An Interview with Russ Flynn

0:20 Luke F. Walton What's good, everybody? Scoobert Doobert here. Welcome back to Love Music More. My guest today is Russ Flynn, principally known as the touring member of alternative rock band X Ambassadors. He's toured all over the world with them. We got really deep into touring stories. It was absolutely awesome. He's also an incredible jazz performer.

0:39 Luke F. Walton He has played with all sorts of different artists like Great Good Fine OK and Sean Lennon. and he's also really schooled within music in a bunch of different genres.

0:51 Luke F. Walton So that was one of my favorite things about this conversation was talking about cross-genre work and the ways that both playing guitar and playing bass is better at that than I am, but I understand a little bit, and how they can kind of inform each other and the different paths that are available to multi-instrumentalists. He studied jazz performance at the University of Vermont.

1:13 Luke F. Walton Mach and then jazz composition and arranging at the Aaron Copland School of Music. Great conversation. I'm really excited for it. Before we get there. I want to introduce you to DistroKid. DistroKid makes music distribution fun and easy, and I actually mean that. I use them. They are awesome. They are both fun and easy. With unlimited uploads and artists get to keep 100% of royalties and earnings.

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2:17 Luke F. Walton dot com slash vip slash love music more and get started with a 30% off discount getting unlimited music up there enjoy the episode what's

2:37 Luke F. Walton good everybody i'm Scoobert Doobert welcome back to love music more i am joined with russ flynn welcome to the show russ

2:44 Russ Flynn Thanks for having me, I'm David

2:45 Luke F. Walton so excited to talk about touring, talk about guitars, talk about the ways that musicians can actually have other hobbies, which is something I've only sort of heard about. One of my recent guests, he was really into gastronomy and cooking and food chemistry and stuff like that, and he saw these parallels into his audio plugins.

3:03 Luke F. Walton I'm excited to talk mixology, homebrewing and all that and maybe see if we could find some parallels to... to making the music. So I'm really excited for this conversation.

3:13 Russ Flynn Likewise, sounds good

3:14 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

3:14 Russ Flynn to me.

3:14 Luke F. Walton So I got to ask, first off, what's it like to be playing with, you know, ex-ambassadors internationally navigating other cultures, playing these big stages? What's it actually really like? Put somebody in your shoes to be living that as a day to day.

3:30 Russ Flynn Well, I will say I don't think it's quite as glamorous as most people might think it is. I joke that I'm in places like Indianapolis a lot more frequently than I'm in places like Paris.

3:41 Luke F. Walton First.

3:41 Russ Flynn It's a mixed bag in the sense that we do a lot of festival gigs, we do a lot of headline touring, private events, we do plenty of college shows, we do everything under the sun. You know, sometimes that means you're on a plane heading back home and you're on cloud nine and sometimes you're like, oh man, what am I doing with my life, you know?

4:04 Russ Flynn The band has really passionate fans and I love playing headline shows and seeing people sing the words to all the music, you know, sometimes you need to get more energy than the audience is giving and sometimes they're giving more energy than you're giving and you have to rise to that.

4:26 Luke F. Walton Love that. I love that. And also, it's such a good point about, yeah, Indianapolis. No hate to Indianapolis, but I understand in terms of the relative excitement or out of your day-to-day norm. Yes, that is a very fair point.

4:41 Russ Flynn I do need to find a new way of phrasing that because the last time we played in Indianapolis was this past fall and we did an event for the Colts Cool and we noticed someone setting up some guitars elsewhere in another room. I was like, I'm going to go take a peek at those. And lo and behold, the guitars that were being set up were some of Jim Irsay's private collection, which happened to include.

5:06 Russ Flynn Jerry Garcia's Tiger,

5:09 Luke F. Walton Oh, wow.

5:10 Russ Flynn the guitar that Kurt Cobain used in the Smells Like Teen Spirit video, George Harrison's SG from Rubber Soul,

5:19 Luke F. Walton Yes.

5:20 Russ Flynn the drum head from Ringo's bass drum from the Ed Sullivan show.

5:25 Luke F. Walton No, no.

5:26 Russ Flynn I swear,

5:27 Luke F. Walton Oh my God.

5:28 Russ Flynn David Gilmour's Black Strat,

5:30 Luke F. Walton What?

5:31 Russ Flynn Eric

5:31 Luke F. Walton I didn't even know he sold that.

5:33 Russ Flynn Clapton's The Fool guitar, the crazy psychedelic... dog painted one that sg

5:38 Luke F. Walton Yes.

5:38 Russ Flynn and then non-musical items too like jfk's rocking chair and the boots that muhammad ali wore in one of the really famous fights i forget which fight it was maybe the thriller in manila I don't know, but it was, and this guy, bless him,

5:59 Luke F. Walton Yes,

5:59 Russ Flynn he like talked me through the whole collection for like 40 minutes and he gave me his card and I was like, holy cow, this is not what I expected and just wandering in some catering hall room, but you know, Indianapolis, it surprises you.

6:12 Luke F. Walton that and actually i think that guitar collecting is a really fascinating thing because you have these

6:19 Luke F. Walton these pieces but they're really they're meant to be played but they're also like they're historical entities onto themselves so you want to put them in a museum there's this weird tension in between like a living breathing instrument and one that you want to like retire in a gawk at or take a picture with

6:35 Russ Flynn Very much so. And I believe what he, Jim, the owner of the Colts, what he does is he will take them on the road, take some of these pieces on the road.

6:44 Russ Flynn and book shows in you know maybe like 500 to a thousand capped venues and play with his band

6:51 Luke F. Walton No way.

6:53 Russ Flynn play with his band and his band will have like penny aronoff in

6:56 Luke F. Walton Yes,

6:56 Russ Flynn it and like like crazy

6:57 Luke F. Walton yes.

6:57 Russ Flynn session dudes

6:58 Luke F. Walton Right.

6:59 Russ Flynn and then besides that performance then he'll have people speaking about the pieces in the collection and he just wants to share them with folks hey

7:07 Luke F. Walton That's the right way to be a billionaire, man. Yeah.

7:10 Russ Flynn it's how i would be a billionaire

7:12 Luke F. Walton Exactly. that's why we need more music education out there so we can get the billionaires before they're billionaires and then they end up being cool guys that hire us to play

7:20 Russ Flynn That's

7:20 Luke F. Walton fun

7:20 Russ Flynn so true.

7:21 Luke F. Walton gigs

7:21 Russ Flynn Yeah.

7:21 Luke F. Walton exactly

7:22 Russ Flynn They have a passion when they're flying to Mars.

7:26 Luke F. Walton well that's such a good example i think of the chaos of tour you never know what you're gonna find like you're saying good bad i'd love to hear some stories of both sides of the aisle if possible of just like anything that comes to mind anywhere on that spectrum of just like yeah what am i doing What am I doing with my life? Why did we play this venue or how do we get hired here?

7:46 Luke F. Walton Like a good example for one of mine is I was playing opening up with the Dewey Brothers and we played Moose Jaw, Canada and it was totally just a booming oil town that got had enough money that they hired and we played for like 400 people in this like weird empty hockey arena.

8:08 Russ Flynn yeah

8:08 Luke F. Walton and

8:08 Russ Flynn i

8:08 Luke F. Walton the whole band was like what what was that what did we just do we're

8:13 Russ Flynn know

8:13 Luke F. Walton the tune

8:13 Russ Flynn and

8:13 Luke F. Walton brothers

8:13 Russ Flynn the joke is like then then you look at the check and you're like okay

8:18 Luke F. Walton yep

8:18 Russ Flynn okay

8:18 Luke F. Walton yep

8:19 Russ Flynn i

8:19 Luke F. Walton exactly exactly yeah

8:21 Russ Flynn hate i hate to talk about it that way but you know it's like at the end of the day it's still the greatest job in the world to play music for people it's not always great you don't get paid for the good days you

8:31 Luke F. Walton that's a good one

8:32 Russ Flynn know right and

8:33 Luke F. Walton exactly

8:34 Russ Flynn Sometimes you just got to suck it up and do the job.

8:38 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

8:39 Russ Flynn I think that. certainly as I get older I am 39 now and I don't love bus touring I don't sleep well on

8:48 Luke F. Walton hmm

8:48 Russ Flynn a bus try as I might I get on a bus tour I get into the rhythm of getting four hours a night and it just is what it is and so there's that

8:54 Luke F. Walton I don't actually i don't know if people know what it's like to actually sleep on a tour bus it's like i feel like people have an image of this big tour bus everyone has a queen-sized bed but no it's like kind of coffin-y

9:06 Russ Flynn unless you're Bon Jovi and you have a star bus which is one person per bus where you have like a back lounge that's been converted into a king-size or queen-size bedroom most bus touring is sleeping 12 people to a bus or at best you have condo bunks so you're sleeping eight people to a bus if you have three berths that are stacked

9:32 Russ Flynn You take out the subdividers and divide them into two, and that would be the kind of buck. So in most situations, you have three, three, three, and three. That's on an American bus. In Europe, typically they're 12 14 or 16 birth buses and

9:49 Luke F. Walton I didn't know that.

9:50 Russ Flynn i

9:50 Luke F. Walton I've never done a Eurotrip.

9:51 Russ Flynn find i sleep better on european buses they're usually double decker in europe and you have more separation between like the galley area and the bathroom which is typically downstairs and then the bunk area is typically upstairs often there's a forward lounge on the european buses that'll be situated above the driver a lot of american buses you'll have

10:14 Russ Flynn doors between a back lounge and a bunk area and then a bunk area and a front lounge area slash driver area but sometimes those doors are really noisy and I always sleep passenger side rear middle you

10:29 Luke F. Walton Okay.

10:29 Russ Flynn know sometimes there's a door that's closing right in my face if people are getting up early it's hard it's just really hard uh again with the European buses I find I sleep better but the problem there is I'm six foot four and all those ceilings are like six one six two so I'm walking with my neck twisted for a month or six weeks whatever it is

10:52 Luke F. Walton Oh my god.

10:53 Russ Flynn I mean, the benefit of bus touring is that you wake up in a city and you can go out and explore immediately before loading.

11:02 Russ Flynn But, you know, the downside is that you just if you're me, you don't sleep well. And I don't hate flying, but.

11:10 Russ Flynn I hate long haul flying like we were just in Australia for two and a half weeks and we finished the run in Perth and I had to fly Perth to Sydney on a red eye uh Virgin Australia and then Sydney to LA on a red eye so I woke up on Friday whatever day it was in Sydney and then I also woke up on Friday the same day in LA it was like five-hour flight sit in the airport for five hours get on a 15-hour flight wake

11:43 Luke F. Walton Hmm.

11:43 Russ Flynn up it's the same day basically the same time as when I had landed in Sydney and then I flew to New York and then I drove to Philly

11:51 Luke F. Walton Oh.

11:51 Russ Flynn so it was like 35 hours when all was said and done and all the while you need to sit there and you know remind yourself of the great show experiences you had

12:04 Russ Flynn That's what gets you through it. It's like, you know, especially if you're sitting seat 42F by the bathroom, you know, if you don't have status with a given airline or something like that, it can be physically grueling and mentally grueling. And, you know, you just get off the plane and go get a good massage and

12:25 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

12:25 Russ Flynn try to remind yourself that playing music for people is a beautiful thing.

12:31 Luke F. Walton Yes. Yes. And, um, that. Like that, I think, puts it so in perspective because people, they'll have work travel or they'll have personal travel, they'll have group travel, but they don't, very few people have the combination of constant going all over the place and then the mixed. versions of travel like yeah being

12:53 Russ Flynn Right.

12:54 Luke F. Walton crammed into a bus and then flying on a plane and like doing all of these this this like long chain of things that i think is a is a certain kind of torture and a certain kind of mental test that i don't know if a lot of people get to experience yeah

13:07 Russ Flynn It's true. And I really get excited about going new places, like going new places, experiencing new culture, experiencing new cuisine is everything to me. I mean, music is.

13:17 Russ Flynn is absolutely my my first love but like food and culture are right there with me with with music and i was having dinner with my dad last night and i was looking at a u.s tour that we're gonna have coming a u.s tour that we're gonna have coming up in september and then also i was talking about european dates that we'll have this summer Nice.

13:39 Russ Flynn and you know even if it's tiny town in hungary or slovakia whatever it might be if it's someplace new I'm jonesed about it

13:47 Luke F. Walton Yeah,

13:47 Russ Flynn because

13:48 Luke F. Walton yeah

13:48 Russ Flynn I want to I want to experience the gamut of what the world has to offer you know like I there's something I love specifically about Eastern European towns where you know they don't get a lot of music and if they do it's not American bands I remember I played a jazz festival in Serbia like 12 or 13 years ago

14:14 Russ Flynn And it was so fascinating to me because it was a pretty avant-garde outfit that I was playing with. I was playing with Elliot Sharp, who's like this iconic downtown jazz guitar player. It was so interesting because we were presenting the music of Willie Dixon. So like American blues music, but with this avant-garde downtown jazz twist to it.

14:37 Russ Flynn And I remember looking out in the audience there, it was like Injia or Novi Sad, Serbia, and you had the most wide range of folks in the audience. You had six-year-olds and 90-year-olds, and I couldn't help but sit there and think like, oh man, I'm sure everyone just comes out for anything that's going on in this town because... why not and

15:04 Luke F. Walton Mm-hmm.

15:04 Russ Flynn and so many of these folks especially the older folks like they were probably censored aggressively during the soviet era Interesting.

15:13 Russ Flynn and anything american jazz related that's like free expression oriented is going to be thrilling to them you know and i think of like japanese culture is sort of similar like that where jazz is such a thing in japan and i think largely because japanese culture is my absolute favorite but you know it's very structured and people find their niche and they operate in their niche and no one is too loud and i mean that metaphorically no one no one is like you know even like folks who are punks in japan

15:46 Russ Flynn during the week nine to five they're they're straight-laced business persons who you know are wearing a very limited color palette and uh have a you know sort of static routine to their lives and then when they go out to a punk show or whatever you know they throw on a mohawk and they wear like the ripped jacket and stuff but like every rip in the jacket has been placed precisely so it's a very structured culture and i think that they have such an affinity

16:15 Russ Flynn eternity for jazz because it's so antithetical to

16:18 Luke F. Walton Hmm.

16:18 Russ Flynn their everything

16:19 Luke F. Walton Hmm.

16:20 Russ Flynn you

16:21 Luke F. Walton Cool.

16:21 Russ Flynn know so I I want to experience it all that's the point and I especially love places that might make the average person scratch their head like, why are you going there?

16:31 Luke F. Walton Yeah, what's good guys Scoobert Doobert here for the love music more podcast and I want to let you in on a little secret one of my favorite new things minuendo lossless earplugs So these are really really really cool.

16:45 Luke F. Walton I've got two of them here It comes in this awesome sweet box, but it comes with a bunch of little goodies like carrying case tether cleaning tools One, you can swap out any of the included tips, so depending on the size of your ear canal, we're all built different, you can get a nice comfortable fit.

17:08 Luke F. Walton But there's also this little lever on these adjustable versions that can go from 7 to 25 decibels of cutting. So depending on if you're listening to new metal or jazz, you can just hit the little lever and adjust in real time and I think that's really really cool. You know, for the longest time I was listening in those awful foam earplugs and it makes the music sound like that.

17:28 Luke F. Walton It just cuts off all of those high frequencies. And so I was always tempted to sneak them out a little bit. Oh, it's my favorite song. No earplugs. And you get hearing damage. You have tinnitus after the show and then you come back, you want to work in the studio and guess what? Your ears aren't right.

17:41 Luke F. Walton And that's why I love Minuendo because you can just pop these in and have full, full, full fidelity with these lossless earplugs. They're two different versions. One is adjustable with a little lever and then this one is fixed at 17 decibels. So check out Minuendo, M-I-N-U-E-N-D-O dot com, where you can search them on Amazon and find Minuendo earplugs today. Get cracking.

18:06 Russ Flynn Like, I want that.

18:07 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

18:08 Russ Flynn You know, yeah,

18:09 Luke F. Walton Totally. Well, this is where I think we could circle back to the initial tease of your love of spirits and brewing and all that, because I think that all those things are intertwined where like you're saying food and drink and language and music, all those are means by which to communicate culture from one person and to like share and have community.

18:32 Luke F. Walton Could you talk a little bit about how maybe that might all align in your head? In your head or in ways that they might intersect?

18:38 Russ Flynn Yeah, I will say when I'm cooking and

18:41 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

18:42 Russ Flynn when I'm making music, be it as an improviser or... purely as a mixing engineer whatever it might be

18:52 Luke F. Walton Yes.

18:52 Russ Flynn you know I have a lot of irons in the fire at any given time but like my headspace is very very similar when I'm cooking in a kitchen and I want to make something new it's very rare that I'm following a recipe explicitly more often than not I will take a survey of like six to ten recipes see what the integral components are the integral ingredients are art and then take it from there with some improvisation I

19:20 Luke F. Walton I like that.

19:20 Russ Flynn guess growing up like I never really saw the distinction between one medium and another you know it was maybe I found myself reaching a higher level of proficiency more quickly in one medium than another like I feel like I understood cooking quickly and I understood music

19:40 Russ Flynn somewhat quickly uh and so i pursued those disciplines but you know i feel like if you're a creative individual and i mean that like there's like the big c creative you know like in like corporate speech people are like oh that person's a creative like a capital c you know and i kind of i don't know i feel uncomfortable with that a little bit but like when i say a creative person i mean someone who's just

20:05 Russ Flynn perpetually propelled to create I've always been blessed and plagued with that you know I remember having a conversation with my tour manager years ago about that and he's like I love music and I love food but I'm not a creative person because I don't lose sleep on a Tuesday because I'm not doing enough and I lose sleep on a Tuesday because I'm not doing enough

20:29 Luke F. Walton Totally.

20:29 Russ Flynn You know, like

20:30 Luke F. Walton I

20:30 Russ Flynn I'm

20:30 Luke F. Walton do.

20:31 Russ Flynn constantly hit with the idea of like, you know, what is my legacy and am I engaged enough creatively to be happy, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And that's the downside of it. The upside of it is, of course, that creating is a beautiful thing and I love waking up and feeling inspired and making something that wasn't there yesterday. Be it food, be it beer, I've been homebrewing for. 20 years now.

20:56 Russ Flynn Be it a song, even if no one hears it. like i love that i love that and i have to constantly stay engaged with that in some capacity but that's all to say if it's cooking if it's brewing if it's music i can go to bed and rest easy if i did something and made something that day and i don't know if that that's the way that everyone operates you joked earlier about musicians with other hobbies it's true like i have lots of friends who are musicians who don't have other hobbies or if they do you know they're a guitar player and like

21:28 Russ Flynn and like they have the hobby of collecting vintage gear or something and like I do that too I love collecting vintage gear and I love collecting guitars I also love collecting spirits and when I'm out on the road if I find myself with downtime I'll go to six or seven stores hunting for specific bottles or great deals or something and maybe I won't even buy anything and that can really

21:51 Russ Flynn tick people off that i'm on the road with it's like you want to go to a liquor store with me and you're like sure yeah and they don't realize what a commitment that is because i might walk around for an hour and just leave without getting anything or talk to the clerk for half an hour and learn something or teach them something just because i'm walking away physically empty-handed doesn't mean that i'm walking away empty-handed metaphorically i guess um

22:14 Luke F. Walton Yep, yep, experientially.

22:15 Russ Flynn experientially yeah yeah i feel the need to create stuff and it doesn't always have to be music and I feel like that's a blessing in some ways because if I get burnt out on music for a while I can just say you know what I'm not going to play for a week and I'm gonna make ramen every day and try to dial that in you

22:37 Luke F. Walton It's so cool. That's so cool.

22:38 Russ Flynn know

22:39 Luke F. Walton I do. And I actually, I have, I've gone through that myself. I was so music obsessed for so long. And then I started to allow myself to have other hobbies and then my music got better.

22:50 Russ Flynn Yeah.

22:50 Luke F. Walton I really think that one cup filled the other in not just just taking the break, but honestly, like one thing I'd like to zero in on is your concept of influence. Like as an accomplished, you've played so many different genres, you've played with so many different acts and.

23:05 Luke F. Walton also the way that you were talking about surveying and taking the essential nature and then improvising on top of it i just in my head i was like oh yeah that's like one of the best advices to be like how do i learn how to do a guitar solo it's like try that huh

23:19 Russ Flynn I think with food or with music, and this is in particular with working for other people as a side person, I liken working with someone as a side person to cooking for a specific set of people.

23:32 Luke F. Walton Cool.

23:32 Russ Flynn And I love cooking for large groups, like 20 people. I love knowing the tastes of a given group because like I love so many different genres of music and I love so many different genres of food and I've never like really settled on my identity being like a jazz bass player or like a rock guitar player or whatever else. I love just.

23:58 Russ Flynn serving the moment and wanting to share in a great musical experience with people so

24:05 Russ Flynn If I'm playing a jazz gig or if I'm playing a rock gig or it's a Latin gig or whatever it is, I don't want to know what the band leader or the person in charge wants from me because I want to like pander to them.

24:20 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

24:21 Russ Flynn It's it's so much more positive and genuine and authentic than that. I want to serve the music in the best way I can possible.

24:29 Russ Flynn so i want to know what do you what do you want from me what's the gig do you want me to improvise and stretch or do you want me to play like clean and concise solos do you want me to move on stage or do you not want me to move on stage there's

24:42 Luke F. Walton Right. Physical.

24:44 Russ Flynn so much more than just like the musical too it's like what's the sound i'm going for and you're not going to insult me by telling me you want this that or the other thing like i love rising the challenge of

24:55 Russ Flynn nailing the gig you know I love playing lots of different music and I love stepping away from the gig and being like okay I gave it my best uh I could improve in this way or that way the band leader would have been more pleased with my work if I had done x y or z I want to know these things I'm not going to get butthurt about it that's taken time I think my younger self when there was more ego in what I was doing I

25:23 Russ Flynn I think it was easy for me to get insulted and not take criticism constructively.

25:29 Luke F. Walton How do you work on that? Like, what are some tips if somebody was like, hey, that's me. That's where I'm at. Russ is where I want to get to. How do I bridge that gap?

25:38 Russ Flynn I think I always want to be the most complete musician that I can. And that's not to say I want to be like a jack of all trades.

25:45 Russ Flynn because that can work against you I think when I was younger it was like okay I you know because my identity wasn't resting in one particular instrument it's like I was getting high off the the initial rush of immediate gratification with specific instruments like okay I'm gonna play mandolin today and I can get good quickly up to a point here and I can play piano tomorrow and get good quickly up to a point and I would just move on instead of like working past these

26:13 Russ Flynn entropy plateaus but I think making the decided choice to want to be the best musician that I can be and if someone finds gaps in my playing

26:26 Russ Flynn to want to address thing from like a mindset of positivity years ago i realized that and i was having a conversation with some guy i was working with this is actually when we were in undergrad we were in undergrad together and we both came out of practice rooms and he was like how long have you been here today because it was really late and i was like oh i've been i've been practicing for 10 hours and he was like have you been practicing or have you been playing and that was a really insightful moment to me and i was like

26:52 Russ Flynn Okay, yeah, and I guess I was just playing all day, because it's important to play, but playing is usually for me. Practicing is also for me, but it's hard. Practicing means sounding bad.

27:11 Luke F. Walton Yes.

27:12 Russ Flynn Like, in order to practice, you should sound bad and that's not always an easy pill to swallow you know if I try to balance it when I sit down and pick up a guitar pick up a bass I try to like improvise for a little while or play something that I know well and that reassures me that I know what I'm doing and I can play and

27:35 Luke F. Walton Cool. Yep.

27:36 Russ Flynn then it's time to practice And practicing means sounding bad, in my mind, that's my perspective, I take that as a challenge now. Again, come at it positively, make a commitment to be able to do whatever it is I'm working on, you know, by the end of next week. I've been working through a book recently called The Subversive Guitar Player by this guy, I

28:04 Luke F. Walton I haven't heard of it.

28:05 Russ Flynn think his name is Joe Gore. he was a contributing writer for Premiere Guitar for a long time and it's really interesting he's a classically trained musician but he's also improvising musician he played with I think PJ Harvey for a while and maybe Tom Waits for a while or something and there's lots of stuff in the book that is really easy for me to do and there's lots of stuff in the book that's really hard for me to do and I kind of love it becomes a game it's like sitting down and finding something that you can't do at all

28:32 Luke F. Walton Yes. Yes.

28:33 Russ Flynn and then by the end of the day or end of the week whatever end of the month whatever it is being able to do it that feels like playing a great show to me Yeah, the

28:41 Luke F. Walton yeah, yeah, yeah.

28:42 Russ Flynn thing that I was working on recently out of that book was like moving a clave around between my feet and my hands and

28:50 Luke F. Walton Cool.

28:50 Russ Flynn I remember like When I was younger, I was really into Al Di Meola.

28:55 Luke F. Walton Yes.

28:56 Russ Flynn And I was really into Charlie Hunter too.

28:58 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

28:58 Russ Flynn And both those players,

29:00 Luke F. Walton Both awesome.

29:00 Russ Flynn like Charlie Hunter would have a pandero play with his foot sometimes and

29:05 Luke F. Walton Yeah, yeah, yeah.

29:05 Russ Flynn do these really complicated rhythms. I mean, he's doing everything that's

29:08 Luke F. Walton Right,

29:08 Russ Flynn really complicated.

29:08 Luke F. Walton right.

29:09 Russ Flynn But I

29:09 Luke F. Walton Type of

29:09 Russ Flynn remember

29:09 Luke F. Walton guy.

29:10 Russ Flynn being so in awe of that.

29:11 Luke F. Walton Is

29:12 Russ Flynn And then

29:12 Luke F. Walton that

29:12 Russ Flynn Al

29:12 Luke F. Walton part of Di the Meola reason

29:13 Russ Flynn was doing things

29:13 Luke F. Walton why you do bass and guitar?

29:16 Russ Flynn Yeah, kind of,

29:17 Luke F. Walton Yeah,

29:17 Russ Flynn kind

29:17 Luke F. Walton cool.

29:17 Russ Flynn of. Yeah.

29:19 Luke F. Walton Charlie

29:19 Russ Flynn it's

29:19 Luke F. Walton Hunter level.

29:20 Russ Flynn funny i saw one of those novak guitars on craigslist yesterday and i was like no

29:23 Luke F. Walton Is it time?

29:24 Russ Flynn yeah um but

29:28 Luke F. Walton Awesome.

29:28 Russ Flynn aldi miola would often play you know he showed schools in the flamenco thing and he would often play with a clave in one of his feet and that was mind-boggling to me and in this book by joe gore he he talked about doing it and i was like i'm not skipping any exercises in this book

29:45 Russ Flynn whatever it is as long as it as long as it takes me I'm gonna do it and the end of those days where I finally was like playing something really simple in the hands but like tapping a clave with my foot which I know the drummers out there Yes. sounds so incredibly easy but

30:01 Luke F. Walton Not to

30:01 Russ Flynn to me

30:01 Luke F. Walton me.

30:02 Russ Flynn me

30:02 Luke F. Walton No, not to me either.

30:04 Russ Flynn never using my feet

30:06 Luke F. Walton Right.

30:08 Russ Flynn That's

30:08 Luke F. Walton also

30:08 Russ Flynn all right.

30:09 Luke F. Walton and

30:09 Russ Flynn Now it's everything.

30:10 Luke F. Walton also and for the people that don't know clave like it's not like tapping a quarter note you know like now you're internalizing a different rhythm a different set of like strong weak and

30:21 Luke F. Walton that alone is difficult on its own and then to internalize that and play guitar at the same time like playing two instruments using your body in a new way that is more than just mind over matter it is physically like you your neurons have to reshuffle and resync you are doing stuff that necessitates practice

30:41 Russ Flynn yeah and it can be so incredibly frustrating and you take the metronome all the way down as low as it goes and you're like i'm never gonna do this And then suddenly it clicks and you have those like synapses in your brain, I

30:55 Luke F. Walton Yes.

30:56 Russ Flynn don't know what's going on,

30:56 Luke F. Walton Yes.

30:57 Russ Flynn but they form in a new way and you feel like a million bucks. It's like playing in front of 10,000 people to me.

31:04 Luke F. Walton Do you need sleep in order to like get over some humps or are you able to kind of get it in the course of a long practice session or taking breaks throughout like one day?

31:14 Russ Flynn I think because of the bus touring, I'm pretty well practiced with having very little sleep. If I can get six hours,

31:19 Luke F. Walton Nice.

31:19 Russ Flynn I'm good.

31:20 Luke F. Walton Nice.

31:20 Russ Flynn Honestly,

31:21 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

31:21 Russ Flynn yeah,

31:21 Luke F. Walton It's a superpower too.

31:23 Russ Flynn I'm pretty useless on less than five hours. I can still play a show because like... Well, I guess the way I share it with X Ambassadors is because I've done it so many times

31:36 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

31:36 Russ Flynn and music is so ingrained.

31:39 Luke F. Walton Mm-hmm.

31:39 Russ Flynn I wouldn't feel comfortable going out and playing like an improvised set with new people on five hours of sleep. I would be doing them a disservice and

31:47 Luke F. Walton Yes.

31:47 Russ Flynn I would make sure that I wasn't in that physical state going and playing with people.

31:51 Luke F. Walton Right.

31:52 Russ Flynn I never want to let an audience down, but also I never want to let the people down who I'm playing with on stage.

31:58 Russ Flynn And, you know, we talked about my love of spirits and my love of home brewing and stuff like that. I always play sober, stone cold sober. And people make fun of me for that. You know, people joke like if Jimi Hendrix came back from the grave and asked you to play after you had a beer, you'd say no. And I'd like, yeah, I would.

32:19 Russ Flynn Or like Obama, if Obama, you know, called you after a couple of beers and wanted you to go play at the White House, I'd say, sorry, Mr. President, I'm not in the headspace to do that. Just because I feel like playing under the influence takes practice and that's not something I want to practice. If you want to do that, that's cool. I do not judge anybody for anything, but I

32:39 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

32:39 Russ Flynn feel like I am most committed to the audience and I'm most committed to people on stage with me when I'm sober. And that's just a choice that I made. i know i was talking about horror stories

32:49 Luke F. Walton Yeah,

32:49 Russ Flynn not

32:49 Luke F. Walton yeah, yeah.

32:49 Russ Flynn to go on too much of a tangent but on that same tour where i played that jazz festival in serbia i was playing the manheim jazz festival and i had done the gig and i was wandering around town with two of the guys in the band and

33:04 Russ Flynn we saw some people on on the street and started talking to them and it turns out that they were going to a jazz recital for some students and we were like oh cool can we come and so we tag along and went to this big ornate music building and I walk in the room and the drummer is my friend David Anlauf who I went to grad school with amazing jazz drummer amazing jazz drummer I used him

33:49 Russ Flynn and on this tour i was playing electric bass and i hadn't touched upright in years it had been a couple years and of course i wasn't carrying my instrument on me there was an upright there and so david's like come up and play and then introduces me to this auditorium of kids and their parents Russ Flynn from new york jazz bass player and i get up and i was like man i i haven't played upright in a long time and

34:17 Luke F. Walton The

34:17 Russ Flynn having

34:17 Luke F. Walton most punishing

34:18 Russ Flynn beer no

34:18 Luke F. Walton instrument around.

34:20 Russ Flynn i know and i made an absolute fool of myself and it that was the last time where i was like okay i should have said no i should have said no

34:29 Luke F. Walton I've got some big news, everybody. My vinyl record is out. We didn't make a ton of these. These guys are going to sell out. And I'd love for you to get your hands on one of them because they're so dope. They're so dope. And it comes with a whole bunch of like liner notes and pictures and special stuff. The things that really went into making this record. And I want you to get your hands on it.

34:50 Luke F. Walton So go to scoobertdoobert.pizza or check out my Instagram for a link or click the link in the show notes. The bio or wherever you're watching this to pick up your copy, you know, they're going to sell out. We really did not make very many of these and I want you to have it. It's like a collector's item. So thank you. Thank you for supporting my music and I can't wait for you to hear it actually on physical vinyl.

35:12 Luke F. Walton Enjoy the rest of the episode. Everybody needs to figure out their own personal ethos and what do they stand for? What do they, you know?

35:20 Russ Flynn For sure.

35:21 Luke F. Walton even if you're religious even if you come from a school of thought all ultimately the decision is up to you like what are you going to stand for what are you going to what are you going to do how are you what are you going to live by ultimate flexibility person to person but i i respect and understand that of this is my relationship to music i want to maintain it that way

35:38 Russ Flynn yeah and you know i'm routine oriented to some degree so many great musicians i've worked with are routine oriented and

35:45 Luke F. Walton Yes.

35:46 Russ Flynn it's like your routine is having two beers before you go on stage like the keyboard player and ex-bassers no more no less two beers always it's

35:54 Luke F. Walton Cool.

35:54 Russ Flynn his routine uh the singer you know he's he does a half an hour of yoga then he does a half hour of vocal warm-ups

36:02 Russ Flynn I need metronome and to run through scales and I usually put a cough drop in my mouth before I go on stage.

36:08 Luke F. Walton Cool.

36:08 Russ Flynn I know it's

36:09 Luke F. Walton Yeah,

36:09 Russ Flynn weird, but

36:09 Luke F. Walton I love it.

36:10 Russ Flynn it's my thing. And if your thing is. taking lsd before you go on stage groovy i don't care it's but

36:18 Luke F. Walton gonna inform your music yeah but

36:19 Russ Flynn that's that's make some music you

36:20 Luke F. Walton like every pro athlete has got the same kind of thing they've got their rituals they've got their methods and there is something to it too of like sometimes i forget that i can play music if that makes sense just like you're saying like starting off a practice session like improvising or doing something to like remind yourself like you've practiced you've earned this but just me as a person it's like oh you didn't pick up a guitar today it's like can i still do this

36:43 Luke F. Walton this is like okay i can but easing into that state of mind of that connection of like mind and body all of those things it's not a light switch as much as people want it to be or expect it to be of like hey play something for me it's like yeah i can do that but it's not going to be you're gonna see some rough rough stage of warm-up yeah

37:04 Russ Flynn Yeah. Yeah. It's, you know, it's the greatest job in the world. which i've said but sometimes it's hard and to go out on stage and give it 110 is not always easy i mean i've played gigs with the flu with

37:19 Luke F. Walton Oh.

37:19 Russ Flynn like a torn ligament to my foot you know like with food poisoning i i remember i played a gig uh at brooklyn steel with ex ambassadors a few years ago and i grew up on long island all my family's on long island and my sister came and her husband and my dad came and all these friends came and I texted everyone before the show I was like I'm so sorry

37:41 Russ Flynn you will not see me tonight I have food poisoning I have a fever I'm doing the gig but it doesn't mean that I'm healthy I said to my dad I was like please meet me at the back door of the venue immediate after we're done I need you to take me home and

37:55 Luke F. Walton Wow. Yeah.

37:57 Russ Flynn and luckily the next day was an off day

37:59 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

37:59 Russ Flynn the following show was in Boston and I was able to just not ride on the bus that night and stay in my own bed in Brooklyn I'm committed to the gig I always want to be tough as nails when it comes to the gig but anything else I try to be forgiving of myself and try to be easy on myself sometimes that means disappointing people socially it's tough though because the people coming to the show that's their getaway and that's an exciting night for them and

38:25 Russ Flynn You want to be respectful of that and stuff. But doing it night after night takes energy. You know, I try to be as gracious as I can with my time and energy, but I always try to prioritize the gig because it's going to sit with me if I don't.

38:41 Luke F. Walton Yes. I just find it so fascinating, the parallels like an NBA player or something like that where, you

38:47 Russ Flynn And

38:47 Luke F. Walton know.

38:47 Russ Flynn very similar in the regard that NBA players have to be primed to be at their peak performance in the evening.

38:54 Luke F. Walton That's a good point, right? Which is exact opposite of most of the world.

38:58 Russ Flynn Yeah,

38:59 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

38:59 Russ Flynn yeah. And I've always been a night owl. When I was in grad school, I remember all my classes started after 4pm. It was meant to accommodate people who were getting their masters after teaching in

39:09 Luke F. Walton Oh, cool. Yeah.

39:11 Russ Flynn like New York City public schools and stuff like that.

39:13 Luke F. Walton Makes sense.

39:14 Russ Flynn That was a very common path.

39:16 Luke F. Walton Totally.

39:16 Russ Flynn And the days that I wasn't in class, I was teaching private lessons around New York and stuff. And so I most days didn't have anything to do until 4pm.

39:26 Russ Flynn yeah and I would stay up till all hours of the evening and I'm I'm still kind of like that when I'm home and left my own devices it's kind of ironic but when I'm on the road I actually go to bed much earlier than I do when I'm home and it's not the case with the guys I tour with the folks I tour with because some of them have kids they're usually waking up at 5 a.m and when I'm home sometimes I'm going to bed at 5 a.m but

39:48 Luke F. Walton Yes, right.

39:48 Russ Flynn I do think that it's something that I've been conditioned i i have maybe a natural that is part of my natural rhythm but but also i've just been conditioned my whole life to be in peak performance at eight or nine p.m you know and you get off stage at 10 or 11 or midnight or whatever it is and you need a couple hours to unwind just the way that someone who's getting off a conventional job at 5 p.m you Needs a couple hours to unwind.

40:19 Luke F. Walton Yes.

40:20 Russ Flynn It's just shifted.

40:21 Luke F. Walton Yes, exactly. Well, just like it's hard to turn the light switch on, it's also hard to turn it off. Where you come off of the stage, you can't just be like bedtime. It's like that is physically impossible. You've wound yourself up, your cortisol, everything is just so high. You have to have some sort of ramp off. Yeah.

40:39 Russ Flynn And sometimes I will take melatonin

40:42 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

40:42 Russ Flynn to help with that. I take a very, very small dose. I take three milligrams and perhaps it's even placebo. It's just like the action of doing that physically.

40:50 Luke F. Walton It's the inverse cough drop, man.

40:53 Russ Flynn And inverse cough drop.

40:54 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

40:54 Russ Flynn Yeah. I also just feel inspired at night.

40:58 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

40:59 Russ Flynn I think so many people I know find inspiration in quiet mornings before everyone was awake. break and the sort of solitude that that brings in a positive way and I feel the same on the opposite side of the clock 3 a.m when the world is quiet the ideas come most fluidly for me yeah

41:21 Luke F. Walton All those things are really important markers to follow in terms like, yeah, where am I going to be most successful? Following on the NBA thing, NBA players always have a really hard time like West Coast players. They'll play a Sunday noon game on the East Coast. This was like 9 a.m. for them.

41:38 Luke F. Walton That's always like their worst game of the season because it's just completely inverted of what their performance tuned towards. They don't their routine is completely disrupted. No naps, no. no no workout in the morning it's just completely flipped like maybe like a radio spot or a good morning america or something like that might be the closest

41:56 Russ Flynn I remember we did Good Morning America one time and I think my call was like 4 a.m., but the poor crew,

42:05 Luke F. Walton no

42:05 Russ Flynn their call was midnight.

42:06 Luke F. Walton oh god brutal

42:07 Russ Flynn That is brutal.

42:09 Luke F. Walton how do you even plan how do you plan your day for that wow you

42:13 Russ Flynn You don't.

42:14 Luke F. Walton don't yeah exactly

42:15 Russ Flynn You plan to sleep afterwards. Honestly,

42:17 Luke F. Walton yeah

42:17 Russ Flynn when I go to the West Coast. I feel like a normal human being because suddenly instead of waking up at nine or 10, I'm waking up at six or seven and it's like, wow,

42:25 Luke F. Walton Right,

42:25 Russ Flynn okay,

42:25 Luke F. Walton right.

42:26 Russ Flynn I'm a functioning

42:26 Luke F. Walton That's true.

42:26 Russ Flynn member of society, you know, you know, yeah,

42:28 Luke F. Walton Yeah, there's a line at Starbucks. How weird.

42:31 Russ Flynn God.

42:32 Luke F. Walton I wanted to ask you about the guitar and bass connection for you, because I always find that interesting for people that specialize on both instruments rather than just dip into both instruments. How did that come about? What's your perspective on it? How do you see the similarities and differences between? This is between the two.

42:47 Russ Flynn I started on guitar in middle school. It's a classic scenario where I was not as accomplished on the instrument as another friend of mine and we formed a band.

42:56 Luke F. Walton Yes.

42:56 Russ Flynn And so because I was a lesser guitar player than he was, it was only logical that I would play bass. I didn't have a bass. I borrowed the drummer's older brother's bass.

43:06 Luke F. Walton Cool.

43:06 Russ Flynn I don't even know what it was. It was probably like a Sam Ash in-house brand or something like that. And anyway, so I eventually got a bass. in eighth grade and i played bass in that band and then i also maintained practice with guitar and i formed another band and

43:23 Luke F. Walton Cool, cool.

43:24 Russ Flynn it was really just that simple it was like okay i still have a desire to play guitar and i have this other group of friends who i'm gonna play guitar with and then in that first band that i formed i was the bass player and that just maintained

43:38 Luke F. Walton Cool. That's great.

43:41 Russ Flynn uh and i've never really thought about it as being as clear as that but

43:45 Luke F. Walton Yeah,

43:45 Russ Flynn that's what it was

43:45 Luke F. Walton yeah,

43:46 Russ Flynn yeah

43:46 Luke F. Walton you had a fork in the road you just chose both yeah

43:48 Russ Flynn yeah yeah and then i went to undergrad and uh i was still pursuing guitar most passionately but there were so many guitar players i went to uvm university of vermont and everyone was obsessed with fish myself included everyone wanted to be trey my grandmother had taken me in sand ash

44:09 Russ Flynn Christmas in eighth grade and she said any bass you want and I still have that jazz bass an American standard jazz bass in Sunburst one of my most prized possessions because

44:19 Luke F. Walton Love it.

44:19 Russ Flynn she wasn't wealthy she was a nurse you know it was a huge financial commitment for her and so appreciative of that gift but I was at UVM so many guitar players and I was like whoa I can get work if I'm playing bass

44:36 Russ Flynn So I started doing that and then that became my academic focus and then faculty there said if you want to play bass you have to play the real bass. So then I had to play upright and I did so so begrudgingly. I did not have any interest in playing upright.

44:51 Luke F. Walton How did you get past that plateau? I've tried and it just tears up your hands. You feel like you just got beat up every time you play that damn instrument. Yeah.

45:03 Russ Flynn yeah and I remember you know I started playing so much of it and I would get all these blood blisters and have to like super glue my fingers and I didn't really fall in love with the upright bass until it wasn't a matter of people forcing it down my throat anymore I finished undergrad and because I went to grad school for composition and arranging I wasn't so much academically pursuing performance anymore anymore

45:30 Russ Flynn no one was forcing me to play upright and so then I could come at it on my own pace how

45:35 Luke F. Walton Hmm.

45:35 Russ Flynn I wanted to come at it which was not academic whatsoever like I play upright in a really unconventional way like I hold the bass in between my knees

45:46 Luke F. Walton Cool.

45:46 Russ Flynn and I don't play I use both fingers I don't play with like one

45:52 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

45:52 Russ Flynn finger and my technique's just all weird

45:54 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

45:56 Russ Flynn because it was what ergonomically made sense to me

45:58 Luke F. Walton Yep.

45:58 Russ Flynn once people were telling me weren't telling me I had to do it a certain way Yeah, I studied

46:03 Luke F. Walton okay.

46:03 Russ Flynn with Ben Allison for a while who was a great New York upright player he's done a lot of music for NPR super great dude and someone I've always respected as a composer as well as a player and he has a really unconventional technique and so that made me feel feel comfortable that I could I could do

46:21 Luke F. Walton Yes.

46:21 Russ Flynn the same I

46:21 Luke F. Walton Great.

46:21 Russ Flynn was playing upright I was playing electric bass I was playing guitar guitar and different people knew me for doing different things and a lot of people didn't necessarily know that I did whatever else you know

46:33 Luke F. Walton Oh, cool.

46:33 Russ Flynn and I

46:34 Luke F. Walton That's cool.

46:34 Russ Flynn kind of enjoyed that

46:36 Luke F. Walton Yeah, right. That's pretty much right

46:38 Russ Flynn cool i did feel like some things on bass helped me be a better guitar player and some things on guitar helped me be a better bass player at the same time there were things that hurt me i remember being in a jam session sometime and having a conversation after i'd been playing guitar and i was like oh i play bass too and the guy is somewhat older and he's like yeah you sound like a bass player and i was like what is that supposed to mean you know

47:04 Russ Flynn That's happened with me for a while.

47:06 Luke F. Walton Yeah, right. What a bird. Just

47:08 Russ Flynn So

47:09 Luke F. Walton kidding.

47:09 Russ Flynn then I became hell-bent on being a convincing player on both instruments.

47:15 Luke F. Walton Yeah, right, right.

47:16 Russ Flynn And I really, I love doing both. And when I don't do one for a little while, I do feel like my calluses change in a certain way.

47:26 Luke F. Walton Yeah,

47:26 Russ Flynn And I'm

47:26 Luke F. Walton cool.

47:27 Russ Flynn most happy when I'm doing both consistently.

47:30 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

47:31 Russ Flynn And I love bouncing between roles, being

47:33 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

47:33 Russ Flynn like just a pocket bass player who, you know, is hell bent on serving the moment and locking in with a drummer and not doing anything flashy and then playing guitar and maybe inserting a little bit more ego into it or something.

47:50 Luke F. Walton Right. Yeah, totally.

47:52 Russ Flynn It stays exciting for me like that.

47:54 Luke F. Walton I love that. And yeah,

47:55 Russ Flynn Yeah.

47:55 Luke F. Walton I mean, it is funny because a lot of people, I think, view them as it's a guitar with four strings, you know, but just

48:03 Russ Flynn And

48:03 Luke F. Walton that it's

48:04 Russ Flynn a lot of people think it's easier.

48:05 Luke F. Walton right, right, that it's easier. Yes.

48:08 Russ Flynn I watched an interview with Michael League from Snarky Puppy a few weeks ago, and he said something that stuck with me. He said, I think bass is the easiest instrument.

48:18 Russ Flynn to develop some level of fluency on but I think bass is the hardest instrument to master and I really agree with that I remember years ago in New York doing some gigs where I was on the same bill as Tim LaFave and him and I having some great conversations and something that Tim said that really stuck with me about bass playing was that A great bass player is thinking about the envelope of their notes,

48:51 Russ Flynn almost like an ADS-R on a

48:54 Luke F. Walton Yes,

48:54 Russ Flynn synth.

48:54 Luke F. Walton 100%. 100%. Yes.

48:57 Russ Flynn It really became something that I started thinking about consciously. Where does my note start, but where does my note end?

49:05 Luke F. Walton Yep.

49:06 Russ Flynn And how do I shape it with left hand muting or right hand muting?

49:10 Luke F. Walton Yes.

49:11 Russ Flynn You know, how does my right hand position affect the envelope of my note?

49:15 Luke F. Walton Yes. Yes.

49:16 Russ Flynn Am I playing back towards the bridge and, you know, getting a really sharp transient or am I playing towards the neck and having a very soft transient with a soft bloom to it?

49:29 Russ Flynn you know there's like the old lee sklar thing where he has like a fake switch on his bass that

49:35 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

49:35 Russ Flynn he calls the producer switch and if the producer wasn't liking what he was doing he would flip this non-effective switch and just move his hand position and everyone undoubtedly would say like that's it that's the sound you know i think bass is really really hard to master and i'm not a master but i want to master

49:57 Luke F. Walton yeah yes totally the thing that still is uh hardest for me is i'm a guitarist that plays bass that is still what i am um but right hand technique and muting with my right hand i'm so used to muting with my left hand but it has such a different sound like i can mute with the two fingers but like i don't know just the the level of acuity that i watch really good bass players be able to do with

50:20 Luke F. Walton do with their right hand to do that tone shaping to be

50:22 Russ Flynn Yeah.

50:22 Luke F. Walton like i'm going to cut the note off but i'm not just going to mute it like i would up here i am going to dampen it i'm going to roll it off it's like man i could do that in pro tools like i could hear what i i can hear what i want it to sound like too but uh gosh

50:38 Russ Flynn Yeah.

50:38 Luke F. Walton especially

50:38 Russ Flynn Someone like

50:39 Luke F. Walton speed

50:39 Russ Flynn Pino

50:39 Luke F. Walton yes

50:39 Russ Flynn or Sean Burley. Oh

50:41 Luke F. Walton exactly

50:41 Russ Flynn my God. Those guys. I love the peanut thing of using your thumb.

50:46 Luke F. Walton Me

50:46 Russ Flynn I use

50:47 Luke F. Walton too.

50:47 Russ Flynn a lot of thumb.

50:48 Luke F. Walton I got a thumb callus.

50:49 Russ Flynn Yeah,

50:50 Luke F. Walton I got

50:50 Russ Flynn yeah, man.

50:51 Luke F. Walton really excited about that. Yeah.

50:53 Russ Flynn I liken the playing with my thumb perhaps to like the James Jamerson claw thing where it's limiting and through that limitation it forces better rhythmic accuracy and

51:12 Luke F. Walton Okay.

51:13 Russ Flynn and i feel like speaking of mute right hand muting

51:17 Luke F. Walton Yep.

51:17 Russ Flynn with the thumb and then placement of the palm behind it i

51:22 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

51:23 Russ Flynn can have more control over muting so

51:25 Luke F. Walton 100%. Cool.

51:26 Russ Flynn i i find myself playing with thumb more than i find myself playing with fingers

51:31 Luke F. Walton Hey,

51:31 Russ Flynn i

51:31 Luke F. Walton great. Me too. But I wasn't

51:33 Russ Flynn should sure be if very

51:34 Luke F. Walton I was just

51:34 Russ Flynn anti

51:34 Luke F. Walton unique.

51:34 Russ Flynn -pick on bass it

51:35 Luke F. Walton Anti-pick.

51:35 Russ Flynn should be very very anti-pick i'm no longer anti-pick because i didn't think that was a healthy headspace to operate in open to everything

51:44 Luke F. Walton but yeah thumb thumb is thumb is special like in like you're saying it unlocked the part uh that like of palm muting that i focus so much on guitar of like am i doing more of like a pizzicato kind of thing or am i like am i choking it am i doing like gruff power chords all of that work on like i don't know you know palm placement i was able to unlock once i started using the thumb and i was like okay another bridge across from the instrument i'm good at to the instrument i'm trying to be

52:10 Luke F. Walton something to be good at yeah

52:11 Russ Flynn Yeah, man, so much to get into with right hand technique and then uh like, you know, practicing playing

52:17 Luke F. Walton that's

52:18 Russ Flynn the same passages alternating between thumb and fingers and

52:21 Luke F. Walton good i need to do that i need to do that that's smart right

52:24 Russ Flynn pick two and trying

52:26 Luke F. Walton yeah

52:26 Russ Flynn to make them sound uniform in terms of like it's so nerdy but i i used to sit with a compressor and try to hit like

52:34 Luke F. Walton cool

52:34 Russ Flynn the same point in it with

52:35 Luke F. Walton of how much like it's it's gain reduction gain reduction over and over that's cool that's a good idea it's

52:41 Russ Flynn yeah i

52:41 Luke F. Walton a really good remember idea because

52:42 Russ Flynn hearing about some session player in nashville doing that years ago and i was like oh

52:46 Luke F. Walton yes

52:47 Russ Flynn That's badass. I

52:48 Luke F. Walton that

52:48 Russ Flynn want to do

52:49 Luke F. Walton is

52:49 Russ Flynn that

52:49 Luke F. Walton that is totally i mean i think the closest thing that i do is i'll loop you know i loop record like crazy i just burn through my disk space and that's when i'll you know i'll shuffle all the different positions because like it's just me like i'm not taking anybody else's time so i can use as much of it as i want it turns into a practice session sort of like that of like i have the exact sound that i'm trying to reach and i'm going to try like 15 different vistas to try to hit that sound um

53:13 Russ Flynn for

53:13 Luke F. Walton but

53:13 Russ Flynn sure

53:13 Luke F. Walton i really like the idea of actually trying to hit hit the meter and shit oh that that'll that'll

53:19 Russ Flynn it's

53:19 Luke F. Walton that's

53:20 Russ Flynn so

53:20 Luke F. Walton hard

53:20 Russ Flynn hard

53:20 Luke F. Walton that

53:20 Russ Flynn it's

53:20 Luke F. Walton sounds super hard yeah

53:22 Russ Flynn super hard and then it also makes you think about your instrument too and

53:26 Luke F. Walton yeah

53:26 Russ Flynn i'm i'm passionate about guitar repair the way that i think a lot of folks are passionate about car repair like my dad my dad is a amazing mechanic and uh you know he he sees a car here's a car and if there's something awry with it he wants to get to the bottom of

53:48 Luke F. Walton Oh,

53:48 Russ Flynn it and i'm

53:48 Luke F. Walton yes.

53:48 Russ Flynn the same way with instruments i do all my own work i don't really touch fret work but anything else i love swapping pickups and pots and whatever else and i remember talking to an engineer friend of mine a while back and he was like i hate it when bass players show up to gigs and the output of their instrument is

54:08 Russ Flynn you know all over the place from string to string there's no balance and how do they not hear that how do they not want to fix that and it made me go home and say all right let me look at the output of like

54:19 Luke F. Walton Cool.

54:19 Russ Flynn all

54:20 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

54:20 Russ Flynn of my basses and if something isn't even let me try raising or lowering pickup heights and let me try swapping pickups whatever it is

54:31 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

54:31 Russ Flynn because

54:32 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

54:33 Russ Flynn You know, I want to have it. I want to provide the most even foundation that I can.

54:38 Luke F. Walton Yes. And it's Yes,

54:41 Russ Flynn And if it's going to be uneven, I want it to be conscious choice.

54:44 Luke F. Walton you want it to be a cool, cool, uneven. Yeah. Choice. Yes. No, I mean, that's that's one of the things that I find most frustrating about my own bass playing is a lot of times I'll be writing and playing at the same time. And yeah, that will add more jaggedness because if I'm like.

55:00 Luke F. Walton I'm like grooving on the same thing over and over like I can I can find those grooves in terms of dynamics, but I still lack a lot of facility and when I when I get a bass track from somebody like Bobby Lewis who's my go-to for a lot of these these things. it's like oh i can't compress if i i want the sound i

55:20 Russ Flynn Yeah,

55:20 Luke F. Walton don't

55:21 Russ Flynn yeah.

55:21 Luke F. Walton need to but like if it's if like if i want a little bit of the character the compressor i guess for me it's a little bit more of like a a prerequisite like we need to we need to get 1176 on this this thing stat but

55:33 Russ Flynn And

55:33 Luke F. Walton i mean

55:33 Russ Flynn this

55:33 Luke F. Walton in my

55:33 Russ Flynn is something that we appreciate as musicians.

55:35 Luke F. Walton yeah

55:36 Russ Flynn It's something that the non-musician has

55:39 Luke F. Walton yeah

55:39 Russ Flynn no understanding. I want to say they don't have appreciation for it. They don't know to appreciate. I would appreciate it.

55:44 Luke F. Walton Right. Sorry to interrupt this very important broadcast, but it's time for one more advertisement for myself for this podcast. What I'm asking for is for you to rate it five stars, share it with your friends. This is like the most important thing for this podcast to grow. So if you want to do this, you go into the podcast screen, right? You click on the dot dot dot on Spotify.

56:03 Luke F. Walton Under there, it says rate show, and you go and you click it five stars. If you could do that for me, that's the best way for the algorithms, all this stuff.

56:11 Luke F. Walton stuff to share it out with the world i know that it's a lot to ask but if you could please please please just please just hit those three dots on a five star it would really help us out and helps us you know get the get the word out and spread the love of music so thank you if you're listening on youtube you know what to do like subscribe all that good stuff thank you so much and here's the rest of the episode

56:29 Russ Flynn They don't know that it's a factor, but it can be the difference between something. making you move in

56:36 Luke F. Walton Yes.

56:36 Russ Flynn something not compelling

56:37 Luke F. Walton Yes.

56:38 Russ Flynn you to move

56:39 Luke F. Walton 100%. And it's also like all of these things are like platonic ideals that you'll never quite hit. And sometimes the tendencies that you'll have just naturally not equipment, you want to eliminate that as much as possible. But that's at least maybe the stories that I tell myself to make me go to bed at night.

56:56 Luke F. Walton But like I make music for myself, like I make my own artist stuff, I do less like it's like the side note stuff now um and so it's like you know some of the rough edges like that's just me that's just what i look like naked in the mirror like yeah

57:07 Russ Flynn Totally. Yeah. I think in this day and age where it's so easy to get caught up in the minutiae and to endlessly melodyne or auto-tune or edit something and flex time something, it's so easy to take the humanity out of something.

57:27 Russ Flynn I feel like we as a music culture are now starting to appreciate human idiosyncrasies Yeah. and imperfection.

57:41 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

57:41 Russ Flynn I remember a few years ago, Sam, the singer in X Ambassadors, he played Dijon for me Yeah. the first time.

57:47 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

57:48 Russ Flynn And I was like, oh, my God, this is amazing. Why is it amazing? Because it's so. human when it wants to be human

58:00 Luke F. Walton Yeah,

58:00 Russ Flynn and

58:00 Luke F. Walton yeah.

58:01 Russ Flynn what I what I mean by that is it's imperfect in a beautiful way and it's so perfect when it wants to be perfect and the juxtaposition of those two ideologies or approaches is Really cool and really modern to me.

58:20 Luke F. Walton I agree.

58:20 Russ Flynn I love that.

58:21 Luke F. Walton I do too. It's a great point for us to arrive at with from the like hyper clean early digital that sounds sterile but also kind of has its own vibe to the like CD era all of the way that they were recording it and transitioning from the analog to the digital and it's kind of a hodgepodge in between and now we finally figured out how to replicate the analog in the digital.

58:44 Luke F. Walton the people go sometimes way too far and everything's way oversaturated um

58:48 Russ Flynn I

58:48 Luke F. Walton but

58:48 Russ Flynn know.

58:48 Luke F. Walton like it's it almost feels like it's we're figuring out the technology like 25 however long 35 40 years after it's introduced it's it's a special time I think no

59:01 Russ Flynn It's been a really interesting evolution in our lifetime. Are you about my age? I'm 39.

59:05 Luke F. Walton I'm a bit younger I'm in my early 30s but

59:08 Russ Flynn Okay.

59:08 Luke F. Walton like same

59:08 Russ Flynn But nonetheless,

59:09 Luke F. Walton same

59:10 Russ Flynn in

59:10 Luke F. Walton gist yeah

59:10 Russ Flynn our lifetimes, we've experienced.

59:12 Luke F. Walton I've been making music for 17 years so

59:16 Russ Flynn Yeah, yeah. We've seen the light bulb go off and people arrive at the conclusion that maybe like cleaner is not always better.

59:27 Luke F. Walton Yeah

59:28 Russ Flynn And now we're still trying to find the balance. But it's a really interesting thing because folks an older generation older than us.

59:37 Russ Flynn I think, you know, it was like progress is progress and you could you could make the same comparison with food, whereas

59:42 Luke F. Walton Ooh,

59:43 Russ Flynn like in the 1950s and 1960s

59:45 Luke F. Walton yeah.

59:45 Russ Flynn with our parents, this quick now with something or other, you know, it's progress in food was seen as nothing but beneficial. You know, we can we can synthesize things in the laboratory rather than grow them in a field.

60:00 Russ Flynn or whatever it might be you know at some point in the 90s and early 2000s similarly with music we

60:06 Luke F. Walton Hmm.

60:07 Russ Flynn as a society said hold on a second maybe progress is not always progress you know and and there are things to be taken from pristine digital recording techniques you know like you know SSLs are great when you want an SSL but like There's something great about a 1073 when

60:28 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

60:28 Russ Flynn you want a gritty Neve sound and in like high level you know cuisine i think there's now a very similar approach like one of my favorite chefs is francis malman the argentine patagonian open flame

60:43 Luke F. Walton Cool. Sweet.

60:43 Russ Flynn that's and what i love about him is like yeah he does all this sort of uses all these indigenous cooking techniques you know like bury gourds in the earth for with hot coals for a day or

61:00 Russ Flynn do like these salt bakes with fish you know everything is well in flame he's got a great cookbook on called on fire i highly recommend it but he's classically trained and has won the french grand prix i think he's got a few michelin stars a couple of michelin stars

61:17 Luke F. Walton Wow.

61:17 Russ Flynn he

61:18 Luke F. Walton Yep.

61:18 Russ Flynn is like this ultimate hybridization of high-level classical technique and like gritty seemingly archaic technique i think that's where we're arriving as a music culture as well where like there's something to pull from both sides of the argument

61:41 Luke F. Walton Yeah. And I mean, I like it. I like looking at it that way because it reflects what our.

61:46 Luke F. Walton what our revulsion and uh codependence on technology is just in our day-to-day lives with social media and traveling actually is really dangerous for me because i find myself investing so much on screen time that i come back home and i'm like what's wrong with me like i have a phone addiction now because i was on a plane for 15 hours but like those those things accurately reflecting it in culture and art and food all of those kind of areas i find that really fascinating because it feels like we're turning the page into a new

62:16 Luke F. Walton new chapter of art history or cultural history that

62:19 Russ Flynn Yeah,

62:19 Luke F. Walton um i like i like more than the last one personally yeah

62:24 Russ Flynn I agree. Yeah, we have everything at our disposal. We should dip into everything in moderation.

62:30 Luke F. Walton yeah and you can't put it back in like social media is here like it doesn't matter what you do it that's part of what it's like to grow up now

62:40 Russ Flynn Exactly. And it's an incredible achievement

62:42 Luke F. Walton Yes.

62:43 Russ Flynn that connectivity that it provides for

62:44 Luke F. Walton Right.

62:45 Russ Flynn us as a society is amazing.

62:47 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

62:48 Russ Flynn But I feel the same way. Sometimes I travel and I'm on plane for eight hours and I realized, oh, I was on my phone for seven of those eight hours,

62:55 Luke F. Walton Yes.

62:56 Russ Flynn especially now that there's Wi-Fi on most

62:58 Luke F. Walton I know.

62:59 Russ Flynn planes.

62:59 Luke F. Walton Yes. Yes.

63:01 Russ Flynn I'm happy that I can respond to an email quickly, but at the same time. I'm just doomscrolling

63:08 Luke F. Walton Uh-huh. Uh

63:09 Russ Flynn and it's

63:09 Luke F. Walton -huh.

63:10 Russ Flynn not productive.

63:10 Luke F. Walton Yeah. Yeah.

63:12 Russ Flynn One thing that I've done in the past six months that I feel like has pushed me to utilize technology in the best way I can is I listen to a new record every day.

63:24 Luke F. Walton Cool. Yes. Awesome.

63:26 Russ Flynn And as soon as anyone mentions anything to me,

63:29 Luke F. Walton Mm

63:29 Russ Flynn I

63:30 Luke F. Walton -hmm.

63:30 Russ Flynn add it to my list.

63:32 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

63:33 Russ Flynn And then I spin a randomizer reel every

63:36 Luke F. Walton No!

63:36 Russ Flynn morning.

63:37 Luke F. Walton Awesome! That's fun! I haven't heard that twist.

63:40 Russ Flynn Yeah, I'm really big on relieving myself of decision-making fatigue.

63:44 Luke F. Walton Yeah. Yeah. Cool.

63:46 Russ Flynn And if I have a non-essential choice to make, I will often leave it up to randomness. And I'll tell you, it actually does wonders for making decisions about like... where you and your girlfriend are going to go for dinner because

64:01 Luke F. Walton Cool. Yes. Right.

64:03 Russ Flynn it takes the accountability out of it

64:04 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

64:04 Russ Flynn you know like

64:05 Luke F. Walton Yeah, yeah, yeah.

64:05 Russ Flynn if you put italian chinese mexican or japanese into the wheel and one of you pushes it and you're committed to doing whatever it lands on

64:17 Russ Flynn there's no i told you so apple music and spotify as much as i lament the fact that they don't pay the royalties that they should it is awesome that we have as much at our fingertips as we do and i love the activity of now spinning this wheel every night and commit to listening to an album front to back and then i have a rating system i give it one to six points

64:43 Russ Flynn one is i turned it off and didn't make it through um but yeah it's cool it's cool to look back at it and see where i'm at now um having checked out a lot of music that i would have never checked out but like that's what we should do we

64:59 Luke F. Walton yeah

64:59 Russ Flynn have all this at our disposal now at our fingertips You know, someone in the 1950s, their mind would be blown that you have virtually every piece of commercial music ever released in an app on your phone at a moment's notice and they would want us to take advantage of that and I should take advantage of that.

65:19 Luke F. Walton Yes. And I also think that there's a responsibility and kind of a burden of you have all of these tools. What are you going to do with it? Like if I gave all of these tools to a lot of people in history, they'd be a lot better. and they're already better than i am so it's like how do i how do i like make up or do something different or do something me but like step

65:40 Russ Flynn And

65:40 Luke F. Walton up to

65:41 Russ Flynn no that excuse,

65:41 Luke F. Walton yeah

65:42 Russ Flynn right?

65:42 Luke F. Walton no exactly it's like i can listen to anything in the world why aren't you yeah yeah

65:48 Russ Flynn Exactly.

65:48 Luke F. Walton so i've got i've got one last question for you and let you go um this show is called love music more this little segment's called love music why and i'm going to ask you a very simple question Why do you love music?

66:04 Russ Flynn I don't think I'll ever fall out of love with music.

66:08 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

66:11 Russ Flynn And, you know, at the end of the day, I'm firstly a fan. Listening to Good Vibrations brings me as much excitement today as it did when I was six.

66:25 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

66:27 Russ Flynn And as much as I've committed my life since then to making music, I don't feel any closer to making something like Goodbye

66:36 Luke F. Walton Oh,

66:36 Russ Flynn Britannia.

66:36 Luke F. Walton yes, yes.

66:38 Russ Flynn And that doesn't mean I'm going to stop trying.

66:41 Luke F. Walton Yeah. Yeah. So Russ, where can people hear more of your music? Where can they connect with you?

66:48 Russ Flynn connect with me on instagram shoot me a message on my website come see x ambassadors i put out a little jazz record a couple years ago go check that out just under my name thank

67:00 Luke F. Walton Awesome. Well, thank you so much for this conversation. I thoroughly enjoyed it.

67:04 Russ Flynn you for having me i really appreciate it