Songwriting, Creative Flow, and The Natural World with Jean-Paul Vest - Music Production Podcast #396

In this episode of The Music Production Podcast, I sit down with musician and songwriter Jean-Paul Vest, the driving force behind Last Charge of the Light Horse. We talk about the evolution of songwriting, the impact of place and sound on music, and the delicate balance between control and spontaneity in the creative process. Jean-Paul shares his approach to writing, how his songs take shape over time, and the unexpected ways music resonates with listeners. We also dive into the role of nostalgia, the value of quiet spaces, and why playing music with friends is one of the greatest joys of being a musician.

Listen on Apple, Spotify, YouTube

Main Topics Discussed:

  • Songwriting and Identity – How artists evolve over time and whether they should brand themselves or stay fluid in their musical identity.

  • Letting Creativity Flow – The challenge of balancing technical skill with raw inspiration and why stepping back can lead to better songs.

  • Sound and Place – How environments, from noisy cities to quiet deserts, influence musical perception and creativity.

  • The Role of Collaboration – Learning to trust bandmates and fellow musicians rather than dictating every detail.

  • Reinvention in Music – How artists like Beck and XTC reinvent themselves and what we can learn from their approach.

  • Music as a Personal Archive – Songs as layered stories, much like a “palimpsest,” revealing new meaning over time.

  • Field Recording and Natural Soundscapes – Using organic sounds in music and the impact of noise pollution on creativity.

Key Takeaways:

  • Step Back and Let the Song Lead – Trying too hard to control the songwriting process can stifle creativity. Let ideas develop naturally.

  • Your Environment Shapes Your Sound – Whether it’s a reverb-heavy church or the silent stillness of a desert, soundscapes influence the way music is made.

  • Not Every Song is an Autobiography – Just because a song is personal doesn’t mean it’s literally about the songwriter. Sometimes, music is a character study.

  • The Right Audience Makes a Difference – Playing in an intimate setting vs. a bar can completely change how a song is received.

  • Music is a Long Game – Success isn’t just about radio play; it’s about the relationships and experiences built through music-making.

Links:

This episode was edited by Animus Invidious of PerforModule - https://performodule.com/

Thank you for listening. 

Please review the Music Production Podcast on your favorite podcast provider!

Episode Transcript:

Brian Funk (00:26.614)

Welcome to the music production podcast, JP. Good to have you.

Jean-Paul Vest (00:35.214)

Thank you. Thank you for having me. It's a pleasure to be here.

Brian Funk (00:38.137)

Yeah, it's great to have you. I think the first thing I just want to say is thank you because you helped my band, Some Good Evil, put together our album art and design, just make it look good on a vinyl record, which would have probably taken a lot more effort and energy and probably some mistakes along the way on our part. And you saved us all that trouble. So thank you.

Jean-Paul Vest (01:02.222)

I was very happy to help and that's a great record man. That record struck a nerve with me. Like it's fun in a way that a lot of the music I listen to isn't and it kind of brought back some good memories for me. So I was very, very proud to be part of that project.

Brian Funk (01:22.639)

That's cool. Yeah, well, it's a reflection of like the fun we have when we play together, you know I know you know all about that kind of stuff when you find the right group of characters to play We came out to see your band the last charge of the light horse Little town on North Shore, Long Island and we had a great time. You guys are excellent great songs great music So yeah, I'm really happy we're finally getting a chance to talk here

Jean-Paul Vest (01:43.128)

Thank you.

Jean-Paul Vest (01:49.504)

Absolutely.

Brian Funk (01:52.367)

Congratulations on the new album by the way. Fairly new, right? 2024. So, In the Wind, which has been a lot of fun to get into as well.

Jean-Paul Vest (02:04.526)

Yeah, that's, it's funny. We've, it's been, 2025 makes 20 years since we put out Getaway Car, which is the first album under this band name, albeit a different lineup of the band. I've been in bands since high school and at some point I realized, well, I'm either...

the songwriter or one of the songwriters for almost all of these projects. A few times I've very happily just been, you know, supporting player for somebody else's project and that's a whole other kind of fun. But at some point I realized, okay, from now on anything I put out is just going to be last charge of the light horse and I don't have to keep renaming it every time.

Brian Funk (02:46.455)

Nice. Yeah, I went through that myself, playing various bands, different makeups and different songwriting, but my music too, I kind of went through different identities. And once I just went with my name, yeah, I don't worry about it anymore and it's a nice feeling. A lot of people struggle with like, how do you present yourself? And especially if you like to dabble in different kinds of music.

Jean-Paul Vest (03:04.686)

There you go.

Jean-Paul Vest (03:13.358)

Yeah, you know, I was listening to another podcast and I'm not going to remember whose it was, but they were talking about all the hats that a musician has to wear now and you have to be a promoter and you have to be an engineer or producer, everything. You have to be good at social media. And they were talking about how you want to, you know,

get a clear sense of what your avatar should be. And that just struck me so wrong. I thought, you know, I really doubt Bob Dylan was sitting in the Chelsea Hotel thinking about what his avatar was when he was writing, you know, Sad-Eyed Lady of the Lowlands or, you know, Gates of Eden or whatever. Like, to me, for me, music happens when I'm able to not think about

when I'm able to get the headspace clear and get some breathing room and some space for the creative spark to light.

Probably why I'm not rich and famous, I feel like I write the best songs when I can get out of my own...

not try to steer.

Brian Funk (04:31.887)

Well, I I came of age when I first started playing music. I was listening to like grunge, alternative rock, and the least cool thing in the world you could ever do is think about branding and that kind of stuff and image. It was like so contrived and you you were a sellout if you did that kind of stuff.

Jean-Paul Vest (04:45.121)

Right.

Jean-Paul Vest (04:53.464)

Exactly, yeah, there was some of that for us too. I was, I'm gonna date myself here, but I was in high school in the early 80s. I just remember how fun it was to be in a band and we'd go play at a club that was really a warehouse with some pallets stacked for a stage and a minimalist sound system, was somewhere we could make loud noise and nobody would complain. There was something primal to it that was pretty great.

Brian Funk (05:16.207)

Hmm.

Brian Funk (05:21.079)

Yeah, yeah, definitely done some of those clubs that are just abandoned buildings or maybe even like somebody's basement that they just named. it was a lot of fun to just get involved with other people that were interested in the stuff you were interested in wanting to make music together.

Jean-Paul Vest (05:30.712)

Yeah.

Jean-Paul Vest (05:38.85)

Yeah, that's a very affirming thing when you find a tribe that likes the same thing you do. It's way to belong and kind of figure out what your identity is when you're young.

Brian Funk (05:43.567)

Yeah.

Brian Funk (05:49.656)

Yeah.

Brian Funk (05:53.655)

It helped me a lot. I didn't know who I was at 13, 14 years old. And then suddenly I felt like, this is something that works for me. And I feel kind of at home doing it. There are some artists though, I guess that get away with kind of switching around and doing new stuff all the time. Like I think of like Beck. He's a good example. He can kind of do whatever he wants and no one knows what to expect from him next.

Jean-Paul Vest (06:03.054)

Yeah.

Jean-Paul Vest (06:15.779)

Yeah.

Jean-Paul Vest (06:22.414)

I like bands like that. One of my favorite bands is the British 70s and 80s group, well I guess they've lasted a bit longer, XTC. And I feel like everything they released, every album is different than the next one and every song is different than the one before. They even stepped away and sort of took a page from the Beatles playbook with Sgt. Pepper as they did a...

Brian Funk (06:23.982)

Yeah.

Jean-Paul Vest (06:47.318)

what was intended as I think just a goofy side project, the Dukes of Stratosphere. And they said, okay, know, normally they spend a lot of time in the studio, everything's very meticulously crafted. They said, okay, we're gonna use only 60s equipment and we're gonna limit ourselves to two takes on any song and we're just gonna lay down these kind of very psychedelic 60s inspired songs. And so they did an EP and it was their best selling records. So they did another one.

I like reinvention. And as we're starting to talk about here, you're reinvented whether you mean to be or not as you get older. For me, I've noticed my voice is in a slightly different register than it was.

Brian Funk (07:15.609)

Really? Best selling?

Brian Funk (07:27.343)

Hmm.

Jean-Paul Vest (07:36.814)

sort of like a snowball, gather experiences and ideas as you go and a few get flung off to the side and that's all good.

Brian Funk (07:44.431)

Yeah, you can't help it, right? It's like that old saying, the proverb of you can't go in the same river twice because the river is always changing and so are you.

Jean-Paul Vest (07:55.608)

Exactly, yeah.

Brian Funk (07:57.964)

I find that comforting and it's a good excuse to go on new tangents musically and artistically.

Jean-Paul Vest (08:04.11)

Yeah, exactly. And try to find something new.

Brian Funk (08:07.289)

Hmm. Yeah, there's so many fun directions to go. It's like a shame to just limit yourself.

Jean-Paul Vest (08:15.406)

Do you have a particular source for inspiration when you're writing songs?

Brian Funk (08:22.606)

Kind of anything really. I almost walk around, especially when I'm in it. For example, in January, I was participating in this thing, Jamuary, where you're trying to make a piece of music every day, just something and share it. It be a jam. Sometimes you get lucky, you come up with a whole song, but it gets your antenna going and you're kind of like, I could use that sound or I could write a song that's like this.

Jean-Paul Vest (08:37.517)

great.

Brian Funk (08:48.675)

you know, maybe I would never try to write like this particular band, but let's do it today and see how goes. Sometimes it's just like memories even. Like I found myself writing about like some like adventures I have with my friends as a kid. And I was like, you know, I think sometimes when I'm not so into it, you know, like more time in between writing, I think like, okay, excuse me, like now this is.

Jean-Paul Vest (08:53.282)

Yeah, sure.

Brian Funk (09:15.779)

This is my song and I got to get everything about me into it and it's got to really reflect who I am. But when, when you're more into it, like you just can pull from anything and just go on these little journeys.

Jean-Paul Vest (09:21.006)

Right, right.

Jean-Paul Vest (09:29.068)

I've always been kind envious of writers like Dylan or, I don't know if you know James McMurtry, and if you don't, look him up because he's amazing, but that are able to write, you know, these songs with a broader vision. Like, McMurtry's able to write these kind of vignettes of Midwestern or Southwestern life and...

Brian Funk (09:46.212)

Mm.

Jean-Paul Vest (09:54.22)

within two lines, you're like, know that character, I've met that character and spoken to them. They just seem so real and he just finds the right detail to hit your memory. And it's a way to give a, you know, it's never, there's never judgment in it. Like it's just a clear-eyed view of the person and everybody's going through their stuff in life. But it's...

Brian Funk (09:57.679)

Right.

Brian Funk (10:13.753)

Hmm.

Jean-Paul Vest (10:23.694)

And Dylan, of course, has written stuff like that. The times they are changing and you can see the broader picture. I don't know if it's a result of being physically nearsighted, but I feel like my songs are more myopic. They're about my experience and pretty small and usually zeroing in on a moment when something happened and you felt something special there.

sometimes that I'm not aware of at the time. But then other times, on our latest album, there's a song called Bridgeport Shanty where I'd come up with a little bit of music and I was like, okay, what's this gonna be about? So I'm flipping through my notebook and I found a passage, it's something I just scribbled down on the deck of the Bridgeport Ferry coming back from Connecticut. It's nighttime, it's cold, the last of the lights fading and it's getting dark and there's only a couple people out on deck.

it's windy and cold. And it was descriptive and I thought, okay, that's something to go for. So I started looking at a map, because I don't actually know what Port Jefferson Harbor is called. Is it Port Jefferson Harbor? I started looking at a map and I realized that one of the spits of land on, I guess, the eastern side is named Mount Misery Point. And I thought, whoa. So then it became a song about a, you know,

Brian Funk (11:43.961)

Hmm.

Jean-Paul Vest (11:48.322)

fictional person riding the ferry after a bad breakup and he's descending into the darkness of the aftermath of the relationship going south. I don't know, I guess that's just funny. But that has nothing to do with my actual life.

Brian Funk (12:02.595)

funny destination.

Well, you know, that's a fun thing you bring up. For one, I'll say that sometimes when you get really specific, like you were saying, like you like to do, I think that pulls people in sometimes more than these general statements. Because like I might not have been on that, I have been on that ferry actually, but I might not have had like that situation, but I can get there. You know, maybe mine happened in like a car ride or, you know, on a park bench somewhere, but.

Jean-Paul Vest (12:30.488)

Yeah.

Brian Funk (12:36.335)

Something about when you really just write out the details, if you're very, you know, if you're clever about which ones you select and which ones you leave out, I guess too, you can really draw people into this like world where it's like, yeah, I'm not that, I don't have anything actually in common other than like the humanity that rings through all of that.

Jean-Paul Vest (12:48.109)

Yeah.

Jean-Paul Vest (13:01.678)

And that cleverness is, you're absolutely right about that. That cleverness to me is a funny kind of balancing act because I feel like it's a songwriter.

you only get better by honing your craft, listening to what other songwriters do, what worked there, what didn't, discussing it with other songwriters, getting feedback from people. Did this work? Did this not work? Finding people that you trust who will be honest with you, like, that's not your best work, which hurts to hear sometimes, but it's helpful. But learn all that stuff and then try not to remember any of it when you're writing. And I feel like...

Brian Funk (13:37.871)

Yes.

Jean-Paul Vest (13:38.722)

picking the right details is a matter of me being quiet when the song is writing itself because I'll have a tendency to say, no, no, not that way. The song knows best. Like I've just learned, it alone when it's being written, sit a couple weeks. If something really doesn't feel right, then you can change it. But just getting out of my own way is the whole thing these days.

Brian Funk (14:03.661)

Yes, okay. Now you're hitting close to home too. Because when you're... I'm my worst when I'm trying to be clever, when I'm trying to think about an interesting chord change or something that might impress like another music producer, like some sound or something. Or I'm trying to be smart with the lyrics. It seems to me when I'm letting go of that and I'm like, I don't care if it's like a one, four, five chord progression, that's fine.

Half the songs I love are the one four five so But that's a tricky place to get to it So I guess what I'm asking really is like the secret. What do you do? How do you approach that where you can because I love that advice like soak it all in but then when it's time just totally ignored

Jean-Paul Vest (14:33.23)

Right?

Jean-Paul Vest (14:54.414)

Well, part of it is just remembering not to edit in the moment. You can edit later. When the ideas are coming, just write them down and let it go. I'm not a prolific writer, so I'll write maybe three or four songs a year, maybe. Occasionally five or something. So we moved to the house we're in now about four and a half years ago. it was the middle of COVID.

So a lot going on, but in anticipation of the move, I took all my amps and guitars and things and my friends Martha and Tom let me storm at their house. So I just kept one kind of cheap acoustic guitar by the desk. And after we moved in, you know, we're settling in and I'm, you know, working and stuff. So I just kind of stuck with that one acoustic guitar for a while and I was...

I'd pick it up when I needed a break from the computer or in the evening or something and noodle a little bit. And if I'd get a good idea, I'd record it on my phone and play it again the next day so I didn't forget it and kind of assembled little like, you know, it's like confetti or more like a jigsaw puzzle, actually. was saying this to someone the other day. And eventually, we moved in in late September, early October. So over the course of the fall, I'm just assembling, maybe it's a little...

melodic fragment or a chord change I like or a little riff on guitar or something and it's it's not you know complete verses or choruses or anything by any means but I would just play through them in different orders every day and made a little you know playlist like on my phone that I could listen to when I was out for a walk or you know bike ride or something and and it was kind of like taking a jigsaw out of the box putting all the pieces on the table

and just swirling around with your hands. And then I got to late February and I went like this and whoosh, like the whole puzzle was done. And in the span of four days, I think I had eight complete songs. And it was, you don't know where the words came from. Don't know how that happened, but it just did. And so, so we put that out as our album octet, because it kind of almost felt like eight parts of one song.

Brian Funk (17:11.023)

Hmm.

Jean-Paul Vest (17:11.384)

It's nice when that happens, but it does not.

Brian Funk (17:15.661)

Yeah, because it is weird because there's like something to be said about letting these things organically kind of like bloom like a flower or something and you just maybe water it every couple days or maybe not water it every couple days. Just kind of pay attention to it as it's happening. But then there's also something to be said about kind of getting the shoehorn out and really working on them.

Jean-Paul Vest (17:41.358)

Yeah, I should clarify this. I feel like I have luxury of my approach because I'm not a professional musician. I don't make my living doing this. I keep my soul and my spirit alive, but I have a day gig that keeps the bills paid. And I think if I was under pressure to get another album written, my process would probably be different. And the results would probably be different too. Maybe better, maybe worse, I don't know.

Brian Funk (18:07.183)

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, who's to say, right? I feel the same way too, having a day job, teaching high school English. So yeah, like I don't need to do it. And I do put a lot of pressure on myself to do it. there is like kind of some kind of, you know, person in my head, like making me feel guilty, you know, and all of that.

Jean-Paul Vest (18:35.022)

Yeah.

Brian Funk (18:37.561)

But the ability to kind of not rely on it is helpful. And I feel like you, don't know if this kind of musical life I've built around myself would be better or worse. I might be taking jobs I don't want to do really and work that doesn't mean as much.

Jean-Paul Vest (18:58.338)

Yeah.

Yeah, that pressure is a real thing. I feel that too. I mean, partly, guess, for me, being a songwriter is part of my identity and it's how I process life. I wrote a song a few years ago called What If that I was really struggling as a writer and I felt a lot of self-imposed pressure.

Music has definitely been a thing that's made me really miserable a lot of the times because it's not coming out the way I want it to and I can't exactly articulate how I want it to. But I sort of had that aha moment of like, in my case, I was still...

Brian Funk (19:31.279)

you

Jean-Paul Vest (19:46.926)

letting a bunch of kind of goals and expectations I had set in high school steer the ship. And I was like, okay, you're in your 50s now. That's not, like, you don't owe anything to that guy. He's back there. So what does success look like now? It's not being Pink Floyd or Dire Straits or whoever, or XTC. It's maybe...

Brian Funk (20:03.119)

Yeah.

Jean-Paul Vest (20:16.853)

Success looks like playing at a bar once in a while with your friends. And kind of, to me, I'm realizing that we've put out, I think, nine releases in 20 years and done a lot of songs and had a bunch of them played on the radio, which very nice, and gotten some great reviews. But really, the treasure of it is the time I've spent with my friends making music, being in the room with those guys and making that sound together.

this living breathing thing that I couldn't have done on my own. yeah, letting go of that pressure is, I can't claim I've let go of it, but every once in a while it helps to take it out and say, okay, why am I really feeling that way?

Brian Funk (21:03.597)

Yeah, that's a good point. And you bring up the idea of like being with your friends. And when I look back at the bands I've had, I might think back to like some of the shows we played and maybe the times of recording and some of the songs still mean something. But most of those memories are being with your friends, you know.

And even if it's like we had a great song or a great show, it's the fact that we can look at each other and be like, yeah, all right, you know, share that with other people. So when I play with my band now, it's much about. It's much more about like preserving the relationship and the friendship and and the getting together. mean, we have goals and luckily everyone's motivated enough where no one really needs to say like, all right, Brian, come on.

Jean-Paul Vest (21:36.492)

Yeah.

Jean-Paul Vest (21:45.912)

Sure.

Brian Funk (21:55.277)

Like, let's go, you're not pulling your, you know. But the real mission, and I think the music benefits from it, is that we keep enjoying doing what we're doing. We're playing this long game rather than this short game of getting the song just right.

Jean-Paul Vest (21:55.502)

Right, right.

Jean-Paul Vest (22:14.562)

Yeah, so my band has become over the years very much my band. It's my project, I write the songs and steer the ship. All three, actually now four, because Martha Trachtenberg has sort of informally joined our group as the fifth member now singing harmonies. But all four of them have their own primary thing. And so they just come to this from time to time as contributors, and it's great.

Brian Funk (22:22.511)

Mm-hmm.

Jean-Paul Vest (22:43.598)

I that the secret to making good arrangements is not to... When I was younger and more insecure, I'd say, I really want it this way. I really want this. I have these ideas and I want you to do them. And now I realized you're blessed to play with amazingly talented people.

tell them what you're kind of looking for and then step back and get out of the way and let them do it and it'll be better than what you thought of. And every once in while I'll know, it's not really what I'm feeling for this song, but you they don't have big ears either so they're just happy to play, you know, so, but I've gotten so much more by just...

Jean-Paul Vest (23:29.184)

not trying to dictate every little thing, because it has to be fun for everybody. And everybody has to be able to express themselves and get something out of it.

Brian Funk (23:33.455)

Yeah.

Brian Funk (23:39.415)

Yeah, I totally agree. I think it took me a long time of making music by myself with a computer and getting to be the dictator that gets to decide exactly where the kick drum goes and where that bass part gets played. And I mean, I love that too, but I don't have to impose that on my friends anymore. Yeah, like that's the that's why we're getting together is to see what happens not.

Jean-Paul Vest (23:56.834)

Yeah, that's...

Right,

Brian Funk (24:07.855)

so that I can have this thing come about. Especially today when you can just kind of correct all your performances and do exactly what you want them to be. If that's what you want to do. Yeah, if you're going to do that, like then why are you asking people to play?

Jean-Paul Vest (24:25.24)

Yeah, right. We just did a concert in my living room. I can only cram about too many people in there. And it was a lot of fun. I just needed to play. Without opening that door, the world is a difficult place at the moment. And I just needed, you know.

Brian Funk (24:31.434)

I read about that on your page.

Jean-Paul Vest (24:49.55)

calm in the storm there. And it was just, I feel like the show was as much about the energy of the audience as it was about the band playing. was the way people reacted to things. it's, you know, when you're in a bar, there's extraneous noise and maybe the sound system isn't the greatest and you don't have control over it. you know, it's, it's a different thing. And some people are there to really listen and some people are there to talk and have fun with their friends. And that's, you know, that's fine too.

And, but a lot of our songs are kind of contemplative and maybe it's more about the lyrics, you know, sometimes. So getting to play in a quiet space with people who are really there to listen and enjoy it, you get a certain kind of energy from that. It's a lot of fun.

Brian Funk (25:38.903)

Yeah, it's a different feeling, that's for sure. Yeah, I've read that post on your site, which I appreciate that you document all your work and give your thoughts about it. It's nice to follow along to get inside another artist's head and how they're seeing things. And you did mention one of the songs, Too Young, got a really nice reception. And that must be nice to just see how sometimes certain things stand out a little bit.

Jean-Paul Vest (26:08.736)

Yeah, that was a song I wrote for someone in particular. Thank you, thank you. I'm very proud of the song and I love how came out. I feel like knowing how important it was to me, like Pemberton and Sean really played their hearts on that song. We got Owen Dodds, someone put me in touch with him. He's a really gifted piano player over at Stony Brook and played on it.

Brian Funk (26:16.121)

Beautiful song.

Jean-Paul Vest (26:39.406)

It just came together really, really nicely.

Jean-Paul Vest (26:45.902)

But if someone asked me, what's the hit from the album? I would have said, oh, maybe Slash and Burn, or the title track, or one of these other ones. And after the concert, my college roommate had come. And he and his wife were leaving. And they were like, that's the song. That's the one. I was like, oh, OK, maybe I should do a video for that one. So yeah, it's a.

Brian Funk (27:03.972)

Yeah.

Jean-Paul Vest (27:12.526)

I used to say you only ever write half a song and the audience writes the other half and it's different for every you know because they bring their own experiences and things are going to resonate differently with them than they will with you and so sometimes I've had a song that I there was one song off of fractures that it was nice enough but once we had recorded it I was like okay I'm kind of done with that and then somebody emailed me I was like that's my favorite song I was like okay great

Brian Funk (27:22.041)

Right, right.

Brian Funk (27:42.605)

Yeah, because the show you gotta just put them out and let people, as you said, finish writing them for you, write the other half.

Jean-Paul Vest (27:45.72)

Yeah.

Jean-Paul Vest (27:51.0)

Yeah, well maybe I can ask you a couple questions here. you mentioned the website, I've been doing a little interview series with some friends and I reached out, you and I wanted to get a cross section of, you know, visual artists, painters and photographers and one poet.

writer who's not a musician but you he's my friend in college and we've probably been to more shows together than anyone I've ever known you know and and just ask him a few questions and so one of the questions is what was the first piece of music or first type you know band or song or whatever that you were aware of like participating in in some way by either

really liking it, dancing, singing, or just like, know, like they grabbed you. Because there's always music in the background, you know, but we maybe don't engage with it fully. And when you find that one that's like, that's my music. That's a special thing, I think.

Brian Funk (28:50.809)

This is funny because I've been reading those interviews and part of my thinking was I was going to turn some of these around on you to ask you the questions. So I think for me growing up, my older brother is nine years older than me. So by the time I start becoming aware of anything, he's basically a teenager. So music was like this cool thing happening in his room that I didn't really understand, but I heard it.

Jean-Paul Vest (28:57.052)

Okay, we can do that too.

Brian Funk (29:20.079)

you know, whatever he was listening to like U2, The Police, Pink Floyd. But I think one of the biggest moments for me where I realized there's something here, I was, I think I was angry about something as a young kid and maybe like went to my room and put on the radio or whatever it was. And I couldn't even tell you what song it was.

But four minutes later, I wasn't mad anymore. It just changed me completely. was probably being a little brat about something and stormed off. And by the time that song was over, like I was good. You know, it was a complete refresh.

Jean-Paul Vest (29:54.157)

Yeah.

Jean-Paul Vest (30:07.778)

That's a magical thing when music takes you somewhere else.

Brian Funk (30:11.055)

That's what occurred to me was like, Hey, what happened here? You know, cause probably my experience up until that point was I was going to be, you know, angry until who knows when, you know, stewing a little bit, but that just sort of wiped it away. And that's when I realized like something's going on here. But it wasn't until much later, I think, until I started actually picking up music myself to listen to and then later on to even play.

Jean-Paul Vest (30:22.914)

Yeah.

Brian Funk (30:40.419)

That moment stuck with me that like, hmm, that changed me.

Jean-Paul Vest (30:44.546)

Yeah, Music has a way of inserting itself into our lives in wonderful ways. I think for me, if we want to turn that around, my father's a musician and he paid his way through college playing piano, gigs, and still touring into his 80s now. So there was always music on when I was growing up.

Brian Funk (30:46.973)

you

Brian Funk (30:57.518)

Yes.

Jean-Paul Vest (31:14.446)

loved a lot of it. My dad played everything. He jazz and classical. lot of Bob Dylan, lot of Beatles and the birds were big. And I loved the Beatles and the birds and grew up with that stuff and definitely was really digging that. And then when I was 13, we went to live in Europe for a year. My dad was an English professor and got a Fulbright Scholarship to go teach over there. So we were...

We lived in Romania and on our way there, we went through Germany to get a used car to drive for the year. And we passed a marquee and I thought it was a joke. And I pointed out to my dad and I said, look at the marquee. says, know, appearing, know, Thursday, the who. And he's like, no, that's a real band. They're good. And so he bought me, Who Are You on cassette. And that blew my

That was the first thing that wasn't from my dad's collection that I was like, okay, now we're talking. It still ticks me off that I can't sing like Roger D'Altre. Yeah, no one can. Looking back, just the unusual song structures and the inside of the lyrics and the introspection and...

Brian Funk (32:23.065)

Something of yours.

No one can.

Jean-Paul Vest (32:42.374)

just the emotional range of that album. That's probably really informed my songwriting in ways that I haven't fully appreciated. But yeah, that was probably the first one for me.

Brian Funk (32:55.227)

I could imagine that, I started to like the Who by listening to their early stuff that sounded a little bit more like The Beatles, because at that time I was really getting into The Beatles. And when I realized, they're kind of like the crazy Beatles or something. They're a little more off the rails. then you just start diving down that rabbit hole.

Jean-Paul Vest (33:17.422)

Yeah.

Brian Funk (33:24.621)

All kinds of fun stuff happening there. That's a fun one.

Jean-Paul Vest (33:26.19)

Absolutely. Let's see. I don't have the other questions up in front of me. Any others you wanted to on?

Brian Funk (33:33.711)

Just.

Well, yeah, this one kind of relates actually to the book he turned me on to, The Sound Book by Trevor Cox, which I'm probably about halfway through right now. And I'm liking it a lot. He went through reverb and all the different reverberant spaces and how that affected the way music was written, which I never really thought about how if the church was...

Jean-Paul Vest (33:49.71)

How are you liking it?

Brian Funk (34:04.717)

very reverberant, you gotta play slower music. can't get away with that stuff because it just all kinda blends on each other. And it gets you thinking about mixing and arranging as well, and how often that's a big problem in mixes is there's just too much reverb going on.

Jean-Paul Vest (34:07.544)

Yeah.

Jean-Paul Vest (34:21.686)

The thing I took away from that book was just an increased awareness of the auditory spaces I'm in, kind of on a daily basis. Just taking a moment to be an active listener of what does this room sound like? What does this outdoor space sound like? And once you turn that on, it's kind of hard to turn it off. There's a line somewhere in the basement, a few years since I it, but somewhere in there about how...

Brian Funk (34:23.598)

Thank

Brian Funk (34:31.309)

Yeah.

Brian Funk (34:45.732)

Yeah.

Jean-Paul Vest (34:51.342)

There aren't as many quiet spaces in the United States anymore. A couple hundred years ago, there wasn't anywhere like the level of day-to-day noise there is now. weren't motors everywhere and machines. We weren't listening to the radio all the time. More music is good music, as far as I'm concerned. But there's something to be said for quiet, too.

Brian Funk (35:17.719)

Yeah. So I teach a sampling class for Berklee Online. And one of the big aspects of it is field recording. And this is like stuff we talk about all the time and stuff I'm always thinking about like.

Jean-Paul Vest (35:22.612)

nice.

Brian Funk (35:31.523)

pay attention to these sounds that are around you. Your life is full of them. And one of our assignments is to go about your routine, but record sounds and then try to compose something. It could be abstract or you can really try to structure it, but use it with the sounds you're encountering. And you're right, like, especially about like all the noise. Like I love taking a field recording. Maybe it might be like birds or crickets or

some nature sound and just kind of subtly placing that in my music. It's like barely there sometimes. Sometimes it's actually like a really important part, but it's teleportive and it's hard though to find some of those clean recordings without like trucks in the background or airplanes humming along. I'm often just cutting the low frequencies out and that does a lot to clean out the recordings. But yeah, like it's something I've noticed a lot.

Jean-Paul Vest (36:07.854)

Yeah.

is.

Jean-Paul Vest (36:25.751)

Right.

Brian Funk (36:30.057)

in this process that there is just always noise and even in environments that feel quiet like my classroom at school there's like something in the walls that's just going like all day long.

Jean-Paul Vest (36:44.078)

Yeah. And once you hear it, it kind of rises to the front.

Brian Funk (36:49.869)

Yeah, and I've got on my phone a little frequency analyzer and you can just see that bump or whatever it is. It might be like 60 or whatever, but it's loud. It's actually pretty loud. And I think that droning, after a while, it kind of wears you down a little bit. It tires you out.

Jean-Paul Vest (36:56.44)

Yeah. Yeah. no.

Jean-Paul Vest (37:10.038)

It does. Yeah, one of the reasons we moved is that the street we were on before was a little busier street and I just felt like everybody in the neighborhood had modded their pickup truck to rattle the windows when it went past. And I was just, you know, couldn't have an uninterrupted train of thought for 15 minutes. It was driving me a little crazy. Like for me being outdoors and, you know.

taking a hike somewhere where there's, you know, up by the beach or something is restorative, like just not having straight lines and right angles everywhere and, you know, either the visual field or the sound field. It's like, okay, there's birds, there's wind, there's, you know, the occasional boat driving by or something, but...

Brian Funk (37:40.857)

Yeah.

Brian Funk (37:53.475)

Right. Yeah, I saw a documentary. I can't tell you what I saw it on. don't know, or something. It could have been narrated by Obama even. I might be confusing things. But anyway, when COVID hit.

There were much less things going on, fewer motors and cars. And it was about like how that affected wildlife, how it affected oceanic creatures and with fewer ships and cargo and just recreational boats, all this stuff that changed. Animals were coming out and like showing up in places you hadn't seen them in a long time. it made sure.

Jean-Paul Vest (38:21.698)

Yeah.

Brian Funk (39:02.255)

But yeah, it's like, it has a real impact on the natural environment. I'm sure it's doing something to us.

Jean-Paul Vest (39:09.486)

I think during 9-11 was another instance where they shut down all the air traffic and the boats were stopped and I think the whales in the ocean were like, ah, okay, this is nicer now. yeah, everything has a cost and an effect. It's a little painful and difficult to teach yourself to consider that.

Brian Funk (39:13.645)

Right, no airplanes.

Jean-Paul Vest (39:38.062)

If you consider everything too much, then you're just paralyzed. can't do anything. yeah. But going back to the sampling and back to XTC, I don't know if you know their album Skylarking, but it opens with a song called Summer's Cauldron. And it starts with buzzing insects and chirping birds and crickets, and it resolves itself into a beat.

Brian Funk (39:41.345)

Right, right, yeah, you gotta still live.

Jean-Paul Vest (40:04.458)

and you realize that, this is a loop and it's playing and then the song kicks in and you're like, okay. It's kind of sort of like, it creates the impression of being attuned to nature's music and yeah, good stuff.

Brian Funk (40:04.943)

Hmm.

Brian Funk (40:15.267)

Yeah, I like that. That's fun. There is a rhythm to it. It might not be a regular rhythm necessarily, but when you listen and you start hearing like this one bird kind of doing its thing over here and then there's another thing over there, they're almost on their own little loop in a way. Asynchronous, but there's something special about that.

Jean-Paul Vest (40:37.602)

they are.

I've had a project in my mind for a long time, and maybe somebody else will be the one to do this project. I still want to do it, but I haven't gotten around to it yet. And it was sparked by something that I think was Stuart Copeland said, that he traveled to Africa to learn about African rhythms, and it seemed like each village he went to had their own rhythm, and he just couldn't figure out what the time signature was for the longest time.

And then he finally clicked that it was a rhythm of like a speech, like a sentence. So it had to do more with the way you speak. And so my thought was to, you know...

to maybe take lines of poetry that are in public domain or something, just find a really good sentence with an interesting rise and fall and rhythm to it and record a voice, mine or someone else's, speaking that sentence sort of on a loop a few times and have the loop sort of dissolve into just the rhythm of that sentence and then have a percussionist kind of riff off of that and have that sentence become a piece of music.

just that rhythm, kind of deconstruct it that way. I thought that would yield something interesting, but I'm not sure what.

Brian Funk (41:57.581)

Yeah, no, that's a cool idea because we do have that. There's something to it. I know when I'm writing my lyrics, I'm kind of looking for these rhythms of words. Where do the consonants go and where are the long notes?

Jean-Paul Vest (42:13.806)

You've got your awesome book cover there, Five Minute Music Producers. There's a rhythm to that, right? Five Minute Music Producer, Five Minute Music Producers. There's a rhythm to that. And English is great because you've got natural stresses and hard beats and weak beats and falls at the end unless it's a question and then goes up. There's music in there. I think Steve Harky's probably done some stuff with that.

Brian Funk (42:18.548)

look at that, conveniently.

Brian Funk (42:25.678)

Mm-hmm.

Brian Funk (42:38.669)

Yeah.

Yeah.

Well, if you did it or if I did it or if anyone did it, we'd do it our way. You know, we'd even if we were trying to copy the other person, you know, you'd still kind of do your own thing. So to bring it back to this idea of like, I guess, acoustic spaces, when you were talking about the concert in your home, I wonder if that song would have hit the same way at the bar.

Jean-Paul Vest (42:50.241)

Absolutely, yeah.

Jean-Paul Vest (43:02.136)

Thank

Jean-Paul Vest (43:14.87)

Probably not, yeah. where you play and I've learned over the years that kind of, that what I go in expecting to play might not be what works best. So sometimes if you're going to a place where I think, okay, you

Brian Funk (43:16.196)

You

Jean-Paul Vest (43:35.138)

There's loud bands in here. will hit harder if we do all the rocking numbers. And sometimes it's the reverse. You play the quiet ones with some space in it. And that works better.

Brian Funk (43:36.27)

Ahem.

Jean-Paul Vest (43:49.55)

you the guys I play with, I'm fortunate that they listen, you know, and they adapt to what's going on. It's fun to be along for the ride there. But yeah, you know, we did a show years ago at, Dave Dirks used to run Acoustic Long Island over at Deep Lost Mansion in St. James. And so he'd have like a short open mic where people would go play one song and...

then he'd have a featured performer. And it was, you know, 50 or 100 people or whatever it was crammed into one room in this old house, sort of a semi-circle, know, chairs elbow to elbow. And it was very much a listening room. People were there to listen, which makes a big difference. And when we, we've played there a couple of times on the front porch and that was fun too for the summer concert. But...

Brian Funk (44:35.843)

Hmm.

Jean-Paul Vest (44:45.56)

playing indoors that show, the music just resonated with people in a way I didn't expect. And within like one or two songs, I just knew that like everybody in the room was right there with us for every word of the lyrics, every note of the music. And I had people coming up to me, talking to me about that show for years afterwards. And I was like, I'd love to recreate that some.

Brian Funk (45:07.919)

Really.

Brian Funk (45:11.257)

Hmm.

Jean-Paul Vest (45:14.19)

Maybe if we were more famous we could play at nice venues that would help us create that. But for now, it's my living room.

Brian Funk (45:18.691)

Yeah.

Well, but that's cool too. mean, there's something personal, just the fact that your living room and you've got your songs that are inviting people into your life and then literally into your world in your living room. think that probably has some psychological impact on how it's all perceived.

Jean-Paul Vest (45:42.688)

It does. It's funny. You just touched on something there.

Jean-Paul Vest (45:50.606)

I know everybody does music differently and for their own reasons. I think it was Anne Wilson of, I'm gonna butcher what she said, so apologies, but the singer for Heart was saying there's some people that do music, it's from the outside in. They wanna connect with people. They wanna...

draw those people in and then other people have something inside them that need to get out. And so they do it from the inside out. And both approaches are valid. It's just a function of your personality and who you are. And for me...

I think some people do music as way to be seen and heard.

to seek some sort of validation for that. me, it's probably that too, but I find I'm most comfortable when I disappear and the listener's only aware of the song and the music. when somebody seems like they're listening to the music as a way to get to know me better, that's almost off-putting, but when they're just fully engaged with the song and want to know more about the song, that's wonderful to me.

Brian Funk (47:04.175)

Yeah, I kind of gather that even by what you said about being on the ferry and writing about this sort of fictitious character. And you got me thinking, because I like to do this a lot as well, where a lot of my narrators of my songs, lack of a better term, I guess, they're either...

maybe like a passing feeling I had or an exaggeration or just even like a total character. Like I'm going to write this from the perspective of someone that's really delusional or that believes it. And the tricky part is I think so many people think that every time you're, you pick up your guitar and sing, it's like, I'm opening my soul and this is me. And there might be,

Jean-Paul Vest (47:52.397)

Right.

Brian Funk (47:54.799)

There's truth to it, but it doesn't, sometimes people be like, are you okay, man? I'm fine, I'm having a great time. I'm enjoying going in this direction with this song. It's a way to, I guess, kind of see what it's like without having to really do it. Yeah. Do you run into that at all?

Jean-Paul Vest (48:00.297)

Hahaha

Jean-Paul Vest (48:18.368)

Yeah, you're trying it on. Yeah, absolutely.

Brian Funk (48:24.111)

where people kind of look at your lyrics and then psychoanalyze you a bit.

Jean-Paul Vest (48:28.654)

Yes, I've had, once I put out an album and a friend of mine called me and he's like, do I need to take away your shoelaces or anything? I was like, no, I'm okay. But, a lot of my songs are personal and clearly personal.

Brian Funk (48:36.227)

God.

Jean-Paul Vest (48:47.662)

I'm so blessed to be married to the exact right person. And so a lot of my songs in one way or another are love songs to her, you know, and about our relationship.

So yeah, they're clearly about her. And then there's other songs where, you know, I feel like I have to say, okay, this one's not, you know, don't read anything into this one. It just having fun here.

Brian Funk (49:10.307)

I've said that before.

Jean-Paul Vest (49:12.622)

But yeah, it can be both.

I guess as a body of work, the songs are somewhat cohesive, but they're meant to be taken each individually, I think.

Brian Funk (49:28.173)

Hmm. I find too, even I change in relation to the song. Sometimes I start to see what was really happening or I reinterpret it even. That goes for other people's songs too.

Jean-Paul Vest (49:40.13)

That's great when you can find your way back into a song you'd like, and it means something different. I have a song called Chocolate and Cherries, and I talk about this song when we play live. It's good rhythm. Yeah, it's a reggae song, I'll explain. Well, a pseudo reggae song. But I was thinking to myself, OK, you know.

Brian Funk (49:56.025)

good rhythm to that.

Jean-Paul Vest (50:11.15)

what could I do to write a hit song if I wanted to, you know? So turn on the radio for a couple minutes and everything's about sex. And I'm like, okay, well, you know, but me being me, within five minutes, I've PG'd myself, know, PG-13'd myself down to, it's a song about kisses, whatever, you know, it's like, it's, you know, it's very, cause I'm like, you know, my kids' teachers are gonna hear this. But so I wrote this song and it ended up being the...

Brian Funk (50:33.443)

Ha ha ha.

Jean-Paul Vest (50:40.28)

The other germ of an idea was I was reading on a design website an article about a Scottish architect and he had designed this very ultra-modern home and kind of built it out of the bones of the ruins of this old Scottish farmhouse so that you've got crumbling stone walls and then this like black rubber thing and there's no right angles and it's a very cool looking house.

But they kept using this word in the article that I didn't know, so I had to look it up and it's palimpsest. And so the origins are when, you know, in the medieval times when paper was difficult to make and hard to come by, occasionally if somebody wanted to write a book, they'd just take another book and scrape or bleach the ink off and, you know, take the pages apart and cut them differently and write a new book on the pages of the old one. And Historia, as it's looking back at it, you can kind of see.

Brian Funk (51:34.094)

Wow.

Jean-Paul Vest (51:37.228)

the traces of the first story beneath the second story. And I thought, well, that's a great metaphor for love or a music career or a life where you have all these stories written on top of each other. And my wife and I have been together for over 30 years now. So yeah, it's not the same thing as it was when we were in our 20s or our 30s or our 40s. This story kind of keeps getting rewritten with all these different layers to it that add to it.

And some of it, yeah, it kind of gets erased and there's a new part. And I thought, boy, that's a cool metaphor for a song. So I jumped on that and then I was like, well, there has to be some zucks in the song. So we'll make it a reggae song. There we go. But yeah, I think music is like that. You write old stuff and the new songs you write are kind of informed.

Brian Funk (52:12.131)

Hmm.

Brian Funk (52:23.116)

Hehehe.

Jean-Paul Vest (52:34.882)

by the old ones. Either you're doing the same thing again or you're doing something completely different in reaction to that.

Jean-Paul Vest (52:43.5)

I saw an interview recently where someone was talking about a quote that may or may not have been from Miles Davis, but where Miles says, okay, think of the music in your head, you know, the little melody, and then play as if you're answering that melody. Like don't play the music in your head, play your response to it. Well, that's cool approach. But so I think, you know, every song I write is probably in some way a response to everything I've

Brian Funk (53:04.067)

Hmm.

Jean-Paul Vest (53:13.912)

written before just because I don't really want to do the same thing again.

Brian Funk (53:20.599)

Right, that's interesting. It's almost like the way we recall memories. And they say you're kind of overwriting it every time you remember it. So you're changing history in a way, maybe slightly. I've noticed this a lot when I talk with old friends. We start telling stories and I start thinking like, I was there or do I just know the story so well that I feel like I was there?

Jean-Paul Vest (53:33.42)

Yeah.

Jean-Paul Vest (53:44.686)

A version of you is there. Yeah.

Brian Funk (53:47.467)

It's hard to tell. And I'm sure there are things that I've just decided I was there. I wasn't, but I might as well have been for how many times I've heard it. I could see how our music could be like that too. mean, even like trauma can be like that. It's a lot about how you're interpreting the events and the stories we tell ourselves around the experiences we have.

I've found a lot of interesting things out about myself. think when I start paying attention to my thoughts and realizing like, these are just stories I'm making up. And sometimes if I'm good, I can catch one that's not working for me and tell a different story or like take that movie out of the DVD player and put a better one in.

Jean-Paul Vest (54:27.426)

Yeah.

Jean-Paul Vest (54:39.832)

Exactly. Did you see the Complete Unknown, the Bob Dylan movie?

Brian Funk (54:45.069)

Yes, yeah, I with Chris one day after work on a whim. just kind of did it. It was so good. Yeah.

Jean-Paul Vest (54:50.06)

That was great. But there was a line in there about that very thing, you know, his girlfriend is saying, no, you don't tell us anything about your past. And he's like, well, everybody just invents their past. They tell a story that they want to hear and forget the rest. So I suppose we all do that unwittingly to some extent, too.

Brian Funk (54:59.735)

Right. Yeah.

Brian Funk (55:06.361)

Mm-hmm.

Yeah, our identities, the things we decide we are. And that becomes almost like a track that the car just follows.

Jean-Paul Vest (55:13.826)

Yeah,

Jean-Paul Vest (55:19.662)

Yeah, and that can be a liberating thing to do once in a while to realize I don't have to be that person I was before just because I was then. Maybe I've, oh, there's a song I love by this artist who goes by the name I Am Jen, Jen Scotero. if I'm remembering right when she released it, she said, this was just an.

Brian Funk (55:30.265)

Hmm.

Jean-Paul Vest (55:48.28)

experiment to test out a new vocal processing idea like just electronic music and the song is pretty much just one song it's kind of the spooky eerie music with a slow sort of beat and

And the whole lyrics of the song, there's a few variations, but it's mostly, today I learned something about myself. And just the way that the music feels kind of unsettled. You're like, well, that could be anything. That could be, you know, like there's so many, like there's just, there's a world of possibilities in that one line. And I would love to write a song.

Brian Funk (56:27.833)

Yeah.

Jean-Paul Vest (56:30.136)

that said as much with as few words as that. That was just brilliant to me.

Brian Funk (56:36.353)

Right, yeah, that's pretty open-ended and kind of morphs, I bet, throughout the song as you hear it even.

Jean-Paul Vest (56:42.382)

Yeah, yeah, and it's like, and you know that experience where you learn something about yourself that you didn't know before. And sometimes that's an exhilarating thing and sometimes really sobering and like, ooh, okay.

Brian Funk (56:50.67)

Hmm.

Brian Funk (56:56.791)

Yeah. Yeah, that can, and it can go back and forth actually too, where depending on the story around it. Those are fun places to go with music into these kind of like, it's, don't have like a word for that feeling that I'm aware of anyway, but yeah, I've got a book.

Jean-Paul Vest (57:04.056)

Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

Jean-Paul Vest (57:20.942)

No, I don't think so. We need one.

Brian Funk (57:27.213)

Not this one. I've been using it for songwriting. did a little song music making retreat two weekends ago and I brought this book. It's called The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows. It's like a dictionary and it's about like words for feelings that you know but we don't really have words for and I guess it's like all kind of made up.

Jean-Paul Vest (57:41.054)

I'm gonna write that down. That's it. Great. Yeah?

Brian Funk (57:56.897)

I'll just give you one. Here's one I just came up with. The McFly effect, which I'm guessing is back to the future. It says, the phenomenon of observing your parents interact with people they grew up with, which reboots their personalities into youth mode, offering you a glimpse of their dreamer and rascal life they used to be before you came into the picture.

Jean-Paul Vest (58:02.382)

That's good.

Jean-Paul Vest (58:17.479)

that's a real thing.

Brian Funk (58:20.463)

kind of seeing your parents as people, seeing any adult or any authority when you kind of realize they're just like regular people. Everyone's like all mixed up and winging it. And we're all screwed up in some way trying to figure this out.

Jean-Paul Vest (58:35.97)

Yeah. Yeah. And the moment you realize that some of the people who are the most emphatically certain, you know, outwardly, are inwardly the most insecure and full of doubts. like, yeah.

Brian Funk (58:52.751)

I sometimes find myself having trouble like holding on to opinions or forming opinions about anything because I just feel like I don't know. Like I know I don't know and I wonder like, well how do you know so well? why are you so convinced?

Jean-Paul Vest (58:54.88)

interesting to navigate.

Jean-Paul Vest (59:08.483)

Yeah.

Jean-Paul Vest (59:18.35)

I did kind of write a song about that too. I a song called Old Habits that's about that moment when you realize I might not be the same person I used to be. I might not believe the same things and I didn't really mean to change my mind but hmm, what do do now? How did that happen?

Brian Funk (59:20.185)

Thank you.

Yeah.

Brian Funk (59:43.043)

Right. It's a really, I mean, I think about this a lot because I'm always around teenagers at school. there were a lot of things, I guess, when I was younger, a lot of convictions, you know, like I'll never, you know, like before you understand the complexity of the world and what people have to go through just to survive and make ends meet, you come up with all these.

kind of moral guidelines and rules that aren't tested on the field. And I can see that in a lot of them. And sometimes you see it in yourself, like, I used to think like that. That was me at one point.

Jean-Paul Vest (01:00:25.944)

Yeah.

Yep.

Brian Funk (01:00:30.457)

doesn't work out. It wouldn't have suited me to stick to that.

Jean-Paul Vest (01:00:36.578)

Yeah, and then we get older, we suddenly know everything and we're certain about everything.

Brian Funk (01:00:43.117)

Yeah, that hasn't happened to me yet.

Jean-Paul Vest (01:00:46.638)

Me neither, but I'm looking forward to it.

Brian Funk (01:00:49.625)

Yeah, one day maybe. It's kind of the beauty of it though, you know, that it gives you something to think about. Probably helps songwriting and music making, that you get to dabble in these different things and experiment with them and toy around with them. I can often explore ideas. I guess it's like kind of tangentially.

Jean-Paul Vest (01:00:57.229)

Yeah.

Brian Funk (01:01:15.715)

with songs, always going directly at them, but through metaphors and comparisons and all that, there's some kind of understanding that comes out of all that.

Jean-Paul Vest (01:01:27.106)

Yeah, I feel like there was a period there, and this is very broad statement for me to make, considering how much new music is written every day. But I felt like for a while when I turned on the radio, which these days isn't that often because now we have access to our own collections of music and our stream through Tidal, so much great stuff on there.

Brian Funk (01:01:53.143)

As far as I can tell, the radio is still playing the same songs. It hasn't changed much.

Jean-Paul Vest (01:01:56.078)

Yeah, yeah, but I felt like for a little while there, and as my friend Pemberton pointed this out to me, there was almost no metaphor in everything. was just very plainly said, one sentence repeated about 30 times, a couple of variations, but there was no metaphor. There was no specific places mentioned, none of that descriptive detail. was like, needs to come back.

Brian Funk (01:02:09.679)

Hmm.

Jean-Paul Vest (01:02:25.571)

to engage with the... I like songs that engage with the art of writing.

Brian Funk (01:02:25.816)

Yeah

Brian Funk (01:02:30.543)

I guess the medium though, the radio, almost doesn't have time for that kind of introspection and unpacking, right? Because sometimes you turn on the radio and you just want to shake your butt. So shake your butt. That's what the song says.

Jean-Paul Vest (01:02:48.664)

Yeah.

Jean-Paul Vest (01:02:52.846)

That was one of the songs on our newest album too called Slash and Burn where I'm aware that we play a lot of stuff in weird time signatures, know, five, four, seven, eight, or eleven, eight, and it's done just because it's fun. But we're not trying to show off or anything.

But I do realize that some of my music's pretty moody and introspective and there's a lot of words and it's maybe not danceable. So I thought, okay, to the poor guy sitting at the back of the bar praying for the love of God, will you just play one thing I can dance to? I'm gonna write a song for you. And it's sort of like a...

Brian Funk (01:03:39.63)

Yeah.

Jean-Paul Vest (01:03:41.762)

poke in our own ribs of like, okay, we're not gonna do that. We're not gonna be all clever. We're not gonna be as smart. We're just gonna stick to the groove on this one song. And that was kind of fun too.

Brian Funk (01:03:54.479)

Do you find yourself sort of creeping into that anyway? When you try to do like the mass appeal type of thing and then... Right. I think that's the cool thing because when I was younger I used to worry about it it was probably because I was copying people and I didn't have as much reference to go off of so my guitar playing skills amounted to what I had been playing for that so... But...

Jean-Paul Vest (01:04:01.078)

Yeah, we are who we are.

Jean-Paul Vest (01:04:21.272)

Sure.

Brian Funk (01:04:23.535)

Now I really don't even think about that too much at all. Unless I really catch like, okay, this is you're singing, let it be or something like that. like you're singing that obvious melody, but I just find that I wind up, I guess distorting it or messing it up even to whatever my own quirks are that it winds up different than that becomes its own thing.

Jean-Paul Vest (01:04:33.074)

There you go, right.

Jean-Paul Vest (01:04:51.864)

Yeah, exactly. Whenever I've tried to play exactly like somebody else, it never works out. So it becomes your own thing by default.

Brian Funk (01:04:59.245)

It's a big way I get into my songs these days is like, I'm going to, this song is sung by Lou Reed and here we go. I'm going to try to just do a Lou Reed here or whatever it is. And I find that it just gets me into it. And you know, I can't do that. none of us can really, for the most part, mean, some people train to imitate people really well, but I think that.

Jean-Paul Vest (01:05:05.838)

Here are

Brian Funk (01:05:26.927)

You wind up missing the target anyway enough that it doesn't matter. I love that it's freeing to get back to like not being overly critical when you're writing and worrying about it too much. Sometimes those approaches might be like a weird combination. Like, oh, if Lou Reed was in this band or he sang this kind of song.

Jean-Paul Vest (01:05:29.368)

Yeah, and that's a good thing. That opens up all kinds of... Yeah.

Jean-Paul Vest (01:05:50.766)

That took me a long time to get to. because like you want to start out, you just want a piece of what you're hearing. And so you want to learn to play that guitar solo or that chord or sing that way. And I feel like so many young singers I hear now, it's an imitation of something. They're trying to do that soulful bluesy thing, you know, and it's not a negative. It's just they're reaching for something that inspired them.

It takes a while to just grow into yourself and find your own voice as a writer or word performer.

Brian Funk (01:06:29.197)

Right. It does take time and that's the journey. You that's part of what makes it exciting. Did you get any surprising answers on some of these interviews series? Anything that stuck out to you or that made you think a little bit differently?

Jean-Paul Vest (01:06:35.555)

Yeah.

Jean-Paul Vest (01:06:45.198)

Well, I guess it's a result of my generation and the generation of my friends, I was a little surprised that everybody so far has mentioned the Beatles. It's like, okay, that's a big thing. That's a big moment for people. And then my friend Tom mentioned traveling with his son and stopping at the Great Salt Lake in Utah and just something about the density of the air there.

Brian Funk (01:06:57.476)

Well...

Jean-Paul Vest (01:07:14.446)

was almost a complete absence of sound and how eerie that was. It's just the quietest place he's ever been.

I'm experience that.

Brian Funk (01:07:30.061)

When I was probably about 10 years old, I went to Arizona, because my brother went to school at Arizona State. And we went to the deserts and stuff. And that was one of the things that really struck me was just how quiet it was. Like you could hear the rocks under your feet when you walked. And everything was so loud because it was so quiet. Your rustle of your clothing.

Jean-Paul Vest (01:07:56.846)

Yeah, it's so quiet. I guess that's, I've spent a lot of time in Arizona, actually, with family out there. It's, I guess just because it's so hot, everything needs to economize energy by keeping it still as possible for long periods of the day. So there's not birds flying around all the time.

Brian Funk (01:08:13.839)

Still in quiet, yeah.

Brian Funk (01:08:18.425)

No. It's a place I want to return to. Especially recently, I was flying out to California and I was just kind of overwhelmed with the country looking out the window of the airplane.

Nobody has their window open on the airplane. It's amazing because here we are like no human beings have ever been able to see this until very recently. And it's an insane perspective. And just the time I was going, guess we were sort of chasing the sunset a bit. the sun was very low in the sky and casting these really cool shadows. And I'm just looking at it and.

Jean-Paul Vest (01:08:42.862)

Yeah.

Jean-Paul Vest (01:08:55.854)

that's amazing, yeah.

Brian Funk (01:09:00.975)

for so long, there's either nothing and then there's canyons and mountains and you could just see like, wow, stuff happened here. I can tell like a river tore that thing open and that's why that's there. And it was like overwhelming, just like the beauty of it and how much there is out there to take in and how little we see most of the time.

Jean-Paul Vest (01:09:10.786)

Yeah.

Jean-Paul Vest (01:09:15.214)

Yep.

Jean-Paul Vest (01:09:27.724)

Yeah, yeah, Arizona and California for me too, like getting to go see the Redwoods and the Sequoias, like, just, they're amazing, but.

Brian Funk (01:09:35.491)

Yeah, that's amazing. I recorded sound in the Redwood forest. Yeah, actually, specifically like a hand clap so that I could put that in a convolution reverb and then sort of recreate the sound of the Redwood forest inside like your computer, you know? Yeah, but that was that was, California really does have a lot of.

Jean-Paul Vest (01:09:42.078)

very nice.

Jean-Paul Vest (01:09:46.83)

Okay.

Jean-Paul Vest (01:09:54.626)

Nice. Yeah, that's awesome.

Brian Funk (01:10:05.103)

Like, if you've ever driven down from like San Francisco to LA, it's, yeah, it's unbelievable. Everyone should do that if you have not done that.

Jean-Paul Vest (01:10:10.766)

Exactly what we did,

Jean-Paul Vest (01:10:16.056)

Yeah, although now I guess driving into LA from that direction is a different experience with all the wildfires.

Brian Funk (01:10:23.545)

Yes, yeah, I did not see much of that when I was out there. But yeah, I know, that's very tragic and scary.

Jean-Paul Vest (01:10:29.164)

there.

Jean-Paul Vest (01:10:37.876)

is. It might be time for me to be heading out here.

Brian Funk (01:10:41.059)

Yeah, all righty. That sounds good. Yeah. So I'm to send people to your site, lastcharge.com. Check out the interviews. They're really cool just to see what people are saying about sound and music and their inspiration. And you can get all your music as well. Any other place you want to tell people to go to check out what you do?

Jean-Paul Vest (01:11:01.998)

No, that's the main one. We're on Instagram too just for last charge of the light horse, but Yeah, it all kind of right Brian thank you so much for inviting me today. It's been a real pleasure to speak with you

Brian Funk (01:11:07.267)

Yeah, it all kind of branches out from the site. Lyrics, bio, stuff.

Yeah, I'm really glad we got chance to do this. Again, thank you for your work on our album and had a great time watching you guys play. I guess that was, I don't know, at least a year ago now, but you guys were awesome. Yeah, hopefully maybe our bands can play together and work something out. Yeah, we should. mean, it's like we were saying, it's the joy of getting together with your friends and doing stuff and.

Jean-Paul Vest (01:11:29.07)

get out there again.

Jean-Paul Vest (01:11:33.57)

I would love that. We should definitely do that.

Brian Funk (01:11:43.055)

You're one of the rare cases where I'm talking to somebody on this podcast that's local. We probably could have even worked it out to sit next to each other and do it. But yeah, it'd be great to get together and share music with each other. Excellent. Well, thanks for coming on. All right.

Jean-Paul Vest (01:11:51.234)

Yeah. yeah. Well, yeah, let's get together in person soon. That would be good. Thank you very much for having me. Have a good night.

podcastBrian Funkmusic production podcast, jean-paul vest