Josh Pyke on Panic Attacks, Parenting and the Future of Australian Music

00:00:00
Speaker 1: When your kids can hear any song ever recorded from a device they can carry with them anywhere, what do you actually want them to hear? And who gets paid when they press play? I'm Osher Ginsberg. This is Better Than Yesterday. Thanks for being a part of the show. My guest today is Josh Pike. He's been making records for more than 20 years. All eight of his albums have debuted in the ARIA Top 10. He's picked up four ARIA awards along the way. But these days, a lot of his work happens outside the recording studio. He's the chair of the PPCA, which is the organization that licenses recorded music in Australia. So people who made it get paid. All right. He's the first artist to have ever held that job. He's also a dad, a very successful children's author, and has been really open about living with anxiety. He's got a new album. It's called Kingdom Within. You can listen to it right now. In this conversation, we talk about raising kids who literally can listen to any song ever.
00:00:54
Speaker 2: Every fact ever.
00:00:56
Speaker 1: And every screen around them, all within reach. Why Josh and his wife decided to keep social media out of their children's lives altogether. And then we look at where music goes from here. It's a great conversation. It's in alignment with some of the other things you've heard me talk about recently. I know you're going to love it.
00:01:14
Speaker 2: I did.
00:01:15
Speaker 1: Enjoy this chat with Josh Pike. Thanks for joining me.
00:01:20
Speaker 2: Thank you. Here in the home.
00:01:21
Speaker 1: I know you're partial to a home studio.
00:01:23
Speaker 2: I love a home studio.
00:01:24
Speaker 1: You've had quite in the morning. Because we are recording this in the state of New South Wales and Sydney. We're recording this during book week. Can you describe your morning?
00:01:33
Speaker 2: Oh, my morning. So a dear friend of mine is a kindergarten teacher and she invited me to come and do a book reading at her school for 80 kindergarten kids. So I played a couple of songs and read one of my books and did a Q & A. Actually, I kept one of the questions to show my kids, but I'll share it with you. This is my favorite question. Do you like the shade? I don't like the sun in my eyes. I just think that is like epitomizes why little kids are great. What a question.
00:02:02
Speaker 1: Have you had to take that as read and come back with an answer or what do you think?
00:02:07
Speaker 2: I mean, I like the shade. I like the shade, but I also like the sun. But I just love that this kid could have asked me anything about books or music, but that's what they chose to ask. I just think that's what's lovely about kids.
00:02:19
Speaker 1: I have an opportunity to ask a grown-up. Now, when you read your, I'm assuming you read your own book.
00:02:25
Speaker 2: I've, yes, I read my own books.
00:02:26
Speaker 1: Which one of your books did you read to your kindergarten kids this morning?
00:02:29
Speaker 2: I read the most recent one, which is called Augie the Corgi and Jane the Great Dane.
00:02:33
Speaker 1: So when you were reading Augie the Corgi and Jane the Great Dane to a bunch of kindergarten kids, do you do the voices that were in your head when you wrote it?
00:02:41
Speaker 2: I do like my talking to kids voice, which is like, hey guys, and that, yeah, you know, and then Augie said that and that. So yeah, very performative and lots of hand gestures and stuff like that. Man, I.
00:02:54
Speaker 1: I relish story time at night.
00:02:57
Speaker 2: Yeah. How old is your kid?
00:02:58
Speaker 1: Wolfie is now, he just turned seven. Okay.
00:03:01
Speaker 2: So you're still in the zone.
00:03:04
Speaker 1: Well, he's now into reading books by himself.
00:03:06
Speaker 2: Yeah.
00:03:09
Speaker 1: And this is the book I'm reading him right now. I'm reading him South, the story of Ernest Shackleton's- Oh, to the Arctic.
00:03:17
Speaker 2: To the Antarctic. Yes. Yes.
00:03:19
Speaker 1: And he's like, are the dogs okay? And I know how the story ends. I'm like, everybody makes it. All the crew make it out. So I'm kind of doing a bit of editing on the fly, but it's extraordinary because now this is kind of the stuff that he's able to comprehend.
00:03:33
Speaker 2: This is the world you can get into now.
00:03:34
Speaker 1: And the language is extraordinary. The florid, tempestuous ice pushes against our tiny ship, our home, our seawater.
00:03:43
Speaker 2: It's just amazing. Yeah. All of that pays dividends. I mean, my kids are 16 and 13 now and They have pretty good vocabularies, I reckon, and they're very good at taking the piss as well. They've been trained from having read so much and sort of being in conversations with us. We always talk to them as adults, and subsequently they're very good at taking the piss.
00:04:06
Speaker 1: My parents did that with me and my big brother, and my younger brothers too, but definitely me and my big brother. I remember we were odd among other kids because we were questioned. I remember being five, and my folks, we moved to Brisbane, and both doctors needed to meet new GPs too. get people to refer to them. And they'd have people around for dinner all the time. And we were going, well, like fully just challenging ideas at five.
00:04:27
Speaker 2: To adult doctors.
00:04:29
Speaker 1: And their doctors going, aren't you supposed to be in bed or something? Like not being able to handle a five-year-old speaking.
00:04:36
Speaker 2: What were you questioning them about? Oh, fuck if I know. It was 1979. Is that bacteria truly, you know, a microbial or is that airborne?
00:04:44
Speaker 1: Possibly like, oh, yes, but school is really important. I don't think so because sometimes we learn about things I already know and I'd rather know about a different.
00:04:52
Speaker 2: Like that kind of shit is what we would say.
00:04:55
Speaker 1: When you hear that kind of question, what is it about kids' curiosity that you get? When you hear that kind of curiosity in a child, what does it do for you?
00:05:04
Speaker 2: I just like, the thing I love about kids' books and the sort of writing kids' books, the whole world, is that for me, it reminds me that, it reminds me how vulnerable kids kids are. And I think we can sometimes forget that when we're adults, we sort of, you know, look at everything through an adult lens. And when I see, hear a question like that, which is just so beautiful and innocent and like, that's something this kid has been thinking about. Like he's, he likes to shine. He doesn't like the sun in his eyes. Just, he's just wondering if anybody else feels like that. And, uh, yeah, so there's something about the vulnerability, uh, making you remember and reflect on the vulnerability of kids that I find, uh, very rewarding and sort of, yeah, it's a good reminder because they're just like, they're really like the world, as we all know, is a stressful place, particularly at this point in history. And they don't know that. And we just need to protect them from, from that for as long as we can, because the world's coming for them, you know, like.
00:06:02
Speaker 1: I would say the world's always been a stressful place.
00:06:04
Speaker 2: It's always been a stressful place.
00:06:05
Speaker 1: I mean, like I'm, I'm older than you. I was born in 1974. And in this country at that time, or right, at least right before it, if you're in high school, like, I'm getting drafted. I'm going to, I'm going to a war that I can't say no to. And if I say no, people are going to label me as a certain kind of person. And I hate my country. Like it was, it's always been fucking hard. Yeah. Yeah.
00:06:28
Speaker 2: True. I don't know. I mean, I don't know if you feel like this, I do think it's always been hard, but even talking to my dad, who's 76 now, he is like, you know, he lived through, uh, you know, the, the end of World War II and his parents were in the war and they had loved ones who died and his dad was a soldier. And, you know, then through Vietnam, he was from Britain, so he wasn't sort of involved in that. But, you know, had friends who were conscientious objectors, been through a lot of the world's sort of big things. And even he sort of thinks that now is the most fraught time that he's experienced because it's sort of, the conglomeration of all of these things at once. And I would say that the main thing is we know too much. We just, we know too much.
00:07:15
Speaker 1: That's what I was going to say. Like, is it the availability bias?
00:07:18
Speaker 2: I think it is.
00:07:19
Speaker 1: That is pummeling us.
00:07:20
Speaker 2: I mean, for the last couple of weeks, I've tried to stop watching the news because I've been sort of having a bit of an anxiety flare up, I guess. And it makes an enormous difference because if you wanted to, and sometimes people do because it gives them a bit of a, dopamine hit or whatever, you could find some bad news every second of the day.
00:07:42
Speaker 1: Every single second of the day. But then what does that make you feel about what the world is? Our survival mechanisms, the way that we've evolved to perceive our environment, become alert to things that cause danger.
00:07:56
Speaker 2: And if we are.
00:07:57
Speaker 1: Seeing and hearing these visceral images and words and sounds all day long, we're going to, our threat response is going to be just through the roof.
00:08:05
Speaker 2: Through the roof. And I, and I often wonder for like, with my own anxiety, I find, I don't know if you do, but I sometimes find I'm almost, I'm almost doing it to myself. I'm almost like sort of test pushing the boundaries of my own anxiety. I'm like, is this, have this thought, go and have this thought now, just give it a go and just see if this elicits anxiety. And I kind of feel like that is the world that we, like, if you, if you're wanting to test whether or not you have any resilience, All you have to do is like start scrolling Instagram and you'll soon find out.
00:08:35
Speaker 1: I have learned a bit through various diagnoses about where the OCD and the ADHD kind of lap each other. And mine was going, I need some stimulation. And the other one goes, guess what I can do for you, mate. And then kind of off we go. And so recognizing that was powerful.
00:08:56
Speaker 2: I mean, it doesn't say it doesn't still happen. It does.
00:08:58
Speaker 1: But as you know, once you can recognize something, So the moment you recognize it, you're aside, you're next to it.
00:09:05
Speaker 2: Then it comes down to discipline and sort of vigilance and all that stuff, which is just practice, I guess. It's forming a better habit than the old one.
00:09:12
Speaker 1: You're sitting next to it on the bus, you know, and it might not have great personal hygiene and it might be chirping in your ear about vaccines or whatever, but you're like, okay.
00:09:19
Speaker 2: Mate, right. Well, this is, yeah, we were talking off air about sitting with uncomfortable feelings. And, you know, one of the big things for me with anxiety at the moment is changing my relationship with it. where i've always fought it and fought it and fought it you know and if i feel the anxiety coming on i'll i'll fight it and i'll or i'll try and distract myself or whatever you know and sometimes it'll be you know drinking or whatever and you know it's been the big thing this year is like learning to sit with it and and as you say it's like i don't like it you don't have to like it it can be shit but it's nobody's ever died from panic attack anxiety doesn't kill you.
00:09:59
Speaker 1: Fucking feels like it feels like I had one.
00:10:02
Speaker 2: I call it an ambulance. I mean, I went, I've been to hospital twice this year because I thought I thought I was having a stroke. It was funny now, but you know, it wasn't funny at the time, but you know, now that I, like I sort of did my due diligence and like checked my heart and you know, All of this stuff. And I know that it's just anxiety. And so once you accept it and you try very hard to make my relationship with it, like, I don't like you, you don't like me, but sometimes we have to live together and it doesn't actually prevent me from doing things. It just might mean that I won't have as good a time doing them as I otherwise would. But when you have responsibilities and shows to play and stuff, you can still do them. But it's, yeah, it's a challenge.
00:10:41
Speaker 1: I read somewhere about, you know, that the normal sized mind can bear quite a load but sometimes this mind feels like it might explode. It was a.
00:10:51
Speaker 2: He's a wise man.
00:10:52
Speaker 1: Yeah, it was a book called Yeah, Here's Not the Place to Store Problems. It was written by a guy called Josh Pike. Yes.
00:10:59
Speaker 2: Making a rhyming.
00:10:59
Speaker 1: Couplet about comprehending your own ability to think about your own problems is pretty delightful.
00:11:07
Speaker 2: Why do you.
00:11:09
Speaker 1: You obviously think about this stuff a lot. Why was it important for you to put that kind of messaging in kids' books?
00:11:14
Speaker 2: I just think, you know.
00:11:17
Speaker 2: I think it's just helpful to talk about it. And, you know, kids' books, for me, the best thing about kids' books, whether or not they're funny, you know, funny rhyming books or more sort of contemplative books like some of the ones I've written, is they're a conversation starter, you know? And so, as you would know, like, you're never closer to your kid than when you're side by side, snuggled up in bed, reading a book to them. And often it's, I don't know what it is, but it's some psychological thing that kids just open up in the evening. And so it's like after their heavy day at school for them, this stuff is all new and their brains are just trying to process it all. And it's just a place and a time that they often just start talking, you know, they might not, you might, they come home, you say, what'd you do at school? And they're like, nothing. How was your day? Good, good. Who'd you play with? I don't know. And then, you know, you get them in bed, you're lying down reading a book and all of a sudden they're like, this thing happened to me today. And so I just think books are a good place for a conversation starter. I also know from my own experience that just being open about those sorts of things alleviates a lot of the anxiety or fear around those things in the first place. And so, yeah, it was just stuff that I've always gone through and I just wanted to express it. And, you know, working with Stephen Michael King, who does the illustrations, he was a like lauded author and illustrator in our household. We loved his book, particularly Millie Jack and the Dancing Cat. And so he just expresses those ideas beautifully as well. And we've talked, for hours about, you know, how to express those things. So yeah, I think it's just like, Justin Clark said to me once, like the kids book world is like, it's fighting the good fight. And I just kind of feel like I don't want all the kids books in the world to be about farts and shit.
00:13:01
Speaker 1: And, you know, I have rhyming schemes that are two syllables out.
00:13:06
Speaker 2: Yeah. Damn.
00:13:07
Speaker 1: Did you say this out loud before.
00:13:09
Speaker 2: You hit go? Big, big, uh, big tip. Read them out loud.
00:13:12
Speaker 1: I'm so, some of them, I'm just like that one. Thank you for the birthday present, but that's Vinnie's is going to have a new book tomorrow and, and Wolfie won't know. When you think about your younger years, when you were in the kind of, you know, primary school, early high school, what did your parents support for you look like with, with music? And what did that kind of growing world look like?
00:13:33
Speaker 2: Um, it was, it was, really my mom and she was very, very supportive. Um, she, she was a musician, like a hobby musician, but she was a beautiful piano player and could play guitar and was a really good singer. And I think she just always recognized, I mean, she encouraged all of us with music. My older sisters, uh, you know, played music in high school and I think still does. She just always encouraged us to explore music and I can't really remember how she did it with the others. But for me, it was like, I think she just recognized that there was something about music that I really connected with in a special way. And I remember listening to the song, it was Kenny Loggins wrote it and the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band played it. It was called The House at Pooh Corner. And I remember I was about four or five and I remember listening to it and sitting on the stairs at our house and I just burst into tears. And I remember my mom going like, kind of clocking it and going like, okay, this, this is something. And so I would just spend hours like trawling through their record collection and listening to this music and really losing myself in the music. What kind of records are we talking? Oh, everything. XTC, uh, Beatles, Beach Boys, early, uh, Elton John, early Billy Joel, um, all the, all the classics, you know, Led Zepp, but, but also like things like Jackson Brown, James Taylor, That's a fair.
00:14:58
Speaker 1: Amount of Yacht Rock vibes. This will make way all the layered harmonies in your work.
00:15:02
Speaker 2: It's still with us. I mean, Doobie Brothers was the big one. And there was like just a best of the Doobie Brothers LP that they had with my favorite song of all time. Oh my God, now I can't remember the name. What a Fool Believes.
00:15:14
Speaker 1: Kenny Loggins once again.
00:15:16
Speaker 2: Yeah, Kenny Loggins, but also Michael McDonald, right? And actually I put that together a few years ago. I was like, okay, so apparently I'm just a massive Kenny Loggins and Michael McDonald fan, you know? And, you know, trawling through the records and looking at the sleeves and realizing how many guest spots Michael McDonald had done and all these other things. It's so cool. Best ever?
00:15:34
Speaker 1: Got to be Ride Like the Wind, Christopher Cross.
00:15:36
Speaker 2: Ride like the wind. That one, yeah. Such a long way. No, it's so good. Holy shit. When I play with my full band, my bass player, Matt Fell, guitarist, sorry, he plays both, but he will often just out of the blue chime in with Michael McDonald backing vocals. So it'll be like, you know, so my name. Oh, I'm always thinking. And he'll be like, thinking about you. It's so fucking good. It's like my favorite musical joke is Michael McDonald. SNL did a great skit on it. Oh, I've seen it. Yeah, he's just like he's running across the cities to make that. But beautiful.
00:16:09
Speaker 1: And so that makes a lot of sense in that. So how you combine what you heard in the parents' record collection. And part of the, you know, I think now, so G, as we were saying before, before we started rolling, she's 22. She just moved out. And she's only ever had the complete sum total of all music ever recorded at her fingertips. Yeah. What's to be said for restriction when it comes to the amount of music we listen to when we're going out?
00:16:36
Speaker 2: I think it's like, instead of thinking of it as restriction, you think of it as curation, you know? Oh, there you go. So, I mean, our kids have Apple music and they, well, one of my, my youngest son explores a lot of music. He's really into metal. So he explores a lot of metal bands. My oldest son almost exclusively listens to Animal Collective music. and the Avalanches, and that's about it. And that's a self-imposed restriction because that's what he's comfortable with and that's what he wants to get into. And I'll send them recommendations and stuff like that. But I think I can't really speak about the restriction or curation of music because we have sort of let him have free reign. But with books, their book-reading history has been heavily curated, mainly by my wife, but they were reading Steinbeck in year three and four and stuff like that. And we sort of, we talk about it in terms of fast food books and books, you know, so sometimes you just want to eat McDonald's, you know, and sometimes you just want to read, I'm not saying Hunger Games is shit, but sometimes you just want to read Hunger Games, you know, like awesome page turner. And then sometimes it's not just that you want to, but you need to read something like Cannery Row or Sweet Thursday or whatever. And yeah, so I think curation slash restriction is kind of actually important. because when you're a kid, you don't, you don't need access to everything in the world. We didn't have it. And I would argue that there's, I don't think this is my, uh, you know, amazing thought. Like there's been studies that show like kids having access to everything is not necessarily been a good thing. You know, my kids don't have social media. They've never had it. They don't far out. Yeah. They've, they've not, we just, and people say like, how do you, how did you do that? And it's like, you just say no, like they don't. And you just keep saying no, they can't get it. Otherwise they might, maybe they're looking at it at school heaps or something, but they don't have their phones at school. But, you know, you just keep saying no. And I remember, you know, there was this point years ago when we would drive into the snow one time, it was like a six hour drive. And my oldest son was about three and he was bored in the car. We had an iPad there and we're sort of, you know, an hour into the trip. And I looked at my wife and we're like, we could give him the iPad. And we're like, let's just not do it. And he fussed about for about 20 minutes. And then he just zoned out and looked out the window and And we just stuck to our guns, you know.
00:18:48
Speaker 1: You and Heggie, the only people in the world that managed to do that.
00:18:54
Speaker 2: It's fucking hard. It is really, really hard.
00:18:57
Speaker 1: We need a quick break from Josh Pike. Back in just a moment. Before we get back into Josh Pike, I wanted to let you know that My other podcast, Story Club.
00:19:13
Speaker 2: Is live now.
00:19:14
Speaker 1: You can search for it where you search for this. We also have live shows all the time, including the 18th of October, where we will be on stage with the incredible Nikki Britton, Rosie Waterland, Charlie Clawson, Christy Jenkins, and Lockie McIntyre. Our theme is going to be, oh, so I'm the bad guy. It's fantastic. The last three shows sold out. There are some tickets still available for the next show. I'd love to see you there. You can get the link in the show notes to buy those tickets. But get on it quick because these ones do run out fast. Let's get back to Josh Pike. Back on the music thing, there's something that I know I get, the excitement of hearing a new song for the first time again and again and again. But it's tricky to try to explain. When I listen to Iron Maiden's Run to the Hills for the 289th time, there's a thing that I have hearing for the first time.
00:20:12
Speaker 2: Oh, what?
00:20:13
Speaker 1: When that level of study, that level of granularity, that little listening to something again and again and again and again, it's so extraordinary. And you kind of miss that. I had like one tape in my car and that was the, I just had the tape and that's what I listened to for about a month. Like Black Crow Southern Harmony Musical Companion, maybe six months of the year. That's what I listened to every day and night. And then something else.
00:20:36
Speaker 2: Yeah. I feel you on that one. Like I've recently started listening to, returning to listen to Alice in Chains for the first time in years. And the amount, like I know every lick, like, and it's, it's in your DNA. Like I know every sort of vocal lick, every guitar lick, but then I was also listening to it and I was hearing all these other drum things that I never really listened to in the past. And it's very rewarding. Like it's, it is rewarding more so than like, you know, listen to a playlist passively and it just sort of passes you by. I think One thing that's been great in our household, I actually don't listen to that much music because it's basically always in my head. And so I kind of like driving in silence and, you know, just being in silence. But my wife listens to music all the time and she just goes on benders of one album and it'll just be like Cameron Winter from beginning to end 10 times in a row on repeat. So my kids have sort of had that experience where they just, they know like Vampire Weekend songs because my wife will have just been on a bender of Vampire Weekend for months at a time.
00:21:37
Speaker 1: There is something quite wonderful about that. But then the music discovery I got from G was also really, I was thankful she had great music taste.
00:21:46
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah. My youngest has turned me on to some good metal bands like Tony Danza and something Tap Danza. There's like a hardcore band. I'm here for it. Yeah, they're really good.
00:21:55
Speaker 1: My metal taste is, it's either super noodley, super technical or like animals as leaders kind of or it's just viking shit.
00:22:05
Speaker 2: Well this this band is a bit like math rock hardcore but he's he's gotten into hardcore so i've been taking him to those um speed curated uh dynasty of style shows um which has been so good i took him to turnstile and we took him to uh flaming lips so yeah he's he's.
00:22:23
Speaker 1: Pretty you took his boy to flaming lips show.
00:22:25
Speaker 2: Yeah It was awesome.
00:22:26
Speaker 1: Yeah.
00:22:27
Speaker 2: It was really great.
00:22:27
Speaker 1: Yeah. If your gig is an opening with 400 man-sized balloons and confetti cannons, and it's just chaos for the first 10 minutes.
00:22:37
Speaker 2: Yeah. What are you, what are you doing?
00:22:38
Speaker 1: Are you, stop staring at your sneakers.
00:22:40
Speaker 2: Yeah.
00:22:41
Speaker 1: Put on a fucking show. People paid money to see you. Give them something.
00:22:45
Speaker 2: Give them something.
00:22:46
Speaker 1: Yeah. Give them something. And there's really, you know, and it, You know, we could talk about music a lot, but there's a part of your work that I, you know, I don't know if you get to talk about this too much. You're in the business side of things as well. You're the chair, the first artist to be the chair of the PPCA, which is the Phonographic Performance Corporation?
00:23:04
Speaker 2: Of Australia.
00:23:04
Speaker 1: Of Australia, which collects the royalties.
00:23:07
Speaker 2: That's the company.
00:23:08
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, the company. It collects the royalties that artists receive.
00:23:11
Speaker 2: Yeah. So it collects royalties that artists receive when they're, when the recorded music is played in pubs and clubs, but also in cafes and live performances. So there's APRA, which collects the royalties for the intellectual property, so the actual song, and then there's PPCA, which collects the royalties for the recorded music. Yeah, and I'm the chair of PPCA.
00:23:33
Speaker 1: So last night, for example, for people, I'd say, Last night we went to this, I was hosting this thing. You were at this thing. It was a thing for a music industry charity called Support Act, which looks after musicians if they break their hand and they're on the road and they can't make gig money.
00:23:48
Speaker 2: So they- They also have amazing like counseling services for mental health issues, which is a big thing in the music industry. Of course it is. It's a very, very important work.
00:23:57
Speaker 1: And so there's a big fundraiser for that, but also they were giving a lifetime achievement award to something like to Darren Hayes. Yes.
00:24:03
Speaker 2: Singer songwriter. It was- Really, really lovely. It was cool.
00:24:05
Speaker 1: Yeah, it was really fun. And Darren got up on stage and he talked about like, I have the life I have because we sold millions of small plastic discs. Like an actual physical widget you would have to walk to a store or it would be mailed to you that you would pay for a physical thing. And there was an amount of money that people got if you wrote the song. And he still gets paid because of that.
00:24:31
Speaker 2: But there was this.
00:24:31
Speaker 1: Actual physical amount of money. And I made a comment to one of the other musicians there last night. I always think about like, like the drummer from Australian Crawl bought a house.
00:24:39
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah. Single releases.
00:24:41
Speaker 1: Yeah. You know, because that's how much money came back to the person that wrote the song. How far are we away from that now?
00:24:48
Speaker 2: Oh, we're a long way away from that. I mean, like the Spotify streaming ecosystem, you know, it's, it's sort of, it's probably not a hundred percent accurate to put this sort of like a zero, 0.6 cents per stream average. figure on it. I think it's a bit more nuanced than that. And the way that they divide up the money is more nuanced than that. But it's pennies. It's microns of pennies.
00:25:13
Speaker 1: Yeah.
00:25:13
Speaker 2: I mean, I think the statistic is something like, I think it's about $ 7, 000 Australian dollars for a million streams on Spotify. I mean, getting a million streams is incredibly difficult. Some of my biggest songs have 16 million streams, but that's after 20 years, you know? And then the other part of that is that if you're signed to a record label, you're only going to get 20% of that. And then you're, you're paying that 20% into a big hole of debt that you have to pay back to the record company in the first place. So it's, it's sort of become a thing where you think of recorded music as almost like a promotional, uh, thing for your touring. And also because, I mean, for me, Also because I love recording. Yeah.
00:26:01
Speaker 1: Well, yeah. So back in the day, you give away the concert ticket so people will buy the album. Yeah. And now you give away the album so people buy the concert ticket.
00:26:08
Speaker 2: Yeah, pretty much. I mean, being a recording artist is probably the thing I enjoy most about being an artist. I love recording. I love the studio. I've got a beautiful studio at home and I've recorded in some amazing studios around the world and mixed in some amazing studios around the world with some incredible, you know, luminaries that have worked with some of my favorite artists. So I just love the studio environment and the creative environment of, I like to work fast and just jump from instrument to instrument and just kind of get into that flow state. But, you know, like the guy from Spotify, he said, Daniel Eck, he was like, you know, it doesn't cost you anything to make music anymore. And it's just, it's inconceivable to me that somebody that owns the main distributor of music in the modern world thinks that because it's, Fundamentally not true. Like if you're doing it correctly, unless you're making electronic music by yourself, then sure, it doesn't cost anything. Or unless you're using Suno to create an AI generated track, then sure, it doesn't cost anything apart from, you know, ecological disaster in some third world country, lack of water. But to say that making a record like I make costs nothing is just so fantastically wrong. Like I pay my musicians, I pay the producer, I pay the mixer, I pay the mastering engineer. And then beyond the actual production of the album, then you have to promote it and you pay a publicist, social media people.
00:27:34
Speaker 1: Not to mention the thousands of hours of mastery to get to the.
00:27:38
Speaker 2: Point where you can do that. Well, that's the sort of, the other thing is, you know, valuing your time. That's not including my time, my time away from my family, making records. I mean, I sort of, I think as a kid of the 90s, I don't, I sort of just thank my lucky stars and, you know, I don't think of that as a sacrifice, put it that way. But, um, but, but, but it is, you know? Yeah.
00:28:01
Speaker 1: You wouldn't say that like a great ballet dancer, you wouldn't say it doesn't cost you anything to move your body.
00:28:06
Speaker 2: Exactly. Exactly. I mean, it costs like, I mean, actually that's a great example because if you think about a ballet dancer 20 years after their career, their feet are fucked, their knees are fucked, they've got arthritis. Uh, and if you think about, uh, you know, a lot of the musicians that you and I probably both know 20 years into the career, our, our, our minds are pretty short, you know? We've two have been touring for 20 years.
00:28:30
Speaker 1: Hearing's not great. Yeah.
00:28:31
Speaker 2: Hearing's not great. Uh, knees are a bit short. Um, yeah, it takes its toll and it's, it's funny. It's like, I think it gave back to me a lot more than I gave it in my twenties, but in my forties now, I think, you know, it's, it's harder to justify what it gives back in terms of what I put into it, because I think I've put into it more than I used to emotionally. And right. sort of, I don't know, spiritually even. And it's harder to get back what you put in, I think.
00:29:02
Speaker 1: As far as not paying our artists what their work is worth and the value that our community gets from having artists in it. Like if we just expected carpentry to be near free, all right, you show up as an expert carpenter. Like we wouldn't feel that great about the houses we live in. As a community, as a culture, what do we stand, what do we risk? by not being able to pay our artists properly?
00:29:28
Speaker 2: Well, it's the age old question, like what contributes to culture? I mean, if you think about, you know, artists in the middle ages, you know, in the Renaissance and everything, they were paid by patrons. to create art because the value of art was known as a certainty. It creates, I mean, it pushes forward conversations, it pushes forward, you know, innovation, philosophy, political commentary, but also just like, I don't know, an escape to the everyday person that doesn't for whatever reason, have the capacity to make art. And in Australia, you know, like we have such a rich history of artists, you know, both First Nations and otherwise. And we contribute massively to the creative culture of the country. Like, I mean, the amount of times I hear people say music is my life and they mean like, you know, music has accompanied them through all these difficult times in their lives. And people come up to me and, and tell me these stories, you know, which is quite, quite a burden sometimes, but you know, like they'll tell me how my music's gotten them through military service. Somebody beautifully, you know, was very emotionally affecting to me, told me that one of my songs was going to be their assisted dying song. And, um, you know, I met this person, it was very full on and I mean, that's, that's what you lose. That's what you lose. As a musician, I remember sitting watching Sufjan Stevens' show, The State Theatre, and just weeping for the whole show because it was about his mom and my mom was going through Alzheimer's and passed away soon after. I couldn't even express my own grief through my own songs at that point. Sufjan Stevens was somehow telling the story of my life. I think we lose that. That's an enormous loss.
00:31:21
Speaker 1: I did a whole... I wrote did a whole podcast about this. Like who's going to write the flame trees for our, uh, 22 year olds? Like, you know, who's, who's writing that anthem of this summer?
00:31:33
Speaker 2: I think there are people writing it. The thing that I worry about is that it'll be less likely that it'll be heard or platformed in, in a mainstream enough way that it'll get enough traction to become this anthem. You know, when we see, you know, when we see these I don't know too much about this story, but this AI generated track that's been, was the number one most played song on radio and stuff like that. We need human curation for that. Like when we're talking about limiting things, like we should, we should platform real music, you know, human generated music. I don't mind it. Like eventually humans are going to use AI to create some really cool stuff. And obviously when AI, when the, when the legislation regulations have been sort of nailed down, which is a lot of the part of what I do with PPCA is, trying to make sure that artists are remunerated and that it's transparent and that they give their consent for their stuff to train these models to create this stuff. When all of that's been taken care of, then sure, make music with AI and humans will decide whether they like it, you know? But yeah, my fear is not so much that artists, that there won't be an artist out there writing incredibly viscerally amazing stuff. It's just that I feel like the weight of The lobbying power and money that AR companies have to push their agenda will probably supersede one human's capacity to get their stuff heard, you know?
00:33:02
Speaker 1: There's something that... I was talking to another person last night. I won't say their name, but they're a big wig in the music industry. And we were just talking about, like, we might not value what makes our culture special internationally enough to protect it. We... have been so influenced by initially British culture and then American culture, but yet we were able to keep an Australian-ness about that, the value system and kind of describing where we live and stuff like this. But if the incentive, the fiscal incentive to create and spend the time to create and try stuff that maybe it might not work, but like, let's just get that out there. When that is gone and everything's on spec, then what ends up dominating is a cultural input from another culture. Yeah. It just, because it's in English, it sounds like it could be ours.
00:33:52
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah.
00:33:53
Speaker 1: But it really isn't. The values are very, very different in those cultural expressions, whether it be television or, in this case, music. And without that, without that song that the whole nation sings together, then that's the stuff that starts to fracture us.
00:34:10
Speaker 2: It does, yeah. And that's, I mean, I think... you know, the danger with all this stuff is that we just become a very homogenous culture. And we're obviously, we're an incredibly multicultural country, but you know, the, the question of like, what is Australian culture? I've never been able to answer that. Like my, my wife's Vietnamese, my kids are half Vietnamese, my version of like family culture.
00:34:31
Speaker 1: You are Australian culture, your family is Australian culture.
00:34:33
Speaker 2: My version of it is like, we mostly eat Vietnamese food, but then I will still be barbecuing sausages. You know what I mean? And it's just sort of like, we live in a very multicultural area and So when you think about Australian culture, it's kind of everything. Beneath the surface, there's all these incredible influences from actual, you know, different ethnicities and stuff like that, whether it's food, religion, language. And then on top of that, there's a sort of pastiche, a cultural pastiche of American and British and other English-speaking countries that produce art. And that is becoming this sort of homogenized just sort of I don't want to say whitewashed because that's not exactly the right word, but, you know, just a bland sort of top-level superficial culture. And it's influenced by social media. It's influenced by AI slop, all this kind of stuff. And it's easily digestible. You don't have to think too much about it. And that's the problem. Like, you want people to think. You want things that are going to be a conversation starter, like we're talking about kids' books. Or music, you know, like the best music that I've heard is the stuff that, starts a conversation, whether or not it's because... Like, for instance, Cameron Winter, great example, solo singer, songwriter from the band Geese. My wife adores him. I think he's a really talented 24-year-old that's going to do his best work in about 20 years. But what a great conversation to have, you know? Whereas you listen to a sort of AI slop bit of background dance music and you're like, well, there's no conversation to even have, you know?
00:36:11
Speaker 1: Making sure that those songs.
00:36:14
Speaker 1: What it is to be in Australia. It is to be a young person in Australia right now.
00:36:18
Speaker 2: Yeah.
00:36:18
Speaker 1: Making sure that they get heard is super important.
00:36:22
Speaker 2: That's the issue because I think people will be writing those songs forever. I think artists need to create art. They're compelled to do it. It's the sort of mechanics of making sure that those things get heard and I certainly don't have the answers. We protect so many other industries. We protect mining. We protect our agriculture industry. What would you want to see us do to protect our musicians? Well, I think the government the federal government is actually doing a pretty good job like they have the whole revive policy which i'm involved in as well through the australia uh council the music australia council which is guiding sort of how to spend all this money that the government's giving um so i think that i think in the last 10 years the industry through advocacy and stuff has really changed the dynamic of of professionalizing the industry. So in the past, I remember when I first started in music, everybody thought of the music as the wild, wild west. Politicians didn't really want to be associated with music or musicians. When you'd go to Canberra and lobby, which I've done many, many times, there wasn't a whole lot of, people were a bit sus. They didn't necessarily want to be associated with musicians because musicians had a reputation of drugs and rock and roll, you know, and I get it. But then when we started going to the politicians and saying like, what was the song that you had at your wedding? And they'd say like, I was hunters and collectors. And you go, okay, so unless we make these changes, the next hunters and collectors is not going to be around. And when you have those, tell those personal stories, they're very responsive. And people like John Graham, New South Wales, a minister for music and Tony Burke have done a really pretty amazing job of getting these things across the line. And we can always do more. I mean, there's issues, I won't bore you with them now, but there's issues that We need to get sorted. And I believe that we can get them across the line. And obviously, AI is one of the massive ones. But yeah, they can do more. But the government is actually, you know, they've been quite responsive to- I'm happy to hear.
00:38:17
Speaker 1: It because as a parent, step-parent of a 22-year-old, it's an important, I feel, because it happened to me and it changed the way I felt about the world. It's an important- learning experience as a young adult to go and stand in a muddy field with 50 000 people and see people and stand waiting for your band to come on be in the middle of 5 000 people all with tears down their faces screaming songs that you've never heard but going something's happening here this is interesting and kind of just that's good for a community to be exposed to the differences.
00:38:50
Speaker 2: Like yeah i mean some of the greatest times of my life were at festivals. Like I started going to big day out when I was 15 and I went to, you know, all of them until I was playing at them, you know, which was just mind blowing to me. So I guess I want one thing I would say is festivals are having a hard time and I don't know, you know, subsidizing things. I always have a bit of a difficult relationship with subsidizing things because if the market's not there to support them and they're failing, then subsidizing things, sometimes it's a bit of a false economy. I'm not really sure what the solution is there except making the offering better, you know? And then obviously it ties into things like cost of living is just through the roof. So how are kids going to afford that? And then it sort of gets way beyond the remit of the music industry. So it's a tricky one, but, you know, having said that, I totally agree that seminal, incredible experiences happen in those environments where anything could happen, you know? And I think My observation of young people's lives, sort of teens to early twenties is their lives are very curated. You know, dating is all online now. I mean, there's a bit of a backlash against that now I know, but you know, everything's very sort of, there are restrictions and there's limitations and there's sort of structure around it. Plus everything's on demand, right? And there's something amazing about going to a festival. And as you say, having to wait three, four hours before your band comes on. And in the meantime, you meet 20 people and see another band that you've decide that you like, you know? So seminal experiences. Um, yeah, I don't know. I don't know what the answer is with festivals. I'm, I really feel sad about the loss of Splendour and Falls Festival. I had, you know, some of the best times of my life as a musician and a punter at those festivals. Yeah.
00:40:38
Speaker 1: I hope they, I can see it coming young people, particularly through G. I could be, I can see her searching.
00:40:44
Speaker 2: Out her and her mates.
00:40:45
Speaker 1: They search out these experiences more and more. They deliberately leave their phones.
00:40:48
Speaker 2: I think it's just like, it's sort of human nature, isn't it? Like we get given things and we love them and it's comfortable and easy. And then we realize that we don't actually like things to be comfortable and easy. We like, like humans need to push against something. I remember when I was 18 or so, I read a book, I think it was called The Mescalito Way of Knowing. And it was about an anthropologist who went and trained as a shaman in the, in the 1970s.
00:41:12
Speaker 1: And he.
00:41:15
Speaker 2: Basically has the whole shamanistic vision, becomes a bird, you know, does, it wasn't ayahuasca, it was peyote or something like that. Anyway, his learning from the whole thing was that you'll only be satisfied and happy the second before you die, because the meaning of life is to be pushing against something. The only path is the path with heart and heart in this context means not exactly struggle, but resistance, you know? And I really, I really believe that, you know, it's like, Sometimes you want an easy life, but actually you're not going to be satisfied.
00:41:48
Speaker 1: The only growth in nature comes from pushing against resistance. Any tropism, any phototropism, geotropism, anything, it comes from pushing against resistance. How our muscles get bigger is how our mental health gets better by being with the anxiety. That's the only way that growth happens.
00:42:04
Speaker 2: I'm with you. It's fair.
00:42:07
Speaker 1: Just a quick moment away from Josh Pike.
00:42:09
Speaker 2: Back in a second.
00:42:14
Speaker 1: Before we get back to Josh Pike, you can find all the links to his books and his albums in the show notes. That's where you can also find the YouTube channel, which this show makes. And all of our interviews are up there. You can watch them should you choose. There's also a newsletter in the show notes. I love that I get a chance to be in contact with you regularly. It's a lovely thing. Let's get back to the last part of our conversation with Josh Pike.
00:42:40
Speaker 2: You talked a bit about anxiety.
00:42:42
Speaker 1: There was a moment that happened to you on stage a couple of months ago down in Victoria. And speaking of being with anxiety, you had a moment on stage where you're like, hang on guys, just need a sec. Came off stage, got yourself sorted, walked back out and was really open about it. What would you say to people about what was happening right before you felt you needed to go off and what was it that got you to walk out?
00:43:08
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's a good question. So, I'd been feeling weird all day. Like the backstory of that whole few months was that I'd, I'd been on, I'd been on anti-anxiety medication for years. And as anybody that has these issues, like I was feeling great. Everything was going great. And I was like, I don't need this anymore.
00:43:27
Speaker 1: Yes.
00:43:28
Speaker 2: And so I, I also have ADHD and I was like, I want to, stop my anti-anxiety medication and, and address the ADHD in case it's the ADHD that's causing the anxiety. So I had, I did have a plan, but I was poorly. You talked to your doctor about it? Yeah. This particular doctor gave me bad advice about weaning. I had really bad withdrawals. Then I went on a 36 state regional tour. Yikes. And so by the end of that tour, I was just fried. I was just fried. And, um, So I'd felt a bit weird all day and I was playing the show and it was really hot in the room. It makes me feel uncomfortable talking about it. And I was playing and I just felt that whoosh of the anxiety coming up from my toes. And I realized that I was like, okay, but you can just, you can do this. And I realized that I was just sort of like, I wasn't singing words anymore. I was just kind of like, and I was like, okay, you just, you got to leave. A couple of technical issues that happened as well. And I was just rattled. And I just said, I mean, I couldn't go on. Like I just, there was, I had to just, I had to just leave. I had to say it. So I was just like, I'm sorry, everybody. I'm just having a panic attack. It happens sometimes. I'm just going to step off stage. Thanks for coming. And I was about three quarters of the way through the show. So I got off stage and I just took some deep breaths. And to be, to be honest, I slugged a bit of whiskey to just sort of slow myself down. And I went outside to get fresh air and I just I was like, nah, fuck this. Like I don't, and this is what I was saying to you off air again, like my tendency is to fight things.
00:45:05
Speaker 1: Right.
00:45:06
Speaker 2: And so I don't, I don't think this is necessarily a good, good thing that I did, but instead of just accepting that that's what was happening to me, I fought it. And I was like, nah, fuck that. That's not how I want to go down. And I was like, I don't want this to, you know, I don't, I don't want this to be my identity. Um, and so I went back on and I just played three more songs. And then I left and then I played three more shows that weekend and I sort of got through them.
00:45:29
Speaker 1: What did it feel like to go back on? What did it feel like to, cause you, you said it, you're fighting it. I would challenge that. I would say you walk back on there. It was all still in your body.
00:45:39
Speaker 2: It was in my body. That's for sure.
00:45:41
Speaker 1: I don't have to like this, but I'm going to finish this fucking thing I said I would do.
00:45:44
Speaker 2: I think that's a generous way to think about it. My, my relationship with it over the last few months is, has, has sort of, uh, yeah, developed. But, um, I mean, I can honestly say at that point, it was just like, fuck, fuck you. Fuck you. I'm going to just, I'm, you know, sometimes that's what it takes though. I know. Well, that's true. Sometimes it is like, shut the fuck up. Just go and do it.
00:46:06
Speaker 1: Yeah.
00:46:07
Speaker 2: So I did it. And, um, and I, and I felt proud, but what I mainly felt was the generosity of the audience. That's, that's the truth is like, I felt like I was just sort of getting through and just, you know, I just, I'm a professional. I've been doing this for 20 years. I've never, I think I've canceled one show in my, in my life, you know? Um, I've played shows with literally with swine flu, you know, I've been to rock doctors to get a jab in the bum to, of steroids to keep playing shows. And I've never, I've never stopped.
00:46:37
Speaker 1: Right.
00:46:38
Speaker 2: And so part of it was just like, I'm a professional. I'm going to see through this, this, this project. But yeah, the main thing that stuck with me and what I felt was the generosity of the crowd. Cause everyone was just like, you know, this is standing ovation. People were just amazing. And then the next day I did a, a statement about it on Instagram because I didn't want it to just be this weird thing that happened. And I was just really open about it and it was 100% positive responses. And it was also like kind of chill responses, you know, it was more like, it wasn't like, oh, you poor thing. It was like, do what you gotta do, man. You know, like just good on you for going back on, good on you for talking about it, but also just don't be kind to yourself and don't, don't worry about it kind of thing. And that was really, empowering because, you know, it's very like, it's very confronting being on stage anyway. And then when something like that happens to express your vulnerability or to have that expressed beyond your control is, it's pretty fucking horrible.
00:47:39
Speaker 1: But there was something else that I really liked about what you did. Not only, not only that you said on stage, but also that you wrote in a statement, it was like, what's the effect of like, it happens. It happens to people all the time. Yeah. This is just a thing that happens when we, it happens to humans a lot. Like I'm not some special snowflake. This is a thing. It's a part of being a human. Occasionally this shows up.
00:47:59
Speaker 2: Yeah.
00:48:00
Speaker 1: And I really like that because it does explain that, that thing that I called the ambulance for. Oh, it's just a thing that my body does.
00:48:08
Speaker 2: Yeah.
00:48:09
Speaker 1: When a certain degree of factors have played in, out in a particular order.
00:48:13
Speaker 2: It goes, well, this is going to happen. I'm out.
00:48:15
Speaker 1: We're going to look, let's, and you think this is like your body's getting ready to explode or fight, destroy. And, Just to say that, it really democratized it, I think, the word for me. It really took a lot of the pressure off the situation by just going, this is the.
00:48:29
Speaker 2: Thing that happens. That's the key because, you know, again, as a male of the 90s, we didn't talk about mental health. And I've had a lot of friends over the years that have had these sorts of issues that didn't talk about it. And, you know, we didn't, I guess we didn't really have the emotional intelligence to think about it or talk about it. And I just know from experience, like, It's, it alleviates 80% of the pressure when you just say, say it out loud. And, you know, so I played my first couple of shows again last weekend and on the first show that was, which is in Melbourne, which was the last place that I'd had a really massive panic attack and I'd ended up in hospital. I was just like all day. It was just coursing through my body. But I had this thing. I was just saying to myself, I can sit with uncomfortable feelings. It's just a feeling. Nobody's ever died from this. It's just, yeah, you feel like shit. but it's not affecting your hands you know it's just a fucking thing that you don't like you know it's like like playing with a you know a sore tummy or something like that you know and so when i went on stage i said you know after the first song i said because i'd had to postpone these shows and it was it was this rescheduled show and i said you know thanks for being patient as you know, uh, I've been having these issues and, uh, but it's great to be back. And then I sort of, as a, on a whim, I said, who else has these sorts of issues in the crowd? And I, and it was like 50% of the crowd put their hands up. And it was something about that for me was very powerful. Cause for me, like for them, I know that they appreciated my honesty, but for me as a, the person with 400 people staring at me and me going like, fuck, am I going to have a panic attack again? It was incredibly powerful to feel their honesty reflected back at me in a way that just took the pressure off because it isn't, it's incredibly common, you know?
00:50:13
Speaker 1: It's part of the survival mechanism that when these things happen, they try to, our brain tries to convince us that it's permanent, that it's personal and it's global. Like this is how it's going to always feel forever.
00:50:22
Speaker 2: Yeah.
00:50:22
Speaker 1: And it's only happening to me and it's going to affect everything. So you start thinking about ways to stop it that can.
00:50:29
Speaker 2: Yeah.
00:50:30
Speaker 1: Sometimes your solutions for the situation aren't appropriate.
00:50:32
Speaker 2: Aren't good.
00:50:33
Speaker 1: Yeah. And so, but then when someone else goes, oh no, me too. Immediately is half as bad.
00:50:38
Speaker 2: Yeah, it really is. It's, I mean, it's, I say to my kids all the time, you know, like the youngest one's 13, the oldest one's almost 16. But when both of them turned 13, I wrote, I made these books for them called things I wish I'd known when I was 13. And they're different for each of them. They're personalized, but there's one thing that was in both, which is like, if you're uncomfortable in a situation, whether it's your first kiss, your first sexual experience, you know, like if you're your first job or whatever, or just, just anything, if you're uncomfortable in a situation, just say it out loud. because it immediately alleviates all this pressure. And maybe the person beside you will be like, oh, fuck you, you're weak or whatever. But that highlights that they're a prick. But probably, most likely what will happen is that person will be like, don't worry, mate, it's all right. And we don't do that enough. And we certainly don't do it to ourselves. And that's something. So when this stuff happens to me now, I think of myself and I kind of think of myself giving myself a hug. And I'm like, it's cool, mate. You've got it.
00:51:35
Speaker 1: That's a lovely idea for a gift. I wish I'd thought of that, wouldn't you? You were 13. That's lovely.
00:51:42
Speaker 2: That's a really lovely idea.
00:51:44
Speaker 1: I've been listening to your new record the last couple of days. The record's called Kingdom Within. It's a pretty good rainy day record.
00:51:51
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'll pay that, yeah. It's a good rainy day record. It's good driving in the rain.
00:51:56
Speaker 1: Oh, man.
00:51:56
Speaker 2: Even more so.
00:51:57
Speaker 1: There's some good road trip songs on there. I'm not going to lie. I lived in America for a long time, and I would always Find the AM country station where I was driving for a long ways.
00:52:08
Speaker 2: It's like, fuck, that shit is just written. That's what you want.
00:52:11
Speaker 1: Asphalt disappearing under your front wheels. I love it. It is solid, solid. But this album, for you, you have a studio at home. You're Prince. You walk in by yourself. You walk out by yourself, right? But you work with a producer on this one. What was it like for you? I mean, you've mentioned this, and I understand this. People go, well, aren't you worried about being on stage? You don't understand, but I'm on stage. Everything's fine because I know what's going to happen. And I get to say what's going to happen. And that's where everything's cool.
00:52:37
Speaker 2: Cool, man. Which is why I was confronting for that anxiety to happen in my safe space, what I consider to be my safe space.
00:52:44
Speaker 1: So when it comes to creativity and this idea that, like from what I understand, you weren't even demoing songs and bringing to a bridge. It's like, no, we're going to write them to get, this is where it's going to happen. What was it like to take a part of your creative process and give it to somebody else? And what would you say to people about the value of that?
00:52:58
Speaker 2: I was incredibly liberating. It was cathartic. I mean, for me, like, so what I would, I would demo them just acoustic guitar and vocals, but a lot of the time it was just gibberish vocals. I hadn't finished the lyrics. So I'd go up to Chris's studio up in Byron and Chris Collins I've known since he was about 19 or 20. He was my first guitar tech. And then he ended up playing in my band and then he went off to have this illustrious career as a incredible producer. But because I know him so well and I know that he knows my material so well, but he also has this incredibly awesome aesthetic of his own. You know, I've worked with other producers who aren't super familiar with my stuff and it just, I don't know, it never works. Like there's, I know what I want, but I also, if I trust the person, I really value their input. And so for me, this whole process was a very cathartic process of being able to get a little bit of distance from what I would say are my most personal songs and sort of most difficult songs to write, like songs like Magic and sometimes Life Leaves More Than It Takes, which are, you know, based around my mum who'd passed away, you know, during the process of writing this record, you know, after a very long battle with Alzheimer's. It was a very traumatic period. I knew that I needed a bit of distance from not the actual creation of the songs and the lyrics, but how to structure it and how to present it. and I didn't want to fall back into just my old patterns and we all get into our own patterns. We've been doing some particular field of creativity for, for 20 odd years. Yeah. Uh, so I would highly recommend it, but it needs to be with the person that you really trust and love, you know, because in, in my way of writing songs, it's, it's as important to me as, as anything, you know, it's like, it's my legacy. Um, so yeah, highly recommend it if you can find the right person.
00:54:58
Speaker 1: Was it a lot for you sometimes to like, just go, I just, this, my idea is this, but I'm going to have to just go in that direction.
00:55:06
Speaker 2: No, it wasn't like there was, it was like, there was one song, there was two songs that we pretty much completed, which we just scrapped because I just, I didn't, I didn't like it. They're good songs, but I just didn't resonate with them. And then the rest of them, like I literally was, I mean, I played the guitar and I would play some bits of keys and stuff like that. And obviously I'd be like, Oh, we should do this here. And, here and there, but I, it was, I was pretty hands-off like Chris, you know, like kingdom within we, we created that song in one day. And apart from the acoustic guitar and the vocals, Chris played everything. And, um, I wouldn't have done what he did and what he did was perfect, you know? And I can't explain that. That's the beauty of creativity. That's the beauty of collaboration with the right person. You know, like we, we got to the end of the day and we both looked at each other and we were like, what the fuck just happened? We were cooking there, man, you know? And we listened back to it after we... I did it in sort of five-day tranches. And I came back after a couple of months and we listened to it again. We were like, no notes. Like, that's... What happened? And neither of us could even really remember what was happening. It was just like, that's the magic of creativity that I'll always be completely fascinated by and addicted to. And it's why I will never stop doing what I do, you know?
00:56:22
Speaker 1: In your music, since you started... And I ask this as... We have two kids. Our youngest son's name is Wolfgang. In your music, there has been a recurring theme of the wolf.
00:56:32
Speaker 2: Yeah.
00:56:33
Speaker 1: Can you talk to me about that?
00:56:35
Speaker 2: I don't know really what it is.
00:56:36
Speaker 1: It's on this new album.
00:56:37
Speaker 2: Yeah, it is. Yeah. So like dating back to Feeding the Wolves, I mean, Feeding the Wolves, the song, the wolves was sort of like a metaphor for the negativity in me, you know? And so it says, I feed the wolves. Um, now they just feed off me.
00:56:57
Speaker 1: Right.
00:56:57
Speaker 2: And it was kind of like, I was recognizing even back then that there was a, I don't want to say darkness because it sounds all mysterious and dramatic, like, like twilight. But, um, there's a, there's something in me that is, is unfortunately fed by negativity. And then eventually that sort of becomes a self-fulfilling thing and it, and it starts to feed you and you feed off it. And, you know, you have to kind of try and quash it. And then there was these other animals as rabbits and the foxes. And the fox for me was the real me that I was trying to, you know, escape from the wolves. And the rabbit was always my wife. And then there was these birds, which were also this other threat. And they've just sort of permeated the songs. I don't know why. I mean, I loved Greek mythology and stuff like that when I was a kid. So I think there's sort of some of that imagery, but it's also, it's just easier to talk about emotions sometimes through Images, you know, animals and iconography and stuff like that. Have you met my friend Aesop?
00:57:54
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah.
00:57:55
Speaker 2: He writes a mean fable.
00:57:57
Speaker 1: He does real good fables. Yeah, and so does Kipling. Like, good stuff.
00:58:01
Speaker 2: Well, but, you know, like, for real, like, I think those sorts of stories resonate with me. You know, these sort of, like, there's a song of mine called New Year's Song, which is based on East of Eden, Steinbeck, and it's this concept of timshel, which is a Hebrew term. which means thou mayest. Um, and I love that because it's, you know, the whole book is about, you know, the dichotomy between people that say that they must, um, versus must not. And then it's like, no, you, you, you may, if you want. And that's what life is every day, you get a choice every day, every second, you get a choice to, to do, to be what you want to be. And you can make a good choice or a bad choice. And I love the sort of you know, almost mystical narrative, you know, fableistic narrative of those sorts of things. So I think wolves became a great way to sort of have an icon for a, a broader emotion and being able to sort of use a metaphor as opposed to saying there is a darkness within me that sometimes, you know, I feed into too much and sometimes it affects my life. It's like, that's the wolf. And then, on this latest album, I've sort of flipped it and I think it's interesting. I've said this before, but I feel like this album was almost like a premonition. I feel like I wrote these songs without really knowing what they were about. And then in the last few months, I feel like it's all come to light to me, which is, again, the fucking magic of creativity that I'll never get over. But the wolves on this one, It's these three-eyed, two-mouthed wolves. And I feel like they are now protecting the kingdom within. They're like sort of, you know, I think we all need to protect this internal moral compass that we have, that we all naturally have. You know, there's a line in Kingdom Within that says, with no kingdom within, such a rudderless thing we become, right? And I feel like our society, we've become a bit rudderless, you know? We don't have this, and I'm not religious, I don't believe in God. I don't think you necessarily need that kind of thing to be a rudder, but there are things that we all lean on to be that rudder. And for me, it's family, creativity, nature, um, you know, love as cliched as that is.
01:00:10
Speaker 1: Yeah.
01:00:11
Speaker 2: And so now I feel like the wolves have flipped and my relationship with the wolves has changed. I'm happy to hear it.
01:00:17
Speaker 1: And maybe, maybe one day you can come and meet the wolf who lives here.
01:00:21
Speaker 2: Yeah, cool.
01:00:21
Speaker 1: He's a good lad, but you gotta have to be into smart bricks, Lego smart bricks.
01:00:25
Speaker 2: I'm pretty, I'm heavy into them. There's a lot happening here at the moment. Um, Thanks for coming around. Thanks, mate. Bloody good to have you on the show.
01:00:35
Speaker 1: That was Josh Pike. You can go and buy some of his books to read to your children. You can go and listen to his new album, The Kingdom Within. Or you could just share this episode with a friend if you found something in it that you enjoy. Maybe it made you think differently about where you listen to your music and how you listen to your music and how the people who get paid for your music get to keep doing what they're doing. Thanks for being a part of the show. If this episode was good for you, please like, share, subscribe, rate, follow. Tell a friend about this show. Thanks for being a part of it. I'll see you next time. Go and do wonderful things. Go listen to your favorite song and go make it better than yesterday.
01:01:10
Speaker 2: Off you pop.