What if your musical journey could take you from church bands in Ohio to pioneering an ethereal genre called "Astral Folk"? Join us as we sit down with Jordan Lee from Mutual Benefit to explore his evolution from a childhood steeped in Christian hymns and rock classics to discovering the sonic landscapes of Fugazi and Godspeed You! Black Emperor. Jordan takes us through his early songwriting days, fueled by an urge to impress and the magic of GarageBand, painting a vivid picture of his formative years and the nostalgic influences that shaped his unique sound.
Uncover the raw vulnerability and personal discovery central to Jordan's music as he shares intimate stories from his artistic journey. We discuss the impact of pivotal albums like Bright Eyes' "I'm Wide Awake, It's Morning," and the delicate artistry of Sufjan Stevens and Joanna Newsome. Jordan opens up about the challenge of performing deeply personal songs as an introvert, revealing his technique of retreating inward during performances to deliver heartfelt music. His candid reflections provide a deeper understanding of his creative process and the emotional layers within his work.
Journey with us to the genesis of Mutual Benefit's album "Growing at the Edges," a creation born from the turbulence of lockdown and a transformative political climate. Jordan tells us how personal and political experiences, including mutual aid and Black Lives Matter activism, influenced his music during this period. We also explore the significance of connecting children with nature, inspired by the teachings of Robin Wall Kimmerer's "Braiding Sweetgrass," and the intimate essence of releasing both polished records and raw demos. Ending with poetic musings on resilience and growth, Jordan leaves us with hopeful reflections on life's unexpected journeys and the possibilities that lie ahead. Don't miss this episode packed with compelling stories, heartfelt conversations, and the poetic richness of musical growth amidst adversity.
What if your musical journey could take you from church bands in Ohio to pioneering an ethereal genre called "Astral Folk"? Join us as we sit down with Jordan Lee from Mutual Benefit to explore his evolution from a childhood steeped in Christian hymns and rock classics to discovering the sonic landscapes of Fugazi and Godspeed You! Black Emperor. Jordan takes us through his early songwriting days, fueled by an urge to impress and the magic of GarageBand, painting a vivid picture of his formative years and the nostalgic influences that shaped his unique sound.
Uncover the raw vulnerability and personal discovery central to Jordan's music as he shares intimate stories from his artistic journey. We discuss the impact of pivotal albums like Bright Eyes' "I'm Wide Awake, It's Morning," and the delicate artistry of Sufjan Stevens and Joanna Newsome. Jordan opens up about the challenge of performing deeply personal songs as an introvert, revealing his technique of retreating inward during performances to deliver heartfelt music. His candid reflections provide a deeper understanding of his creative process and the emotional layers within his work.
Journey with us to the genesis of Mutual Benefit's album "Growing at the Edges," a creation born from the turbulence of lockdown and a transformative political climate. Jordan tells us how personal and political experiences, including mutual aid and Black Lives Matter activism, influenced his music during this period. We also explore the significance of connecting children with nature, inspired by the teachings of Robin Wall Kimmerer's "Braiding Sweetgrass," and the intimate essence of releasing both polished records and raw demos. Ending with poetic musings on resilience and growth, Jordan leaves us with hopeful reflections on life's unexpected journeys and the possibilities that lie ahead. Don't miss this episode packed with compelling stories, heartfelt conversations, and the poetic richness of musical growth amidst adversity.
Welcome to another episode of If it Be Real podcast, where we're scouring the world for conversations with amazing indie artists, and today I am not holding any punches. I have jordan lee from mutual benefit coming in. Um, mutual benefits been around for many, many moons. Some great records out there. Um, there's a new demo version of the growing at the edges that came out in 2023. A demo version came out in 2024. And I have Jordan joining me here from his humble abode in Brooklyn to kind of talk about his music and his journey so far in life. So, jordan, thanks so much for joining me. Yeah, thanks for having me, jordan. I saw it somewhere where it said that you make astral folk. Now I would love a definition of like. I think that you had said that that's what you thought your style was. Is that correct?
Speaker 2:
Yeah, what does that mean to you? I landed on Astral Folk after I decided that before my band camp said Raincore, raincore. I really liked both the feeling of being in my apartment and hearing the rain. I live up in the attic area so I like hearing the rain on the roof and I like when a synthesizer part or a piano part kind of feels like raindrops. Um, but I was finding that it was a little too abstract if I showed it to a concert promoter or something like that. So I sold out and I changed it to Astral Folk, which I think you know folk music means so many different things to different people. But I think a lot of my songs start on acoustic guitar and then I'm kind of interested in what other sounds and arrangements I can add to it, and so, especially on previous albums, there's kinds of there's field recordings that get manipulated and there's, you know, lots of effects, pedals happening, so yeah, so it kind of landed on astral folk Sounds a little spacey.
Speaker 1:
I like it. I like it a lot and, like Jordan, what I read that you, your upbringing was, you grew up in a christian home. Going to church, father was in the church band. How, how did how, did those beginnings in music um influence you to want to have a career in music?
Speaker 2:
Sure, yeah. So I grew up in the middle of Ohio and it was just a pretty typical suburb and you know, most people that I knew went to church on Sunday, so it was just kind of a normal thing. And yeah, my, my dad played keyboard in the church band and the church was attempting to be modern sounding. All the songs kind of vaguely sounded like U2. You know, there was like an electric guitarist and I was just kind of fascinated by it. I loved going to the band practices, just sitting and watching them rehearse.
Speaker 2:
At like a pretty young age I was going and, uh, um, eventually I joined the band, kind of sometimes I would play piano when someone couldn't make it, or I would, uh, I played guitar and I sang in the band. That was for the teenagers, but I certainly did not imagine having a career in music. You know, I didn't really know anyone who you know from my town who like went on and did something that people knew about out of state other than maybe some athletes or something like that. So it wasn't really it. It wasn't. The older I got in high school, the you know I wasn't thinking I'm gonna make it. You know, I was just thinking me and my friends are gonna mess around. And you know, eventually I heard the band. You know, eventually I was listening to pop punk and then, you know, someone showed me Fugazi, and then someone showed me.
Speaker 2:
Godspeed you, black Emperor. I was still playing in the church bands and I was just a really confused teenager, sure.
Speaker 1:
Well, that's pretty cool though, and I read that in your home, in your parents' home. When you were growing up, you had a CD player with a switcher CD player right, you could load a few in there. And you had basically three CDs that never changed. What were those three?
Speaker 2:
CDs. What were those 3D CDs? The soundtrack? Until my siblings and I started having more of a say, when it was just my parents in charge. It was the Eagles Greatest Hits, volume 2, the Harry Nilsson album, nilsson Schmilsson and James Taylor's Greatest Hits. Those are the three. And then usually a smattering of contemporary Christian music like DC Talk or the Newsboys or something like that. But if I hear any of those songs now, like if I hear Without you by Harry Nilsson or Peaceful Easy by by the eagles, it takes me right back to that green carpet hopefully it's not a traumatic experience, but definitely not, it was you know those songs like the back of your hand.
Speaker 1:
um, I just found that that was such a I needed to ask. And then, like, when did you yourself start to write music? Like I heard that you, you, you picked up the guitar cause you thought it was cool, cause you're playing the trumpet, or but you wanted to go to the guitar. Like, when did you actually start penning your own songs?
Speaker 2:
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I picked up the guitar because I wanted girls to like me and it was unsuccessful. But I, yeah. So I did all the normal stuff. I'm learning the Green Day songs and the Weezer songs. So I did all the normal stuff, learning the green day songs and the Weezer songs, and eventually I think I don't really remember it started eventually.
Speaker 2:
I was playing other people's songs and I thought, you know, I could just change the song up a little bit and put my own words to it, and then it's my song. And I was I'm 36, I think and so I was really lucky that the advent of recording technology got really cheap. When I was in high school, All of a sudden computers came loaded with GarageBand and with just a little $20 cable I could plug my guitar right into the computer and there was some pretty cool synthesizer sounds right off the bat, and so I started putting songs into the computer and eventually I had a keyboard that had what's it called. Basically, it had a four-track recorder in the keyboard and so I could make a piano part, and then I could make a bass part and then I could make a string part. And you know, it was one of those things where I would start doing it after school and then I just noticed it's dinner time. You know, like the time would just go by in a flash, and you know it was just my favorite thing.
Speaker 1:
That's cool and like did your early childhood, did religion come into your songwriting when you were first starting to write, or was it a response to that like of questioning, like, how was your approach to how you grew up when you started writing songs, the themes and kind of your direction of how you wanted to to position yourself with your music?
Speaker 2:
yeah, um, my older brother passed away when I was in middle school and kind of in a somewhat traumatic way, and so now that I'm thinking about it, definitely my first music was kind of processing that a little bit. And then, yeah, my first band you're going to coax it out of me all the hard hitting stuff, but my first band was a Christian pop punk band band. So I was, but I was, um, uh, it was right during the like at some point w bush was president, the, the war was happening in the middle east and I I could sense that that was not good and that, you know, the the bands I was listening to were speaking out against it. So my politics were very confused. As a 16 year old I was.
Speaker 1:
I had a song about not standing for the pledge of allegiance, but I also had a song about how, like god loves, punks you're figuring stuff out, right like it's a great kind of like those teenage years too, and I think music amplifies that kind of like what out, where am I? Where am I? What am I gonna do? Like who? Like? What's all this shit going on around? Like it makes everything so raw and I can appreciate that you had a punk and that like it questions all that and kind of pushes it a little bit and rattles it around a bit.
Speaker 2:
Um, totally yeah one of my early songs was called question the answers.
Speaker 1:
I just remembered that there you go, question the answers. That's a good one, and call me crazy, but did you also have a band called our friend canada?
Speaker 2:
uh, you know I'm gonna, I'm gonna plead the fifth, but if you read between the lines, that might be the high school band.
Speaker 1:
Okay, all right. Well, I'm Canadian, so it spoke to me for sure. And then, as you kind of were like evolving your songwriting, how did you eventually start finding your voice and the sound that you felt most comfortable delivering?
Speaker 2:
Yeah, I'm a bit of a sponge, especially with music, and so I remember when the Bright Eyes album I'm Wide Awake, it's Morning came out and I hadn't had much exposure to country music and that you know that album has a pretty country leaning band and I remember that, blowing my mind and the lyrics were just incredible to me, um, kind of as a modern protest album. And you know my older sister she's eight or ten years older than me and she was, you know, showing me the postal service and, um, a lesser known band called the no Twists who was kind of out around the same time who had kind of similar electronic instrumentation. And you know I would just hear things and I didn't you know the suburb that I grew up in. It just wasn't, it just wasn't there, just wasn't a lot going on. So I couldn't just ask someone how do you make sounds like this or like who's the producer of this Bright Eyes album or anything like that. And so I think I just took little pieces of things I enjoyed and made some sort of like attempt at recreating it.
Speaker 2:
A lot of my early songs before mutual benefit were, I think, kind of like I'm wide awake, it's morning, ripoff songs with. You know I bought a banjo. I really love Sufjan Stevens as well. Yeah, Joanna Newsome was a huge influence on me, even though I only understood about half of the words she was saying. And I think by the time Ease came out by Joanna Newsome I don't remember what year that was, but you know it was Van Dyke Parks helped with the arrangements and it's these four 16 minute songs with some of the most beautiful string parts I've ever heard in modern music and I was loving.
Speaker 2:
You know, I I realized that acoustic guitar and big string arrangements were the thing that I that moved me the most. And and I found an album from the 60s by a singer named Vashti Bunyan called Just Another Diamond Day, and I loved those arrangements. There's that Nick Drake album, Five Leaves Left, that has some of my favorite songs in the world. To this day it's still one of my favorites and I think I started to decide if I could make songs like that.
Speaker 2:
But the thing that's missing to make it interesting to me is messing around with kind of the experimental elements of sound. And what if there's field recordings? What if? What if I ran this through four pedals and just see what it sounds like? And so that was kind of when I felt like I had something I could add to kind of the musical conversation, because I I especially back in 2012 I wasn't hearing people who were dabbling in the kind of like fancy sounds of like a violin arrangement mixed with something that they're recording in their bedroom at the same time right, right, no, I hear you.
Speaker 1:
And how did you like I always ask this to to musicians, because you're always putting yourself in a very vulnerable position right, you're, you're, you're writing down things from your heart that you, that you've got, you know? I mean, it's kind of like journaling a little bit, in the sense that you're pouring stuff out, yet you take this next step of putting yourself on stage in front of a bunch of people and singing these things. How do you, how do you, how did you get there? Because I do know I had read a couple of things that you're that said that you were an introvert and like you, and I can, you know, tell just by talking with you that you're not a, you know, bombastic and like. How do you, how do you navigate, taking these personal, personal gems that you've created and standing up there for the world to hear, and criticize and and and poke at and pull apart? Where do you find that bravery, jordan?
Speaker 2:
um, yeah, that's, that's a great question and yeah, it's. It's still horrifying to me. I I played new songs to about 30 people last week so it's just 30 people and I knew half of them well and I could not get my body to stop shaking, and so it's definitely to me quite nerve wracking. But what I do, I've noticed, is oftentimes my eyes are closed the entire performance and I think there's just a retreating inwards while I perform. I'm sure the people who came expecting me to dance around the stage, you know, might be disappointed, but yeah, I think I just have a place inside of myself that I kind of built and I go in there while I'm performing and I think the advantage of that is what's coming out is something from very deep and inside of me, um, but it is a bit funny to get on a stage in front of a couple hundred people and try to pretend that none of them are there right.
Speaker 2:
I mean, I guess that that trick of of closing your eyes, are there other um pre-show things you have to do to kind of like get into that mindset, into that zone of of of being a front person to a, to a pretty popular band, I must say yeah, um, one thing if, if we're lucky enough to have a show that has a green room or you know a place that the band can go in before the show, um, especially if it's a bigger show, I do like to have a little bit of a physical freak out.
Speaker 2:
Bandmates have seen it and sometimes partake in it, but I like to just we'll be practicing the harmonies and then I like to just roll around on the ground, jump up and down, jump on the couch, just get all of that nervous energy out so I can kind of get on stage and be calm. Um, so I do that and then at some point about 10 years ago, I realized I hate the feeling of just getting on stage and boom, starting a song. Um, I like to kind of coax the sound out slowly and I like to kind of invite the audience into this world that we're building. So almost every show I've done over the past 10 years there's maybe five minutes of kind of ambient buildup to get to the first song, and I find it's a really wonderful way of getting the feel of the stage and getting the feel of the room and getting yeah, like I said, like getting the audience prepared to hear music, so that's probably the biggest mutual benefit ritual.
Speaker 1:
That's a really cool idea. A really cool idea. And the rolling around too. I mean I can see how I understand that kind of internal nervousness and it's got to go somewhere. Right, you got to get it. Yeah, really cool. So let's just kind of let's touch a little bit on Growing at the Edges. I read that every album is inspired by a tipping point in your life. What tipping point would you associate with growing at the edges?
Speaker 2:
I think oftentimes the album, when I'm working on it, will have a political, external sorts of thoughts as well as personal. This is what's going on in my life, types of thoughts, and oftentimes I think those can be married together because both realities are happening at once. So I, I uh, you know the the music industry is difficult and it's it's hard to decide how much of your life you're going to devote to, you know, playing the game and how much you can tour and you know what, what you can offer your bandmates so that they don't move out of town. You know like it's all very difficult to figure out, and so I wrote a lot of growing at the edges during lockdown and, um, it was a totally different process than all the other albums, which were collaborative from the very first moments. I would maybe just even have a sound or a couple chords and I'd have a friend over and be like let's just, you know, hear all the sounds together. And that was, in new york, totally impossible. It was just me and my partner had our little apartment, right, great. And so, you know, I had some thought.
Speaker 2:
I I did like a half of a coding boot camp. I was like maybe, you know everyone else is becoming a coder and getting rich, so maybe maybe I can make my life a little easier. And uh, you know, and I just started, you know, thinking about what, if my identity doesn't have to be that I'm a musician all the time, um and uh, I was about halfway through this coding boot camp and it just wasn't for me. I I don't like sitting at the computer all day and um, and I got an email from an old record label who I just kind of I'm not super good at making the money, so I didn't even think they would do another album with me. And they sent me an email and said you working on anything? Because, like, we're really interested in and and what you have to say. And I sent them a couple of demos and they and they said, yeah, let's do an album together.
Speaker 2:
So I quit coding boot camp and uh, kind of had this really, you know, it had a sense of purpose again and the then, politically, you know, obviously the, the pandemic was just awful and it's all over, especially in New York in the beginning. And but kind of a strange byproduct was all these conversations that were politically very exciting to me. There was a lot of, and there was a lot in my neighborhood of mutual aid, people delivering food to the seniors, and and um, I, uh, myself included, a lot of us got unemployment for the first time and were able to, you know, make our studios a lot nicer. Um and and uh. And so that kind of leads to talks about like, yeah, what if the government had a bigger role in giving people their basic needs? Or what if we?
Speaker 2:
You know, for part of that time, I was working with a new union of of musicians. That and I. It was too much work, so I left, but it's called Yuma, the Union of Musicians and Allied Workers, and it was like a bunch of indie musicians. We were just on Zoom and since I left, they've, like, they're trying to get legislation passed to, you know, make conditions better for artists, and they've been doing such an amazing job. But, you know, and then there's the Black Lives Matter marches and conversations around all that. So, you know, it was just politically really exciting, yeah.
Speaker 1:
It was a charged day for those like 2019, 2020, 2021. I mean just insanity going on. So much happened in those few years that kind of changed our trajectory a little bit. Years that kind of changed our trajectory a little bit. Eh, like it's still. We're seeing the repercussions of it even after all these years.
Speaker 2:
It's, um, absolutely. And so I think it awoke my political imagination where all of a sudden I thought, well, these things that are just theories, or that, um, wouldn't it be nice kind of stuff. All of a sudden, people are activated, and you know people who I didn't think of as as political. Their imagination is starting to wake up. So that was kind of growing at the edges. To me is an ambiguous title, but I like to think of it as you know. Uh, there's a wasteland and these little sprouts are starting to come up and they might not be pretty, but, you know, they might even be weeds, but we've just we're starting to get growth and and it's exciting. And when I started working with that imagery, I would see a plant growing out of the sewer or I would see a flower blooming out of a concrete wall or something, and it just started to bring me a lot of joy, yeah, that's cool.
Speaker 1:
It's like like we had massive forest fires up here in in quebec, uh, last summer and the devastation and this year nature, you know, it's like pushing like it, it doesn't stop um, and there's such joy and hopefulness. I find similar to what you said and on your band camp, where there was a wasteland karma, something new dot, dot, dot I mean I I I feel like that really kind of encapsulates what you're saying.
Speaker 1:
And listening to the record a few times through, I'm getting that sense of you know like the phoenix rising from the ashes. You know like there's an end, but the end is like a rebirth into something totally new. And were you saying that most of those songs were written during the shutdown period, like like you were dreaming of that, um escape, or or that you know flower growing through the concrete? Um, that to keep you kind of going to keep hope and um change kind of at the forefront.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, hope and um change kind of at the forefront. Yeah, I think a majority, maybe their fragments of them had been written before, but the big moment that most of it got written in was, uh, 2021 and uh, yeah. And it's a tricky subject because I I never want someone who's had a lot of suffering for me to say, well, it's going to get better later, and I never want to tell a political organizer, hey, you know, things are just going to get good, don't worry about it. You know, like I don't want it necessarily to be like a passivity or, you know, to minimize someone's suffering or anything like that. It's tricky, but I was reading.
Speaker 2:
I just got kind of manic and I was just spending all day reading and I read this book called Islands of Abandonment and it was about landscapes where humans had kind of ruined it and then left, and then what happens next? So like there's a chapter about chernobyl, there's a a chapter about um I think it's either in wales or scotland. There's like this big mound uh that got left over from mining and they thought it was totally useless until they realized there's all these birds and insect species that that don't exist anywhere except this weird um and and then a big influence was a book called mushroom at the end of the world, and it's it's a bit of theory where she she, I think coins a term called scavenger capitalism, where we've, you know, so many of the easy sort of extractive practices are already done and so the extraction that has to happen now is in very odd places. Um, so she talks specifically about this strange type of mushroom and this weird commerce surrounding it and, um, so yeah, I got really into those types of stories and then I think everyone, all my friends, are reading this at the same time.
Speaker 2:
But that book breeding sweetgrass it was written by an indigenous, robin Wallkamerer, and I just loved it, the her, you know, kind of native knowledge, as well as her being such a brilliant biologist and and the science mixing with her upbringing. So I think when I was looking for imagery and looking for things to to explore, a lot of it was coming from those types of books.
Speaker 1:
Right, that's so fascinating. I love that book. I love that book. We got to get kids outside more so that they start to realize these things. Yeah, that's some of my job, cause I'm a teacher.
Speaker 1:
So I'm big into like getting kids outside so they like we expect them to take care of nature, that we screwed up. But if they have no connection to it they're not going to care right. And that's kind of the crux of what I try to tell teachers is if we're not exposing them to nature, they're not going to give a shit about it you know, I mean. So the best way to get any person connected to nature and its beauty is to get them out experiencing it um living in it yeah that's pretty amazing.
Speaker 1:
Like I'm gonna have to listen back to this now with those references that you put there, jordan, because I felt some of those tingles as I was going through the lyrics today. I was looking at the lyrics as I was listening to it. It's a really powerful record that you put out and I wanted to ask too. So you released the record itself last year and then you put out the demos this year. What's your thinking behind that? I'm curious. Why release the demos?
Speaker 2:
Yeah, so this writing process was quite a bit different from the other ones and because it wasn't possible to collaborate in the way that I had before, um, I, yeah, I made these really fleshed out demos. Uh, in my room it was acoustic guitar, piano, bass, uh, I used casio, a little 80s casio keyboard for all the string parts and then and then, uh, lots of singing and harmonies with myself and uh, the result I really just wanted to show it to the label to see if they wanted the album. But uh, it kind of turned into my own uh kind of project I was putting all my energy into because it was gonna be months before I could get into an actual studio. So you know I was bored and I was getting unemployment, so might as well just have fun, yeah, so I knew that when the actual album came out it was gonna be pretty epic in terms of instrumentation and the arrangements getting really big, and, and so I wanted to share the demos, because I have a handful of friends who said, you know, no offense, but I actually enjoyed the one that you made in your bedroom a little bit more, and uh, and I, I unfriended them, but, but, but before I, no, just kidding.
Speaker 2:
Uh, I I appreciate honesty. Um, so I kind of I had it in the back of my mind of should I make this a cassette and have it a tour? Only merch. But uh, the the label Transgressive. I had a UK tour back in March I think, and they were hoping to just get a little bit more press around the tour and I said, do you mind if we just release the demos? So the short answer is the label. The label wanted to do it.
Speaker 1:
Sure, well, I mean, I only said that because I like that comment. You said I'm not saying that the record is an epic. I think it's really epic. I think it's one of your more cohesive, um, larger than life sounds that you've created.
Speaker 1:
But those demos rip at my heart like they, the rawness I found, like I felt you, you know, I felt closer to you and and and your delivery, and it just felt so intimate, like it's the kind of record I throw on when I'm going to bed. I'll throw it on and I'll listen to it as I. It puts me to sleep, um, oh, thanks, and I just love like. Those kinds of records to me are just like. So I'm trying to get out. Thank you for releasing it, because I loved hearing the production, but then the heart, the kernel of what those songs were, and kind of looking at them together and it's really quite an interesting dynamic that happens. And it brought me back to this final observation. I never really understood the, the name of the band, mutual benefit, but I think I understand now why you named it, that is, that we get as much out of it as you do. Would that be a crazy statement?
Speaker 2:
That's absolutely not a crazy statement. I hope that's true. I get a lot out of it and certainly would be doing this regardless of the audience size. So I do think that's part of it, and I think it's too long of a story to say how the name actually came about, but I think a short version is in my early 20s I worked a bunch of odd jobs that were some of them were pretty exploitative, and at one of them they you know I was doing the. At one of them they had a business what do you call it? Consultant come in and he was giving tips on how to grow the business and, you know, I felt like a lot of my my life was existing under this exploitation. Someone has power over you and you work for them and they give you a little bit of money and they keep the rest, and I felt like I was starting to internalize that a little bit Like we just live in a dog eat dog world. Right.
Speaker 1:
And transactional.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, and, funny enough, this guy who I think he was partial owner of a nascar team and he's not not the guy that I was expecting to get, uh, my band name from, but he just talked about. He talked about the idea of mutual benefit and how the best types of interactions that can happen is when everyone leaves happy and uh, and so, and I started thinking about you know biologically, how that happens, a lot in nature, um, and, and you know, basically just woke up one morning and thought I wonder if it's possible to live a life where you're, where the main type of interaction that you have are ones of mutual benefit, and that the systems you take part in are that. And I just started thinking about it. Enough that when it came time to name the project, I thought, well, this is kind of goofy and maybe some people make fun of it. But, uh, you know I like the phrase and I like thinking about it you know it's brilliant, it's really brilliant, like thinking about it.
Speaker 1:
No, it's brilliant, it's really brilliant. Well, jordan, this has been a real, real pleasure. Um, it's been so fascinating talking with you and I mean we're jumping all over the place, but, um, it's, I love your backstory and I love your continued story, and I mean the records just keep coming, which I love and I'm sure many out there love, and I just want to thank you for doing what you do.
Speaker 2:
And thank you for doing what you do. We need more independent bloggers and podcasters, so thank you for taking the time to listen to everyone's music.
Speaker 1:
Awesome. Well, all the best in 2024. And I look forward to our paths crossing again one day.
Speaker 2:
I hope so. Thanks, Chris.
Speaker 3:
Thank you. If time is a river and pain is a teacher, then let's jump in together in that cold, cold water, cold, cold water. And if the path's just a sliver Through the pine and the cedar, then let's walk it together in that cold, cold weather. When the light of the moon casts its silvery gaze, how, the shadow of the sea. But what's left in the space? Ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh.
Speaker 3:
Growing at the edges Something new, when our hopes are like embers. If these winds could fan them, could we remember how it feels to dream again, through the snow and the bluster of that dark, dark winter's night, when the light of the moon casts its silvery gaze, how, the shadow of the sea. For what's left in the space, beyond what we know, there is a place. Are you ready to go past the path that was laying me? Ooh, ooh, ooh. Growing at the edges, beacon from a sea, where there was a wasteland Something new, thank you.
