated, but I just had to stay with it, you know, and that's, there's a song like high and lump sum that's on the record.
[SPEAKER_01]: There's very much about that, you know.
[SPEAKER_01]: that it's, you know, the staying, how many times have you stayed up extra late, you know, or had too much to drink, staying up too late, just waiting a good idea might come.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: And we're not in a widget making business where it's like you don't get paid if the factory line isn't putting out widgets.
[SPEAKER_00]: We're in a, we're in a thing of if you, you rack that,
[SPEAKER_00]: if you rack that machine and get all cherries that will that will pay for your next 10 years type of business you know what I mean see you got to be focused on that that rack you know the machine when you can and uh... and as long as it takes that's how it takes it's not a linear input and output type of business no it's a prospector's lifestyle a prospector there you go yeah it really is yeah yeah there's no 401k man
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm starting to learn that.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm really that's really hitting home at age 41 here.
[SPEAKER_00]: It really is hit no, um, prospectors lifestyle and I guess the other thing that prospectors had to worry about was someone stabbing them by the fire as they slept after the big score, which yes, there's aspects of the music business.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think go along that as well.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, right.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, the whole I was right up in the mountains like where real I was in the and the mountain system where like treasure the Sierra Modra and all of that.
[SPEAKER_01]: No, take place.
[SPEAKER_00]: that is wild, what are you are you now looking forward to I can imagine going through a season like that and as hard as it is to write with rival sons where you're in a room everyone's waiting for you you're gonna come out and just cut a song for the first time that you've ever sang it in front of a bunch of people.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'd imagine after this season of writing kind of a solo way you might actually be chomping at the bit to do that again right in that other manner.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yes, and no, I mean, I think that, you know, live throwing me some curveballs, like at this very moment, I think, you know, I miss my friends and I'm looking forward to like sharing and getting that collaborative energy.
[SPEAKER_01]: So yes, but the idea, like I'm doing some writing right now, I'm trying to
[SPEAKER_01]: In my spare time, I'm not all together sure what is going to come out, you know, or like what this next rival sounds records is going to be like, I don't know about that.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I think that also because I'm so preoccupied with other things, present moment, that there is some trepidation there, you know.
[SPEAKER_01]: like, where's it gonna come from?
[SPEAKER_01]: Because I mean, like, what we just talked about until it exists, like, man, I don't know for sure if that's gonna show up.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, there's always that thing of like, is there any more left in there?
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes, yeah, but when it works, you know, one of the things I find, listen to so much music in my life and sometimes I'll be driving home.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I want to put on a song and I'm like, ah, I'm so bored of all this stuff that I listen to.
[SPEAKER_00]: The song that I want to listen to doesn't exist yet.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then you go back the next day and maybe you're in the studio and you freaking write it.
[SPEAKER_00]: And you wrote that song and it didn't exist.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then as you drive home on that day,
[SPEAKER_00]: You pull up your little demo file, you put it into the car stereo and now you can listen to the song that you wanted to hear yesterday and it didn't exist didn't exist in the world for 24 hours beforehand.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, you know, for all of the waiting that has to happen and all the boredom and and the shame in some ways that we both described like man, that feeling of being able to listen to the song that you just wrote that didn't exist 24 hours before that's as high as it can get as as an adult.
[SPEAKER_01]: I think what you need, you need those winds in order to carry on, you know, you know, when they train these, they train the, uh, search and rescue dogs up in the Alps, you know, the old cartoon with the, the dog with the, the brand here, the schnapps, you know, under there.
[SPEAKER_01]: Um, but when they train the, the avalanche dogs, when they're training these dogs, they
[SPEAKER_01]: They have to plant a survivor every now and then because the dogs get depressed and they lose heart.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, and they because even dogs, those dogs that they need a win.
[SPEAKER_01]: And we're the same way, you know, the dogs get depressed and they can no longer keep training.
[SPEAKER_01]: They can't learn.
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, are they'll stop looking?
[SPEAKER_01]: because they get too bombed.
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, how I, like sorry, nobody wants to think about a sad dog at the press dog, like peaches or sadder.
[SPEAKER_01]: But I mean, at for us as writers in this prospector's lifestyle, you just wanna know that there's enough water to get you and your horse to the next mission.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, and just knowing that,
[SPEAKER_01]: getting a win.
[SPEAKER_01]: Nothing feels like that.
[SPEAKER_01]: And when you've done it enough times, you trust it.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I think that, like, with this last record for me, staying out there so long, getting some of the songs that I did, um,
[SPEAKER_01]: It was a pretty terrifying experience, you know, there was more doubt than I thought that I could endure.
[SPEAKER_01]: There was a lot of high-dive jitters there going on and the reflection and the isolation and like everything, it was able, I was able to get a result, I was able to get just enough.
[SPEAKER_01]: Justin, Justin up to make a record because when I left the desert and I had to fly to Savannah and record this record, we recorded it over five days and all the way over there, I was nervous as could be.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I mean, you know, I've read what have I made like 15, 16 records in my life already.
[SPEAKER_01]: But I was still, I was just about terrified because of what I had done was so personal.
[SPEAKER_01]: And it was so close to the bone.
[SPEAKER_01]: I hadn't shared it with anyone.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I didn't, I wasn't, I wasn't convinced that any of it was worth a damn.
[SPEAKER_01]: Or that anybody would relate to it at all.
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, I didn't show cob, I didn't show anybody.
[SPEAKER_01]: And, you know, Dave misceives gave me a little distribution deal in order to pay for things and, you know, get the, with 30 tigers and get the record going, he didn't even hear it, you know, he just thankfully he, he believed it, he had faith in me.
[SPEAKER_01]: But I mean, just getting in there and I remember recording the very first song, I was so nervous.
[SPEAKER_01]: I was so nervous.
[SPEAKER_01]: I think I meditated like three times upstairs, just trying to get the courage to show the band the first song.
[SPEAKER_00]: And also not looked terrified.
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, not looked scared that, you know, that I was going to fail.
[SPEAKER_01]: But it's interesting how those things work.
[SPEAKER_00]: Man, well, it's after having heard the record and now hearing your experience of making it like that.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's heartening to listen to as as another writer because it, it just comes off as such a great record.
[SPEAKER_00]: And if you would have asked me beforehand, I would have been like, yeah, he wrote all those songs out in the desert.
[SPEAKER_00]: He knew it was a smash and it was just a party getting to go record them.
[SPEAKER_00]: It feels good to know that you were sweating it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Listen man, it's been an absolute pleasure to have you on the show.
[SPEAKER_00]: I really appreciate you taking the time with everything that's going on with your right now and just thank you so much, Jay.
[SPEAKER_01]: I appreciate what you do, Joe, and your podcast is fantastic because it's four writers by
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, and real quick, shout out to, let's see, Joe Firstman and B.J.
[SPEAKER_01]: Barham for turning out yours.
[SPEAKER_01]: Turn to me onto your stuff.
[SPEAKER_01]: It was B.J.
[SPEAKER_01]: and Joe and I in a van back in 08, somewhere around there, and yeah, many times.
[SPEAKER_00]: I love both those guys so much and Joe I mean all that stuff obviously I've been a fan of BJs for years but Joe's stuff with the Cordovas.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think that the record is called that Santa Fe channel.
[SPEAKER_00]: I love it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, there's so much there.
[SPEAKER_00]: This town's at your strength.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I think Brian right wrote that song.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's a great song.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, Brian's a he's a great writer, but yeah, just shout out to them.
[SPEAKER_01]: You make your right great songs been a long time fan Joe.
[SPEAKER_00]: Thank you, man.
[SPEAKER_00]: This week's show was brought to you by Banzergle.
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[SPEAKER_00]: J. Buchanan's latest album is entitled Weapons of Beauty, available everywhere music is sold or streamed.
[SPEAKER_00]: If before we meet again, you sit down to write, please remember, an expensive drug habit is not a song, a compelling Instagram account is not a song, and most importantly, reverb is not a song.
[SPEAKER_00]: So let all that take care of itself and for you, just keep your eye on the song.