Howlin’ Moon Interview
Q: Can you talk about your musical history?
A: I can vividly remember listening to music in the car with my mom at an early age when we’d go visit my grandparents. They lived forty-five minutes away, and in those days there was still a lot of farmland in between the towns that make up the region of Texas where I grew up—there wasn’t much to look at, and we did a lot of driving back and forth at night, so listening to music and stargazing was how I coped with the commute. Actually, hearing the intro guitar riff to “In My Life” by The Beatles is the first memory I can recall having in my life.
My grandparents liked to host big parties, and would regularly hire a mariachi band to play, which was my official introduction to live music. My grandpa also had a classical nylon string guitar but I can’t remember ever having seen him play it. Both my parents owned guitars of their own, which primarily collected dust until I decided to pick up my mom’s guitar and teach myself to play when I was about twelve years old—I’d just started learning to play the trumpet in the middle school band, and used the chromatic tuner I’d received for that to tune the guitar once I learned what each string was supposed to be tuned to. I started to mimic melodies and riffs from songs I knew pretty quickly, and have been playing by ear ever since. I can read sheet music, just not for guitar—my eighth grade jazz band instructor will woefully confirm.
Q: What is your creative process like?
A: People ask me if I write the music or the lyrics to my songs first, and the short answer is it’s changed over time. When I was younger and scribbling lyrics in my journal, I was usually doing it in the back of the classroom, away from my guitar, and I didn’t have the the experience playing yet to have my own music stuck in my head, so most of what I wrote would match the rhythm or melody of a song I already knew but hadn’t necessarily learned how to play yet. Now, I typically sit down and just start noodling around on the guitar until a pattern starts to take shape, then I usually start to explore a melody, and then the lyrics come into focus. For me, songwriting has become less of a direct expression that reflects upon my specific personal experiences, and feels more like those experiences are what allow me to harness my creativity to write a song with a unique experience of its own—writing a song feels like I’m receiving an abstract message of emotions from the ether and trying to capture them in their clearest most tangible form by using music and lyrics.
Q: I was wondering how you would explain the themes and concepts on The Sun & The Moon?
A: Overcoming grief is definitely a central theme. The Sun & The Moon is comprised of mostly songs that were written after my daughter was born. Her mom and I were engaged, but we ended up calling off the wedding and ultimately ending our relationship—it was just one of those things that we knew was right despite how painful it felt at the time. For me, it was a time of profound joy experiencing my daughter grow, mixed with tremendous grief over the loss of my relationship with her mom. We all experience some form of grief in life (I’m convinced there’s no way around it), but I find strength in knowing it’s an imminent pain that we’re all going to experience—like a wave offered from the ocean. It might bury us for a while, but it will eventually wash over, and fresh air will fill our lungs again at the surface if we just give it time. The Sun & The Moon was created to serve as a reminder of that fact for my daughter (and anyone else who listens). I think there’s something incredibly beautiful about the resilience of the human spirit. We’re designed to endure hardship, to be tested and to grow—and this album is more or less a testament to that.
Q: What is your recording process like?
A: At first, it was super uncomfortable because I wasn’t used to singing without feeling the notes on the back of my guitar resonating against my belly—I felt like Ricky Bobby in Talladega Nights, I didn’t know what to do with my hands. Then, with the help of my producer, John Rankin (who I’m convinced is actually probably a wizard), I started to embrace that uncomfortable energy and harness it into my performance where it was necessary. Vocals were a unique and challenging experience, and one that I’m deeply grateful for because I feel like it definitely helped sharpen my ear. I’m also a shameless textbook baseball fanatic, and I found that having the game playing muted on my phone while I tracked helped me to relax (I think I only ruined one take celebrating a walk-off home run).
The album was recorded during the height of the pandemic, so I set out with the intention of making an album that sounded like it could have been tracked by one person because that’s pretty much all the participation I could really guarantee. That being said, tracking instrumentation with John felt like piloting one of the Jaegers from “Pacific Rim” (for those who aren’t familiar with the reference, a colossal machine that requires a “neural bridge” between two individuals in order to pilot it in unison). I don’t consider myself a piano player by any means, but I would hear a part in my head (like the one in The Sun & The Moon, for example), and John would urge me to try and track it, which would allow him to hear what I was going for and take a stab at it as well. Then we’d just go back and forth learning from each other’s takes and perfecting the part until we had it—the piano solo in The Sun & The Moon is actually more of a duel, as it features alternating riffs from John and me. Same for the drum part in “The Mountain”—I’m pretty sure most of our drumming experience is limited to the steering wheel, but together we got it to work, like using blue and yellow to mix green when you don’t have green just by itself. Our relationship became very complementary as it pertains to the production of the album, and after we quickly established a good working relationship, I found myself thinking of that old saying, “iron sharpens iron,” and began embracing the challenges that are inevitably presented while recording an album, because I knew we’d both end up better musicians/producers for it. I appreciate John for creating a space where I felt safe exploring new musical terrain, and for being able to interpret my abstract ideas so damn concretely.
Q: You mention that The Sun & The Moon is the first of three releases that are connected by a story. Can you expand on that?
A: Most of the songs on The Sun & The Moon were written relatively recently, and typically gravitate in an orbit around my journey into fatherhood. Prior to that, most of the songs I’ve written and have been performing for the past ten or so years primarily center around two concepts: the residual lore that preexisted my lifetime in the home (state) I grew up in, and the difficulty I had leaving my home behind when I moved to California. My hopeful plan is to record and release these songs over the span of two more albums in the not too distant future, tentatively and respectively titled Ghost Stories and Hair of the Wolf.
Ghost Stories is an anthology of acoustic folk songs inspired by my family’s unique history, each revolving around a different fictional character (or group of characters), and set in the vast yet often imprisoning landscape of Texas throughout the 1900’s. Meanwhile, Hair of the Wolf has a much more traditional bluesy/folk-rock pulse to it—I typically prefer to perform these songs on a hollow body electric, and my hopeful intention is to record it with a full band. Sometimes it just feels good to howl at the moon, and that wild impulse we all feel inside us is what Hair of the Wolf is meant to fulfill.
Q: Have you started playing shows or virtual shows?
A: I’ve been playing gigs in San Diego for about as long as I’ve lived here (just north of ten years), and my partner and I did a few livestream shows during the pandemic—to be honest, it’s been a challenge trying to establish momentum and book the gigs I’m looking for since releasing the album. I’m super grateful for all the opportunities I’ve been presented, but my ideal show is at a joint where people are there to see a show and have a good time. I’m hopeful that as we all get further removed from our fear of being around each other, there will be more opportunities for me to offer the experience I’m trying to offer.
I know The Sun & The Moon isn’t a very strong representation of it, but I grew up going to rock shows, and I prefer my shows to have a high level of energy on both sides of the stage (enter Hair of the Wolf). I was offered my first opportunity to play at The Casbah, which is exactly the venue experience I was describing (thanks, universe).
I also have a record release show planned for September at a really rad spot my friend curated downtown called The Acid Vault, but I’m still working out the details of getting something cut on vinyl (my album is too long to fit onto one 12” disc, and not even my mom would pay what it’d cost for dual disc—I can’t say I blame her). Overall, it’s not a bad problem to have though—we’ll figure something out.
Q: What else should we know about your music?
A: Recording The Sun & The Moon was one of the most challenging and also most rewarding experiences of my life. I’m blown away by the fact that only three people worked on this album and helped bring it to life, and I’m so proud of the work that we put in. I’m incredibly eager to share my music with as many people as I can, and to perform—I’m enamored by the energy that exists between the stage and the crowd, and I’m looking forward to diving in. I hope people resonate with my music, and I invite them to reach out and connect/ follow us on social media to help build a community around it if they do.
Q: Can you talk about your musical history?
A: I can vividly remember listening to music in the car with my mom at an early age when we’d go visit my grandparents. They lived forty-five minutes away, and in those days there was still a lot of farmland in between the towns that make up the region of Texas where I grew up—there wasn’t much to look at, and we did a lot of driving back and forth at night, so listening to music and stargazing was how I coped with the commute. Actually, hearing the intro guitar riff to “In My Life” by The Beatles is the first memory I can recall having in my life.
My grandparents liked to host big parties, and would regularly hire a mariachi band to play, which was my official introduction to live music. My grandpa also had a classical nylon string guitar but I can’t remember ever having seen him play it. Both my parents owned guitars of their own, which primarily collected dust until I decided to pick up my mom’s guitar and teach myself to play when I was about twelve years old—I’d just started learning to play the trumpet in the middle school band, and used the chromatic tuner I’d received for that to tune the guitar once I learned what each string was supposed to be tuned to. I started to mimic melodies and riffs from songs I knew pretty quickly, and have been playing by ear ever since. I can read sheet music, just not for guitar—my eighth grade jazz band instructor will woefully confirm.
Q: What is your creative process like?
A: People ask me if I write the music or the lyrics to my songs first, and the short answer is it’s changed over time. When I was younger and scribbling lyrics in my journal, I was usually doing it in the back of the classroom, away from my guitar, and I didn’t have the the experience playing yet to have my own music stuck in my head, so most of what I wrote would match the rhythm or melody of a song I already knew but hadn’t necessarily learned how to play yet. Now, I typically sit down and just start noodling around on the guitar until a pattern starts to take shape, then I usually start to explore a melody, and then the lyrics come into focus. For me, songwriting has become less of a direct expression that reflects upon my specific personal experiences, and feels more like those experiences are what allow me to harness my creativity to write a song with a unique experience of its own—writing a song feels like I’m receiving an abstract message of emotions from the ether and trying to capture them in their clearest most tangible form by using music and lyrics.
Q: I was wondering how you would explain the themes and concepts on The Sun & The Moon?
A: Overcoming grief is definitely a central theme. The Sun & The Moon is comprised of mostly songs that were written after my daughter was born. Her mom and I were engaged, but we ended up calling off the wedding and ultimately ending our relationship—it was just one of those things that we knew was right despite how painful it felt at the time. For me, it was a time of profound joy experiencing my daughter grow, mixed with tremendous grief over the loss of my relationship with her mom. We all experience some form of grief in life (I’m convinced there’s no way around it), but I find strength in knowing it’s an imminent pain that we’re all going to experience—like a wave offered from the ocean. It might bury us for a while, but it will eventually wash over, and fresh air will fill our lungs again at the surface if we just give it time. The Sun & The Moon was created to serve as a reminder of that fact for my daughter (and anyone else who listens). I think there’s something incredibly beautiful about the resilience of the human spirit. We’re designed to endure hardship, to be tested and to grow—and this album is more or less a testament to that.
Q: What is your recording process like?
A: At first, it was super uncomfortable because I wasn’t used to singing without feeling the notes on the back of my guitar resonating against my belly—I felt like Ricky Bobby in Talladega Nights, I didn’t know what to do with my hands. Then, with the help of my producer, John Rankin (who I’m convinced is actually probably a wizard), I started to embrace that uncomfortable energy and harness it into my performance where it was necessary. Vocals were a unique and challenging experience, and one that I’m deeply grateful for because I feel like it definitely helped sharpen my ear. I’m also a shameless textbook baseball fanatic, and I found that having the game playing muted on my phone while I tracked helped me to relax (I think I only ruined one take celebrating a walk-off home run).
The album was recorded during the height of the pandemic, so I set out with the intention of making an album that sounded like it could have been tracked by one person because that’s pretty much all the participation I could really guarantee. That being said, tracking instrumentation with John felt like piloting one of the Jaegers from “Pacific Rim” (for those who aren’t familiar with the reference, a colossal machine that requires a “neural bridge” between two individuals in order to pilot it in unison). I don’t consider myself a piano player by any means, but I would hear a part in my head (like the one in The Sun & The Moon, for example), and John would urge me to try and track it, which would allow him to hear what I was going for and take a stab at it as well. Then we’d just go back and forth learning from each other’s takes and perfecting the part until we had it—the piano solo in The Sun & The Moon is actually more of a duel, as it features alternating riffs from John and me. Same for the drum part in “The Mountain”—I’m pretty sure most of our drumming experience is limited to the steering wheel, but together we got it to work, like using blue and yellow to mix green when you don’t have green just by itself. Our relationship became very complementary as it pertains to the production of the album, and after we quickly established a good working relationship, I found myself thinking of that old saying, “iron sharpens iron,” and began embracing the challenges that are inevitably presented while recording an album, because I knew we’d both end up better musicians/producers for it. I appreciate John for creating a space where I felt safe exploring new musical terrain, and for being able to interpret my abstract ideas so damn concretely.
Q: You mention that The Sun & The Moon is the first of three releases that are connected by a story. Can you expand on that?
A: Most of the songs on The Sun & The Moon were written relatively recently, and typically gravitate in an orbit around my journey into fatherhood. Prior to that, most of the songs I’ve written and have been performing for the past ten or so years primarily center around two concepts: the residual lore that preexisted my lifetime in the home (state) I grew up in, and the difficulty I had leaving my home behind when I moved to California. My hopeful plan is to record and release these songs over the span of two more albums in the not too distant future, tentatively and respectively titled Ghost Stories and Hair of the Wolf.
Ghost Stories is an anthology of acoustic folk songs inspired by my family’s unique history, each revolving around a different fictional character (or group of characters), and set in the vast yet often imprisoning landscape of Texas throughout the 1900’s. Meanwhile, Hair of the Wolf has a much more traditional bluesy/folk-rock pulse to it—I typically prefer to perform these songs on a hollow body electric, and my hopeful intention is to record it with a full band. Sometimes it just feels good to howl at the moon, and that wild impulse we all feel inside us is what Hair of the Wolf is meant to fulfill.
Q: Have you started playing shows or virtual shows?
A: I’ve been playing gigs in San Diego for about as long as I’ve lived here (just north of ten years), and my partner and I did a few livestream shows during the pandemic—to be honest, it’s been a challenge trying to establish momentum and book the gigs I’m looking for since releasing the album. I’m super grateful for all the opportunities I’ve been presented, but my ideal show is at a joint where people are there to see a show and have a good time. I’m hopeful that as we all get further removed from our fear of being around each other, there will be more opportunities for me to offer the experience I’m trying to offer.
I know The Sun & The Moon isn’t a very strong representation of it, but I grew up going to rock shows, and I prefer my shows to have a high level of energy on both sides of the stage (enter Hair of the Wolf). I was offered my first opportunity to play at The Casbah, which is exactly the venue experience I was describing (thanks, universe).
I also have a record release show planned for September at a really rad spot my friend curated downtown called The Acid Vault, but I’m still working out the details of getting something cut on vinyl (my album is too long to fit onto one 12” disc, and not even my mom would pay what it’d cost for dual disc—I can’t say I blame her). Overall, it’s not a bad problem to have though—we’ll figure something out.
Q: What else should we know about your music?
A: Recording The Sun & The Moon was one of the most challenging and also most rewarding experiences of my life. I’m blown away by the fact that only three people worked on this album and helped bring it to life, and I’m so proud of the work that we put in. I’m incredibly eager to share my music with as many people as I can, and to perform—I’m enamored by the energy that exists between the stage and the crowd, and I’m looking forward to diving in. I hope people resonate with my music, and I invite them to reach out and connect/ follow us on social media to help build a community around it if they do.
Check out the full critique