Right, that makes sense to me -- the trust, when you're onstage and you guys all trust each other.
Yeah, and trust that what's coming out is actually a cool thing and not having as many doubts.
So when it's really, really happening and you're in the thick of it, what kind of stuff goes on?
You mean like in one show?
Yeah, during one moment. When you're kind of having that moment of perhaps transcendence.
Well, the most obvious answer would probably be, nothing is going on in my head. [laughter]
A complete void.
Yeah, and there's a lot of different levels of it, too. The deepest level doesn't happen every night; it might happen every month, maybe a few times a year. But then there are more levels, like a shallower level, like when the groove is really settling in and we're all just pounding and going and for whatever reason I feel fresh about it, because a lot of these songs we've played a million times and I can get stuck in that sometimes and lose my ability to really just sink into the groove, or I'm just thinking too much. There are a million variations of what it can be, but I'll just really start to feel fresh and feel excited about the music. I'm just dancing and playing, and I'm so comfortable with the sax parts and stuff that I can play them and it's really easy and it's not as challenging.
But also one really cool thing that I love is a song like "Kuma" that we've played so many times, my vocal approach has definitely changed and evolved and every once in a while -- and it'll happen on any song -- I'll just all of a sudden totally out of nowhere be inspired to do it a different way, and I'll like how it sounds and it'll be cool. That's a really cool thing, and I think that comes out of that sort of transcendence where it's like you're not even expecting it to happen and you weren't thinking about it beforehand, and it's just like in the moment, but it just comes. It comes right out, and I like that a lot.
And it just happens.
And I surprise myself with it. It's cool.
That's really awesome. I had that experience a couple of times playing music, where it's like you transcended yourself, like whatever you thought of your ability and all that stuff gets thrown out the window and you're just there doing something incredible. It's almost like it's coming from some deeper space within. It's like, Oh, I finally channeled all that stuff that I knew was inside of me. [laughs]
Yeah, totally. And the trigger is always a mystery for me because I could do it a million times the same way and it could always be fulfilling, and all of a sudden, for whatever reason, and I still don't know what, something changes and there's this snap, and it's really cool. An unknown.
Yeah, that's great stuff. That must make it very rewarding.
It does.
And liberating in a lot of ways to go out and have those kind of experiences. Are there other kinds of experiences like that the more you play? Different things that are surprising you?
Yeah, but I think that something that's really important for me is the more I play creatively and do my own creativity and practice and whatever, that, without a doubt, will spur more surprising myself onstage. I think that it's just the more I can work on my own stuff and work on new songs and be practicing and sing to myself all the time, that is really what spurs an onstage revelation. So it's fun to keep that in mind.
That's cool. What kind of exercises do you do, just to kind of stay in tune?
Well, I do a lot of warm-up exercises with my voice before shows and on days off, and sometimes I do Tuvan. Although obviously it's not Tuvan because I'm not Tuvan, but I just sing really low and practice making different overtones ring out, and that's just an awesome way of getting my voice really loose and warmed up. And the singer from Spirtual Rez, Toft, he just got me some throat massage techniques that were really cool and they feel really good, so I've been doing those. Then on a bigger, more creative level, I mean the artwork and visual stuff has been such a great release for me through this whole project, but especially lately with the release of our new album and the redesign of the website and working on the album artwork and all that stuff, it's really awesome for me, one of the coolest parts about being in Rubblebucket is having it be a multimedia thing and not just music.
That's cool. That's really good to hear. You get to have your hands involved in all the creative aspects of what you're doing.
Yeah.