[Transcript here but Weadee worked hard on the episode ]

Absent Sounds: To start the interview, we get a sense of how they are feeling.

Paul: We have not seen the Needtobreathe folks in a minute. I think it's going to be a beautiful tour. I love playing for fans in small clubs, but it's also fun to play big rooms for new audiences and, try out the material of the new record, it's gonna be great.

Absent Sounds: When was the last time you guys were up here?

Paul: We had a 2020, cancellation right around the time everything shut down. So it has been a minute.

Absent Sounds: I think mid 2019 would be the last time for a lot of people coming up here because of the pandemic. I noticed you guys are doing a lot of unconventional things with this album release. Even offering it for free in advance and having a free lyric book and field notes. I'll admit when I saw the album was free. I didn't believe it, How did you come up with the decision to do all that stuff?

Paul: It's funny that you had the experience. Maybe a lot of people have had experience. What it does is, allows us to share it in the way, you know, share it on our own. We pour our hearts into this record, and we feel really strongly about it. People consume content removed from the personal connection, to the artist. It lets us tell the story of the songs, by email exchange, and people write back to us, we're having conversations with fans as they're experiencing the record, over, old fashioned email. Spotify has done great things for us. This is just a more direct and meaningful way to relate to people and it's been really rewarding.

Absent Sounds: I think a lot of people have been looking for ways outside of Spotify or social media to connect with their fans, so email is definitely one of the ways that I've seen quite a few artists do that. Substack too.

Paul: Yeah, for sure. I see that happening. This record will be everywhere that it normally would be within a month's time. So it's a chance for people to get it early, sort of like, ingest it and experience fall with this record. And it really is meant to be listened to from start to back. We're also sending out lyrics books so for the first time ever maybe as we're sharing our music with our fans, we're able to read lyrics as they're listening which seems sort of obvious but the way that the music economy works is you know, we're reaching certain groups not the way before consuming it and yeah we put a lot of time and care into our work. Its not always the easiest.

Absent Sounds: How do you find yourself grappling?

Paul: Not well [Laughs] I think that's the human, situation, right? We are eager for bits of the future because of the frustrations of the present. We put on rose tinted glasses to view the past, things that are bothersome in the present become beautiful in the past, and they create challenges. Finding beauty in the present, I struggle with that just like everybody else. Not to go too deep, but I tend to rewrite the past. Our memories are not perfect if you are prone to self-doubt or self-loathing, you sour, positive memories. And I think that's the punishment of the human situation. I'm not good at predicting what my life will be like in a few years. The apple tree, metaphor came out of, the common experience of not expecting to be where you are. Looking back and hopefully seeing something through its twists and turns

Absent Sounds: Apple Tree is probably my favorite song off the record, with lyrics like, Time grows strange like an apple tree, still I toil, and I pine, I pine. This line beautifully captures the strangeness of time and the persistence of hope. So I ask Paul, What's been giving him hope lately?

Paul: The innocent beauty of a kid's mind. I'm worried about the future for my own kids, for all kids, I like the inherent human capacity for optimism and joy that, gets taken down a notch as we age, and I try to latch onto that in my own kids. I think humans really want to be wonderful to each other. Ultimately, people feel good when they make other people feel good,

Absent Sounds: That we could be better to each other. Even as we go into the next song, just the idea of, as you grow older, having that optimism taken down a notch, feeling disillusioned, Still Feel the Same confronts this theme of time. How do you stop yourself from feeling calloused as you grow older?

Paul: That's, hard. The flip side of being callous or jaded, is the benefit of depth of experience, It's not just a cliche, like what doesn't kill you makes you stronger. You have more experience to draw on and a better chance of getting it right because of what you've been through. I think that is a great counterweight to the feelings of throwing your hands up in the air if you're jaded.

Absent Sounds: Another part of getting older is not being able, to hold on to parts of you despite everything shifting. Do you struggle with change as you grow older? Or, a lack of consistency or is there something that holds you to your core?

Paul: Yeah, you're talking about, self-identity as life changes? I trust in my long term relationships not just my marriage. It's like, I have, I have a lot of friends that I have known for a long time. And, it's sort of, like, hard to believe I'm the same person, there's a through line of, personality, but when I was 18. I knew a lot of people and we're still friends. I think, it can be hard to zoom out on your identity. Through the years, it's easy to look back and say “What was I thinking? Who did I think I was?” I do think I have a better idea of who I am. Would I, behave the same way as I did? I think just embracing the fact that who you are and how you see yourself will change. Hopefully, my capacity for kindness generosity and ability, to love and be a good friend, are constant through my life. I think I'm okay with it.

Absent Sounds: Yeah.

Paul: Being a different person than I was.

Absent Sounds: I agree [music interlude]

Paul: It's easy to be a good friend and musical partner when everything's carefree and easy and simple and, and obviously the real test of who you are as a partner and a friend or when things are more difficult. Speaking from a band perspective, Tim and I have known each other for so long, done things beyond our wildest dreams- our 18 year old dreams of a music career. Being a career musician is hard, being away from home grinding on the road for 200 it takes a toll. We’ve gone through this interesting bell curve, when we were first starting, we didn't live together. It was a long distance writing partnership. And we were eager to, like, be in the same room and performing together. And then we had a lot of years of, incredibly close, living and working, quarters. Living in our van for many days a year like being on a space shuttle. There’s no personal space. it can get harder to wake up and see your buddy that you've seen every day for the last 200 days and be like, Hey, how are you? Good morning, right? It becomes more commonplace. And, probably more real. At this point, we're living in separate states, see each other a lot, but it's not quite as, there's not the same intensity and not quite the same close quarters as those years, and, and we are back to sort of like missing each other, and like, you know, there's never any loss of affection. We're getting together for shows and tours, and, and it's like, your best friend you haven't seen in a while. Thats like more about change in situation than it is about change over time between us. We’ve always been so united in our purpose and in our art changes around us have been, situational. We are pretty much a constant. Which I feel really, really lucky, really lucky to have. There's no huge blow up or, singular event that weighs on me. I do spend time worrying that I've wronged people and I think a lot of that is misplaced, you remember the bad things you've done, and the people around you mostly just remember you fondly. [whatever the next song is oops I can’t remember] I think the song being about, the relationship with, with your mother, yeah, I'm like, I find myself just like wanting to make sure I let my parents know how thankful I am and, show my appreciation and be there for them, at their age. Yeah, it's more like this, the preemptive grief that, that once they're gone, I will, I will feel I haven't done enough to show them that.

Absent Sounds: My sister and I talk about preemptive grief or mourning our parents, even though they're still here. It's strange to feel like you are already mourning, or trying to make up for mistakes you haven't made. You imagine after they pass you'll regret something you haven't done so it's like living in a memory and then imagining that you look that you're living in a memory and then trying to write the wrongs before they actually happen a lot of times

Paul: Yeah, you can go too far but if you can just have like a healthy dose of that, then it's probably a pretty good motivator

Absent Sounds: I definitely think that resonates with me. I come back to this idea of memory, remembering, and change often throughout this interview that's what's on my mind as I listen to the album. [music interlude]

Paul: I don't think I'm very good at communicating in person. I don't sort of relish the opportunity to write a letter, but I'm always glad I did and so much good comes out of it. And it can be a great exercise to open the mind to start writing music. Even if it doesn't get sent, like journaling is great, but actually writing to someone- there's this whole like book of letters that John Steinbeck wrote to his editor. He's just warming up to start writing his book, to write East of Eden, but he's sort of just sort of like recounting the day's events the act of whether it's received or not, but the behavior of trying to communicate, clearly, concisely, whatever, with emotion, is a great, a great exercise. I'm way better at writing cards than looking someone in the eye and saying, I love you

Absent Sounds: Yeah. I didn't know John Steinbeck did that. I'll have to look at that.

Paul: It's called, Journal of a Novel.

Absent Sounds: Journal of a Novel. Thank you for sharing. East of Eden is a book I almost bought from BMV last night But, I was looking for a quick read to finish my Goodreads challenge before the end of December. As we finish this album, we've got two songs left, Breakthrough Prologue and the title track, Softly Softly. I'll let Paul explain Softly Softly before we play through.

Paul: This song is based off a nursery rhyme. When I was two or three years old, I latched onto this song, Softly Softly, and had my mom sing it every night. When we had my son, we started singing it to him. Now he, asks for it every night. Tim, you know, hanging out here for practice one night, heard me singing it to my son as we were putting him to bed and had never heard it and, and had the thought that we should, we should repurpose it. The idea of repurposing it towards, you know, a warning message about gun violence. It hurt to hear, just the idea, of doing that to the song. And yet, we should all feel a deep sense of discomfort at this issue. And so we did it. And I still sing the original version to my son every night. I don't sing this version to him. But I think it's really important, and because it is a lullaby, a powerful vehicle, to convey. And what we see in America,

Absent Sounds: I feel like because it's a lullaby, it makes you all the more haunting too. Thank you Paul for chatting with me Devin for setting this up and Tim for the great music. Tall Heights are on tour and Softly Softly is available now.