Xuan Nguyen Interview

0:10 Luke F. Walton What's good, everybody? It's Scoobert Doobert here for another episode of Love Music More, and I have some really awesome special guests to talk about everything from projects in tandem, growing as artists, meeting people on the internet, the good and the bad and the ugly of the internet. So please, special welcome to Chris and Swan. Welcome to the podcast.

0:35 Chris Hackman and Xuan Nguyen Hello. I

0:38 Luke F. Walton How are you two doing?

0:40 Chris Hackman and Xuan Nguyen The best ever that I've done in my entire life. Thank you. How are you?

0:44 Luke F. Walton not at that same stage, but I'm trying to get there.

0:48 Chris Hackman and Xuan Nguyen Really? You look amazing.

0:49 Luke F. Walton Oh,

0:50 Chris Hackman and Xuan Nguyen Your hair is glossy.

0:50 Luke F. Walton why thank you. It's glossy because of the hot box of heat that I'm currently in that's just radiating. By the end of this podcast, I will be glowing with sweat.

1:01 Chris Hackman and Xuan Nguyen Oh, I love that.

1:03 Luke F. Walton San Diego summer. So I'd love to just kind of hop in and... And start talking about your projects and kind of what you're up to right now in terms of creating music. And then we'll dig into background, philosophy and what you got coming up next. So maybe you could kind of give the overview of what you've been working on and what you're currently working on right now.

1:26 Chris Hackman and Xuan Nguyen Um... I've been putting out music under the name Human Barbie for a few years. I have an album out and an EP. And over the course of recording and learning how to put music out intelligently and evolving and performing, I met Swan and we started kind of like... A sister-brother-cousin project.

1:57 Luke F. Walton Cool. Yeah.

2:00 Chris Hackman and Xuan Nguyen Human Barbie is all acoustic instruments, all analog effects. The first album was done to tape, so it's like a lo-fi rock, I guess I would call it.

2:11 Luke F. Walton Right on.

2:12 Chris Hackman and Xuan Nguyen And Veronica Vaughn is lo-fi pop.

2:18 Luke F. Walton Cool.

2:18 Chris Hackman and Xuan Nguyen more upbeat more in the box but still kind of like that woozy vibe

2:24 Luke F. Walton Like it. I like it. So I actually think that's really interesting to kind of divide the projects from a almost production technical standpoint, as well as genre, but obviously the two inform each other, but to have, you know, a tape based project and then a computer in the box, like on the computer for those of you that don't know what that might mean, listeners. Um, I think that's really cool.

2:46 Luke F. Walton Laptop production, tape production. What made you gravitate towards kind of doing both?

2:53 Chris Hackman and Xuan Nguyen Time.

2:54 Luke F. Walton Time? I like that? Yeah, it's so much faster to do it in the box. That's a good point.

3:01 Chris Hackman and Xuan Nguyen Massively. Although... there are many things that are faster about tape

3:07 Luke F. Walton hmm that's interesting as in

3:09 Chris Hackman and Xuan Nguyen well right

3:11 Luke F. Walton terms of like decision making or or like because you're you're having to lay it down to tape and so there's not that endless loop of let me tweak this let me tweak that is that is that kind of what you're getting at

3:21 Chris Hackman and Xuan Nguyen in working with tape uh which i did on the first human barbie album was that like a 16 track i did all my apartment um

3:30 Chris Hackman and Xuan Nguyen But there's no room to edit and there's no comping so when you're done it's just done and then you bring it in and mix it which I mixed it in Logic.

3:42 Luke F. Walton Cool.

3:44 Chris Hackman and Xuan Nguyen There's no editing at all. There's no tuning. There's no fixing. There's no moving anything around. You just move the faders and make it sound cool.

3:52 Luke F. Walton Mm hmm. Mm hmm. And then on the other side, you have the computer with, you know, endless comping, you're taking the little different takes like I saw, I saw a Billie Eilish production, a song and it was like a production breakdown. It was literally every syllable was a different vocal take. It was stunning.

4:09 Chris Hackman and Xuan Nguyen Oh, wow. I mean, I believe it. To get that perfect tape, that Yeah perfect sound that we hear now,

4:16 Chris Hackman and Xuan Nguyen Mm I just. -hmm I'm not sure if we have trained enough as people to

4:22 Luke F. Walton yeah i

4:22 Chris Hackman and Xuan Nguyen deliver that kind of sound in that amount of like vocal training that one would need to be to sound like that.

4:29 Luke F. Walton get that and also there's it's like a different sound right the sound of finding the perfect like syllable or the perfect little microsecond rather than a whole phrase the performance just sounds different it's

4:41 Chris Hackman and Xuan Nguyen It's

4:41 Luke F. Walton yeah

4:41 Chris Hackman and Xuan Nguyen so different.

4:41 Luke F. Walton yeah so i don't even if you could sing it i don't know if it'd be the same because it's like i don't know yeah

4:46 Chris Hackman and Xuan Nguyen Yeah, that's the I mean, I think that's the beauty of like live music, though, when you, you know, you don't have a chance to come.

4:54 Luke F. Walton i

4:55 Chris Hackman and Xuan Nguyen The motion is, I don't know, and it feels so different when you're in the room, I think.

5:01 Luke F. Walton agree i agree

5:03 Chris Hackman and Xuan Nguyen There's beauty to both.

5:05 Luke F. Walton there is there totally is what do you what do you guys how do you approach a vocal session i'm curious like when you're when you're when you sit down you're like okay we're gonna we're gonna record the vocal say we've written the song or whatever we're gonna record the vocal how do you approach it how do you get in the right mindset how do you you know set up the microphone what walk me through kind of the the mentality and the philosophy behind like let's record some vocals

5:28 Chris Hackman and Xuan Nguyen I, I'm not doing tape anymore

5:30 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

5:30 Chris Hackman and Xuan Nguyen just because it's annoying and I feel like I've learned what I needed to learn from it. I'm sure it'll come back someday, but now for human Barbie or Veronica Vaughn recording vocals.

5:45 Chris Hackman and Xuan Nguyen is much more similar to how I would do it on tape than it ever was before so if I don't like a take I'll just undo and sure it's there but I never ever go back so

5:57 Luke F. Walton Hmm.

5:57 Chris Hackman and Xuan Nguyen like track undo track undo you know I'll break it up into sections and there's not much that needs to be done really at the end of a recording session maybe it will pick between like two or three versions

6:14 Luke F. Walton Mm-hmm.

6:15 Chris Hackman and Xuan Nguyen of it and just try and get the most natural sounding vocals almost also just to protect my time because and our time now bouncing between two projects it's a little bit of a what what they call a content treadmill where

6:38 Luke F. Walton Okay.

6:38 Chris Hackman and Xuan Nguyen anytime now that we're not working on a Veronica Vaughn album working on a human Barbie album and then as soon as that's done we'll switch back and forth forever I guess

6:51 Luke F. Walton I like that. Yeah, the forever creator journey. I'm curious for, you know, on the performer side, like the vocal performer kind of hat that you wear, do you go through any like routines, like warm up routines or like you drink this special tea or you have this special room or anything like that, or you just kind of jump in front of the microphone and you get it done?

7:14 Chris Hackman and Xuan Nguyen What do you do? I'll warm up some but with recording with Chris I learned a lot I think before I met him I was just trying to be on key and sound pretty I

7:27 Luke F. Walton Okay.

7:27 Chris Hackman and Xuan Nguyen weren't sure there was really a feeling associated with it and then like listening to music of him and like him kind of guiding me when we record you know it changed a lot and I try to catch a feeling

7:43 Chris Hackman and Xuan Nguyen rather than you know just always just singing on the right note so sometimes I don't know they may be a little breath that like wasn't expected or something or a sigh or a dip or that's you know like I said not written but it works this

7:59 Luke F. Walton Well, the – sorry,

8:00 Chris Hackman and Xuan Nguyen oh

8:01 Luke F. Walton go ahead.

8:01 Chris Hackman and Xuan Nguyen no I was gonna say you were talking about like Billie Eilish's tone

8:05 Luke F. Walton Yes.

8:06 Chris Hackman and Xuan Nguyen and

8:06 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

8:07 Chris Hackman and Xuan Nguyen I was like it's probably how you know sometimes you can hear those sounds in certain syllables Instead of catching a whole phrase.

8:15 Luke F. Walton It's so true, but I also see how the two can kind of go together where if you're not comping in that super minutiae kind of way where it's like I'm going to take this S and this A and we're going to make it saw. Instead, it's like looking at a broader phrase than having, you know, a less technical, more emotional kind of approach on the vocal performer kind of aligns with what Chris was doing on the.

8:39 Luke F. Walton You know production side I can see that other things kind of they can form each other I'd say

8:45 Chris Hackman and Xuan Nguyen Yeah, I love recording vocals so much because you can take that you can take like lyrics that are kind of questionable that if you sing them right they're an absolute gut punch and you can take the most brilliantly written song you know and deliver it poorly and you're like well whatever no one cares so there's like this infinite like colors of what you can do and we're obsessed with the human voice and i think this is why to me

9:18 Chris Hackman and Xuan Nguyen I mean, I'm sure obviously AI will expand and take over the world and do things that horrify and amaze us.

9:27 Luke F. Walton Yes.

9:28 Chris Hackman and Xuan Nguyen But even the voice, like, emulators are so far from even scratching the surface of the, like, majesty and expression of what we can do with our voices. It's just like a window into... So many shades of the self.

9:49 Chris Hackman and Xuan Nguyen I love trying all different ways of singing to see how, you know, it makes you feel.

9:57 Chris Hackman and Xuan Nguyen That's so beautiful.

9:59 Luke F. Walton That's

9:59 Chris Hackman and Xuan Nguyen Are

9:59 Luke F. Walton pretty

9:59 Chris Hackman and Xuan Nguyen we writing music again soon? You're getting me all like inspired.

10:04 Luke F. Walton Yes

10:06 Chris Hackman and Xuan Nguyen I'm sorry.

10:07 Luke F. Walton That's

10:07 Chris Hackman and Xuan Nguyen It's

10:07 Luke F. Walton great

10:07 Chris Hackman and Xuan Nguyen true. That was a great way to say that. Ah, get out of town.

10:13 Luke F. Walton That was beautiful. And I actually I'd love to now talk to you about that Grimes thing that we were talking about just briefly before the podcast.

10:22 Chris Hackman and Xuan Nguyen I'm very curious to hear what happened and how it went.

10:24 Luke F. Walton So I for listeners that don't know Grimes. great musical artist does a lot of stuff in the electronic world as well and she made a basically this public statement saying you can use my voice as long as i get 50 of the royalties use it however you wish um and then her manager had to figure out actually how to do that so

10:49 Chris Hackman and Xuan Nguyen I didn't do that.

10:50 Luke F. Walton they made a website called elf.tech and on that website it's actually it's really well done they they have all these pdfs and lore documents it's very silly it's awesome um and what you do is you upload uh up to like a minute long vocal recording and then they vocal transform your voice into her voice but they

11:12 Chris Hackman and Xuan Nguyen Wow.

11:13 Luke F. Walton maintain the pitch they maintain the articulation and it creeped me the hell out and so naturally i had to i had to make one and so i'm i'm basically probably 30 different vocal takes of my voice into this microphone then transformed onto the browser and then imported back into pro tools vocal harmonies and then i sang some stuff so it turned into this very bizarre duet where half of it sounds like wow she's saying it and half of it sounds super uncanny

11:38 Luke F. Walton in caney valley like something's a little off here but that was kind of interesting too and i wrote a song about being scared about the future and um so that's going to come out on friday but

11:48 Chris Hackman and Xuan Nguyen Sick.

11:48 Luke F. Walton Wow. it was a trip it was a trip and then you distribute it through her website and then they pay you in ethereum

11:55 Chris Hackman and Xuan Nguyen And Oh, that's how you wow. do this. Okay,

11:57 Luke F. Walton yeah

11:57 Chris Hackman and Xuan Nguyen that actually makes a lot Of of sense. course.

11:59 Luke F. Walton yep so that was my uh my very recent um and then i made my art through dolly the um ai art art generator giving prompts and stuff um

12:10 Chris Hackman and Xuan Nguyen Oh, I can't wait to see

12:11 Luke F. Walton it's

12:11 Chris Hackman and Xuan Nguyen it.

12:11 Luke F. Walton it's a trip it's a trip

12:13 Chris Hackman and Xuan Nguyen I need to check in. It needs to be Friday today.

12:15 Luke F. Walton yeah it i mean it can't be i'll just i'll just send you the file

12:20 Chris Hackman and Xuan Nguyen Very interesting.

12:22 Luke F. Walton yeah it's it's weird it's weird it was like it's definitely an experiment i think it could go farther but um we'll be really curious to hear your take on whether or not it preserves that humanity because it really what it is is it feels like i'm putting on her vocal cords because it keeps that articulation to a teeth like same vibrato same scooping into the notes all that kind of stuff um was replicated in her in her voice

12:45 Chris Hackman and Xuan Nguyen Nice.

12:46 Luke F. Walton Pretty weird.

12:47 Chris Hackman and Xuan Nguyen That's so crazy because I just read that book Never Let Me Go and Oh, yeah. this like applies.

12:52 Luke F. Walton Tell me about that.

12:59 Chris Hackman and Xuan Nguyen It's I mean, I'm embarrassed to say, but it took me a minute. Should I spoil? spoiler

13:05 Chris Hackman and Xuan Nguyen Yeah, spoiler you can spoil if you've never heard never read never let me go and you want to read it skip this

13:11 Luke F. Walton There you go. Yeah. Yeah.

13:12 Chris Hackman and Xuan Nguyen spoilers spoiler it took me a minute to realize that they were clones you know i just thought that they were just you know teenagers living in the anyway so it's set in the maybe not so distant future where um humans are making clones just

13:30 Luke F. Walton Okay.

13:31 Chris Hackman and Xuan Nguyen is explicitly for to harvest their organs but throughout the book you know you come to realize i guess kind of a flowery more poetic version of stephen stillberg's ai because it's like they have souls that's the you know um crutch of the book is like whether these you know clones have souls or not that's right right do

13:59 Chris Hackman and Xuan Nguyen Yeah. you want to expand on that he It's so sad. thought it was so sad and he was like i'll never who's what's the other's name again

14:08 Chris Hackman and Xuan Nguyen Kazuo Ishiguro.

14:10 Luke F. Walton Cool.

14:10 Chris Hackman and Xuan Nguyen And he's like, I'll never read him again. And I'm like, I thought it was okay. I mean, I don't expect it as much as Chris, but maybe it's because I'm a clone. I'm a robot.

14:20 Chris Hackman and Xuan Nguyen Oh, God. I have no.

14:21 Luke F. Walton Resonates less. It's your story on the page. It should resonate more.

14:26 Chris Hackman and Xuan Nguyen Yeah. Yeah. That's why I'm like, I think it was fine. It's my day to day.

14:29 Luke F. Walton Right? Totally, totally. A little boring. but that that is an interesting uh that is an interesting conversation i'd say is like whether or not works created by technology or through heavy use of technology maintains that soul of the craft or whatnot i don't know what do you think i

14:50 Chris Hackman and Xuan Nguyen Maybe. Probably depends

14:51 Luke F. Walton guess on yeah

14:52 Chris Hackman and Xuan Nguyen the song. Exactly. I mean, there are many songs performed using traditional technology that have no soul. but yeah

15:02 Chris Hackman and Xuan Nguyen It's just fighting where is the true.

15:04 Luke F. Walton it's i mean well it's it goes back to what you were saying earlier about uh performance and lyrics kind of being so deeply connected um like if you've ever done like a songwriting workshop or songwriting class or whatever and everybody you know if you pass around the lyric sheet it creates a completely different experience of the song rather than just experiencing the song because you're reading it and now it turns into like a different medium it's it's it's still cool but it's like that's not really what the lyrics is there for necessarily to be read as poetry they're there to be you

15:35 Luke F. Walton be in the context of the song so yeah kind of goes back to that point you were making okay

15:41 Chris Hackman and Xuan Nguyen In particular, there's like this moment in a Beach House song that made a huge impression on me. And it was the big album, I don't know, 2008 or whenever it came out, Mitz, and it's the song Wishes, and the line is, once in your life.

16:02 Chris Hackman and Xuan Nguyen But the way she sings it is once in your life and she puts a breath in the middle of Huh. it for no, you're like, why the hell did you breathe? But the way like the way she breathes,

16:15 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

16:15 Chris Hackman and Xuan Nguyen you're like, and I'm like,

16:19 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

16:19 Chris Hackman and Xuan Nguyen that blew my mind like you can like breathe in in the middle of a line in a way that like makes people cry.

16:29 Luke F. Walton Yes, that's cool. I get that. And it's breaking like traditional rules of phrasing.

16:35 Chris Hackman and Xuan Nguyen Yeah, I was like once you know the rules you can break the fuck out of them

16:40 Luke F. Walton That's a good point. And I wonder if those things are aware of like, I'm curious, like for that, from the production side, do you think they were like, ah, whatever. And then somebody else is like, no, that's the magic. We have to keep it.

16:55 Chris Hackman and Xuan Nguyen i I guess we'll have to get big enough to ask him one day. guess right well we don't have to get that big because we can ask their producer

17:02 Chris Hackman and Xuan Nguyen Okay, great.

17:07 Luke F. Walton that's special yeah

17:08 Chris Hackman and Xuan Nguyen You know, you never know those happy accidents, really. But that's the thing that a human touch would have that AI can do.

17:16 Luke F. Walton that's a good point i agree with that Because AI is by nature doing things

17:20 Chris Hackman and Xuan Nguyen It's

17:21 Luke F. Walton that

17:21 Chris Hackman and Xuan Nguyen perfect

17:21 Luke F. Walton it's trained on. Yeah, it's yeah,

17:22 Chris Hackman and Xuan Nguyen Mimetic.

17:23 Luke F. Walton it's mimetic. Yeah. Yeah, that's a good point. I'm curious, like, how you write your songs. Do you approach them from like a traditional way? Do you have different ways that you do it song to song? Do you top line where you, you know, are writing on top of an already finished instrumental? How do you prefer?

17:46 Chris Hackman and Xuan Nguyen It's also two different, very different processes for the two projects.

17:51 Luke F. Walton Oh, cool. That's neat. Was that intentional or is that just how it kind of evolved?

17:56 Chris Hackman and Xuan Nguyen It's like the nature of, it's built into the nature of the project because human Barbie, I write everything and then take on the responsibility of finishing everything.

18:07 Chris Hackman and Xuan Nguyen I'm just singing a little bit.

18:09 Luke F. Walton don't

18:09 Chris Hackman and Xuan Nguyen A little bit of tambourine here and there.

18:12 Luke F. Walton don't don't don't we were just talking about how important that is don't downplay it

18:18 Chris Hackman and Xuan Nguyen no it's crucial that's the salt in the cayenne pepper i write with your voice in mind though i mean i have the band's voices in my mind but with human barbie i'll write basically all of the music in my head and

18:39 Luke F. Walton Mm-hmm.

18:39 Chris Hackman and Xuan Nguyen I'll know what the chords are and I'll know what the vocals are going to be and kind of what the different instruments will be and kind of the way the vocals are going to sound and then I'll write all the lyrics to

18:50 Luke F. Walton Cool.

18:51 Chris Hackman and Xuan Nguyen fit what the song would sound like Mm and

18:55 Luke F. Walton -hmm.

18:55 Chris Hackman and Xuan Nguyen kind of interact and you know I'll tweak things And then demo and record.

19:05 Luke F. Walton does does all that come to you at once do you kind of have an epiphany of like like you get the whole perspective of here's where all of these sonics are going to live and and the vibe that you're going for or is that iterative do you like go okay i have kind of like a vocal idea and then as i'm like developing it then i get the rest of the ideas or does it come like a does it hit you like an epiphany

19:26 Chris Hackman and Xuan Nguyen It takes shape. It takes shape pretty quickly usually, but once like the kernel, like the nugget of the song is there, how it's going to sound musically comes very quickly. And then the lyrics take however long they take, maybe a day or maybe 18 months.

19:47 Luke F. Walton uh-huh yeah that's great that's great and then what's yeah yeah please please yeah i was gonna ask the same thing

19:56 Chris Hackman and Xuan Nguyen Veronica

19:56 Luke F. Walton Okay.

19:56 Chris Hackman and Xuan Nguyen Vaughn, some of it we've co-written. Some of it are songs that Swan wrote completely and then we just produced together. How do you write the songs that you write solo?

20:10 Chris Hackman and Xuan Nguyen The songs that I write solo, it's usually a melody or a phrase that will start it. And then I have to be by myself and maybe be sad for like a while.

20:26 Luke F. Walton Isolation

20:26 Chris Hackman and Xuan Nguyen with the song

20:26 Luke F. Walton sadness.

20:27 Chris Hackman and Xuan Nguyen I do like I really I don't know and they're not always just sad songs it's just like I can be very extroverted but to write songs I really do need to be by myself so I kind of have to turn away and reflect but it's so fun when I write with Chris it's just a completely different When I was speaking,

20:53 Chris Hackman and Xuan Nguyen I don't know how we create like sometimes it's like solving a puzzle is what I like to say.

20:58 Chris Hackman and Xuan Nguyen Mm hmm.

20:59 Luke F. Walton Cool.

20:59 Chris Hackman and Xuan Nguyen Like we're literally like, let's make this puzzle today and then we just fit in pieces. I don't know. They just come out of air. It seems like I think they're spun out of air.

21:10 Chris Hackman and Xuan Nguyen But sometimes it's maybe a therapy session and I'll be like, this is what I want to write about.

21:15 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

21:17 Chris Hackman and Xuan Nguyen It's like 10% writing. 10% drinking tequila and 80% us saying I hate that. No, it's

21:28 Chris Hackman and Xuan Nguyen Yeah, it's fun. I love I don't know. It's fun writing with you. I don't know how to explain. I haven't

21:33 Chris Hackman and Xuan Nguyen fun writing with you. been able to do it with a lot of other people.

21:38 Luke F. Walton I subscribe to this concept of the third writer. When two writers are in the room, they create this third writer. So that's why it's so hard to write a song that would sound like together separately.

21:49 Chris Hackman and Xuan Nguyen Ah, absolutely. it's a thing that's so true i don't know there's something that like you draw out in each other and like i said when i say it's fixing a puzzle when it's just me i'm maybe more like um trying to understand the feeling

22:06 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

22:07 Chris Hackman and Xuan Nguyen it's him it's like I don't know maybe it brings about like old things that you didn't realize that were in the pot or new things

22:14 Luke F. Walton Okay. That's interesting.

22:17 Chris Hackman and Xuan Nguyen that makes sense

22:17 Luke F. Walton Well,

22:17 Chris Hackman and Xuan Nguyen me

22:18 Luke F. Walton you're approaching it too very differently, like from being, you know, a team versus being highly introspective and alone and like maybe more emotionally vulnerable place with the sadness and stuff.

22:30 Chris Hackman and Xuan Nguyen it's so fun we have a record coming out and i'm curious if people would be able to tell which songs were written solo

22:36 Chris Hackman and Xuan Nguyen That'll be a fun guess. yeah

22:37 Luke F. Walton That's a good game. Yeah, for sure.

22:40 Chris Hackman and Xuan Nguyen Because our minds combine, I don't know, there's some vulnerable stuff in there.

22:43 Luke F. Walton Of course. Yeah. But it is different. It is different writing together, writing separately. I'm curious on the stuff that you write on your own.

22:52 Luke F. Walton do you like set the stage in any way is there like a certain type of room or certain type of setup or like incense or tea or whatever that like helps you kind of get to that place um just i'm always super curious about like rituals and like if there are or aren't to kind of like put your head in the right place

23:16 Chris Hackman and Xuan Nguyen for me there's not although i will say i usually am like crouching on the ground when

23:22 Luke F. Walton That's it. That's one for sure.

23:24 Chris Hackman and Xuan Nguyen i started but not like in like a fetal position it's just like i don't know it's just how i can sit comfortably i'm self-easy they're very like grouchy people very squatty people i started dream girl i think i was literally cooking breakfast

23:42 Chris Hackman and Xuan Nguyen there's a song a new song it's a first single coming out of the album and the first line it's um gotta shelf life when you're just a girl and I literally just thought of that as I was thinking they

23:57 Luke F. Walton Love it.

23:58 Chris Hackman and Xuan Nguyen Boom. just come they come I there's spawn out of air I don't know how to I don't know any other way to describe it

24:05 Luke F. Walton Totally.

24:06 Chris Hackman and Xuan Nguyen Do you collaborate frequently? How do you find it, because we're just writing with each other,

24:12 Luke F. Walton Mm

24:13 Chris Hackman and Xuan Nguyen how

24:13 Luke F. Walton hmm.

24:13 Chris Hackman and Xuan Nguyen do you find it working with different musicians kind of serially?

24:18 Luke F. Walton It's it's very bizarre. Like my my biggest thing is I just have to approach it with like the right mindset of we're we're going to make something. We're going to release it like I have to almost give up a certain sense of no.

24:33 Luke F. Walton entirely to do it so frequently because it's like and it usually ends up being really cool but i almost have to be like i don't even know what adventure we're about to walk into because it may be one collaboration with that other person on the other side of the world we'll do like one or two zoom calls and then make it make a song

24:51 Chris Hackman and Xuan Nguyen you know in that and then remotely um and it's never going to be anything i would have made on my own um usually never what i expected even based on their catalog but usually ends up being dope just in part because i think i give up uh the sense of like

25:09 Chris Hackman and Xuan Nguyen it needs to be this certain way or needs to be this certain sound then we just kind of shape it as we go but the cross-cultural stuff is also super interesting to me like yeah

25:18 Chris Hackman and Xuan Nguyen Oh, yeah. that that is always an interesting curveball and I'm excited to you know do more of it I really want to work with some artists in Africa just because I absolutely love the music that's coming out right now and I just I don't know I'm super super excited to work with more people around the world and

25:38 Chris Hackman and Xuan Nguyen learn from them because you i don't know i feel like after every song after every album you change as a person um and that's why i like making so many of them because it's like i don't know like you guys are doing that content treadmill um if you're on a treadmill all day every day you get pretty freaking strong and that's part of the idea flexing

25:57 Chris Hackman and Xuan Nguyen Yeah, creative that's muscle it's Yeah. tiring it's so cool. fun it's really fun it's tiring though

26:07 Chris Hackman and Xuan Nguyen I can definitely sense that. Do you feel like you get a fresh burst of, like, okay, finishing an album is...

26:16 Chris Hackman and Xuan Nguyen Yeah. feels like dying almost Yes, it's it does. just it's so massive it takes so much out really

26:23 Chris Hackman and Xuan Nguyen Yes. actually get it done always takes way like longer than you thought it would does working with like different collaborators serially give you a boost to push through or does it still have that feeling of like Oh my god, I finally made

26:40 Chris Hackman and Xuan Nguyen You're it to the finish exhausted. line. yeah it's both it's both i think what ends up like when i end up feeling exhausted is when i like zoom out and kind of like take stock of everything or when i finish an album i'm about to finish an album right now so i'm feeling i'm feeling it right Nice now

26:54 Chris Hackman and Xuan Nguyen Love it. yeah it's it's that that is the like you're right it feels like dying because you put so much into it it's also like kind of a similar feeling when you finish like watching a show that's like five seasons long or like reading a really long book and you get to the end and you're like i don't even know if i want to finish because then it's over like

27:15 Chris Hackman and Xuan Nguyen Yes. i'll never see them again it's like kind of feels like that with albums collaborations feel a little lighter because they're usually singles

27:21 Chris Hackman and Xuan Nguyen else um but there's a pace to it and i think that the thing that keeps me going is like the energy inherent in the idea itself like you were talking about those little nuggets um like you water them they grow it's like the potential energy of the thing that you that i stumbled on or you guys stumble on is what ends up like making you do the next one um because in absence of that little bit that we snag out of the air i don't know how we do it again

27:49 Chris Hackman and Xuan Nguyen because they're so creatively exhausting but the ideas i think power themselves to an extent yeah

27:57 Chris Hackman and Xuan Nguyen Yeah. yeah Yeah. Huh. break Break legs. It's going to be great. Oh,

28:04 Luke F. Walton Awesome.

28:04 Chris Hackman and Xuan Nguyen on the album. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you. I'm excited. I actually, yeah, I feel like what I'm trying to do right now, so for a long time I covered my face, did a masked project and all that kind of stuff.

28:15 Chris Hackman and Xuan Nguyen And what I'm trying to do right now is I took off my mask for my promo shots and whatever, but now I'm trying to do it more musically. We're like going deeper and being a little bit more recursive and connecting with my life story and all of its ups and downs and also.

28:31 Chris Hackman and Xuan Nguyen so it's uh it's uh imperfections in the way that i tell it to myself um and trying to examine that and put that into music now so that's my that's my current album cycle we'll

28:43 Chris Hackman and Xuan Nguyen Very see thanks cool. It's incredible. well i mean listen to it first but before you judge

28:51 Chris Hackman and Xuan Nguyen Your music thanks is good. I'm excited to listen to it. appreciate that yeah um So we've talked about kind of what you're doing now. I would love to talk about your background, kind of how you ended up growing as a musician, what attracted you to music. And I'd love to ask kind of both of you in turn, just take that wherever you'd like. I would just love to hear a little bit of your story, how you got into this and skilled.

29:17 Chris Hackman and Xuan Nguyen Man, we have kind of different paths, but... Mm-hmm. I feel like we're, it's not karmic, but it's, you're awesome. You're like, yeah, it's

29:34 Chris Hackman and Xuan Nguyen Oh, stop it. like we met at the perfect time. At the right time, the time that we were supposed to meet, I definitely agree.

29:41 Chris Hackman and Xuan Nguyen Yeah. I've been grinding for years, like so long. I don't want to say the number because then you'll know I'm in my 80s. Man,

29:50 Chris Hackman and Xuan Nguyen They're feeling fresh. and just so many projects, just project after project. Learning and then also the music industry over that time has like transformed radically and then accepting, slowly letting go of things that I thought needed to be a certain way and in the past many years really accepting more like. I have to learn marketing. I, well, no, I want to learn marketing.

30:19 Chris Hackman and Xuan Nguyen Yeah, yeah. to do to do what I want to do there are all these micro skills that I neglected for years and years and that also means letting go of things that are unnecessary so I started I used to gig a lot on bass I'm like a jazz bassist I went to school for bass um and then like playing around in a lot of different kinds of bands and that has shrunk and shrunk and shrunk and and my focus is really

30:48 Chris Hackman and Xuan Nguyen isolated and finishing songs and promoting them on spotify to grow in that way is

30:57 Chris Hackman and Xuan Nguyen Yeah, mm in as direct and quick of a way as possible um -hmm cool. and that has brought that has brought back opportunities um so for example we just went on we were very very fortunate to be asked to open for a band called Palace on their U.S. tour.

31:21 Chris Hackman and Xuan Nguyen Awesome. Congratulations. We were out. It was amazing. That sounds We awesome. were out for a month, like playing the biggest shows I've ever played, huge audiences, passionate fans. We made so many new connections and so many new fans. And I didn't, that didn't happen because of a traditional hustle. I wasn't out there booking. I wasn't playing like local shows. We play like twice or three times a year, maybe.

31:49 Chris Hackman and Xuan Nguyen Yeah. It came because of just focusing on that one kernel of art and then sharing it with the world and then getting really lucky.

32:05 Luke F. Walton I like that though.

32:07 Chris Hackman and Xuan Nguyen also it's the culmination of of years years and years of of trial and error and learning and recording How'd you get here?

32:17 Chris Hackman and Xuan Nguyen I forget our stories are so different. My Christmas is, you know, classically trained musician, like got his master's in performance and I went like a different route. I mean, I had, I was always in the fine arts, but I hadn't really thought about making music until.

32:41 Chris Hackman and Xuan Nguyen I started dating this Irish songwriter and he was just mine was a more romanticized point of view he he we were together and he didn't think that we could realistically be together and I didn't know anything about music and I'm like oh my god we'll both be songwriters and we can just like travel together and like that's how we make our living and he's like that it's nonsense

33:06 Chris Hackman and Xuan Nguyen And I don't know, maybe it's because he said it couldn't be done. I went out and wanted to do it. But

33:13 Luke F. Walton Cool.

33:13 Chris Hackman and Xuan Nguyen it had always been something that I wanted, but I had no relationship to it. Like nobody in my family does anything in the arts.

33:23 Chris Hackman and Xuan Nguyen It really felt so far away until I just genuinely met somebody that like does music and even kind of for fun. But it became something that I really wanted. and I

33:39 Chris Hackman and Xuan Nguyen just went about it you know it was kind of a funny like the movie I guess I'm like oh I'm just gonna write songs I'm gonna play an open mic and somebody will discover me and that's like literally what fucking happened

33:48 Luke F. Walton Cool.

33:49 Chris Hackman and Xuan Nguyen um yeah I you know got on a really a label that I don't think is any longer a label in Dallas um

34:01 Chris Hackman and Xuan Nguyen but their A&R guy was in LA and they were they were in their own band and they were really hitting their scene and wanted to make connections and they found Chris and they like played music and they're like oh yeah this guy's in LA like he'll want to do your stuff and I was like yeah this guy's fucking awesome um but you can't really go about it like that I don't know like I said we met kind of on the internet we went to a Cherry Glazer show together you

34:27 Chris Hackman and Xuan Nguyen Hmm. um What quarantine a smash. happened and we were like what are you doing and we're like nothing like you want to maybe just like hang out and like write music and that's how Veronica Vaughn was born it's

34:42 Luke F. Walton that's really different yeah it's really different but i i believe i believe very strongly in like serendipity

34:49 Luke F. Walton and you've got to put it out there and then there will be these moments where you can walk away from them you know there's it's not a guarantee like you have to be together you have to work together or whatever but when you put it out there stuff like that happens where hey now we have a project or like we i was just talking before the call about how i got sam my record label random internet

35:13 Luke F. Walton you know put something out there said you know it would be nice to make this project real and

35:20 Chris Hackman and Xuan Nguyen Mm

35:20 Luke F. Walton then

35:20 Chris Hackman and Xuan Nguyen -hmm.

35:20 Luke F. Walton a few things happen in the universe so then the project becomes more real but it's like that intention that if you

35:28 Chris Hackman and Xuan Nguyen kind of knock on the door sometimes it opens and in unexpected ways and not in like a now you're assigned to Taylor Swift's record label or so you know it's like it's not like that but instead

35:39 Chris Hackman and Xuan Nguyen Right. it's like you meet the right person and then you you can go a lot farther because you're you have something that somebody that believes in what you're doing and you believe what they're doing and that's enough

35:51 Chris Hackman and Xuan Nguyen Yeah. Definitely. Yeah. man you've grown also so much since i first became aware of you so it's yeah it's really beautiful to watch it's like when you get into the fast part of the stream like you really get in the flow of it and then it carries you obviously there's clearly so much work going into it as well but that that work when you're like in the right Part of the flow that

36:21 Chris Hackman and Xuan Nguyen Yeah. work propels you so much further. Yes, totally. And I think you bring like a learning mindset to that and then it, you know, the pace picks up and.

36:34 Chris Hackman and Xuan Nguyen like the thing that leveled me up the most was i got a production gig for a japanese band called chai and that was totally

36:41 Chris Hackman and Xuan Nguyen Love them. random because i i got a song that had no business being in new music friday on spotify and then it got in there and then they heard it posted on their story i wrote them in japanese in their messages they replied and then i remixed and then i started producing for them but that was my ultimate like okay i gotta get better now like they're

37:02 Chris Hackman and Xuan Nguyen Wow. a band that i actually really like their music i don't want to screw that up so i'm gonna have to like really level up at mixing and all this kind of stuff and um those you meeting those moments i think end up yeah helping you get into the faster channels of the stream um and being like like i'm i feel like i have so much more to learn and so much more to do so i'm i feel like that helps too it's like recognizing i'm not a world-class mixing engineer but damn it i want to be

37:30 Chris Hackman and Xuan Nguyen mm-hmm So, sorry working on it every day. That's so wonderful. yeah i feel like you're in i i have this i have a what you're saying reminds me of a very similar conversation i'm having in my head also all the time with my own mixing but at the end of the day if it's on a playlist and people are hearing it it's like you're a pro you're a pro

37:54 Chris Hackman and Xuan Nguyen Yeah, that yeah, right. is a mix that is meaningful to people. mixing especially though because there's like a million different ways you can go and they're all valid and so i think that's one of the ways that mixing engineers end up getting in their own heads myself included of like well i could have made that choice and somebody else would have made this choice and they're you know better paid than i am and so maybe i went the wrong choice but it's like there's not really a wrong choice it's like the breath in between the the phrase you know there's

38:24 Chris Hackman and Xuan Nguyen There are infinite choices and sometimes the one less explored is the actual right choice for that that moment You know, it's

38:32 Chris Hackman and Xuan Nguyen do you also yeah. feel like we Yeah, go for it. sorry Uh when -huh. No, please you like finish a song or like write a song like do you have that feeling where you just know it's right yeah

38:43 Chris Hackman and Xuan Nguyen I yeah. Yeah, I think so. I think so. It's like and it's it's funny because that moment

38:50 Chris Hackman and Xuan Nguyen is in the moment like sometimes I'll go back and I'll listen to something later but I'll be like the moments changed and if I made that now it'd be different but that doesn't mean that it wasn't right then where like the I don't know it's not just musical taste it's like everything um

39:05 Chris Hackman and Xuan Nguyen Right. preference and growth and all those kind of things don't aren't necessarily like I'm better at everything now so if I just remixed all of my old music it would be better it's like no it just would fit now rather than when it fit then it was right I don't know if I'm explaining that very well but like I feel like music is very much um present

39:27 Chris Hackman and Xuan Nguyen Yeah. I just feel like to expand that further, it

39:31 Luke F. Walton Please

39:31 Chris Hackman and Xuan Nguyen feels like that in like every aspect of the musical process, but also like our lives, like

39:38 Chris Hackman and Xuan Nguyen Mm especially -hmm. working with Chris, I'm like everything just feels right. Mm

39:41 Chris Hackman and Xuan Nguyen Like, yes, disagree sometimes, but there's never anything that ever it's like we're grinding to get to the next thing or to finish something or like it's painful. you know everything is just so lovely you

39:56 Chris Hackman and Xuan Nguyen That's great. That's great. know like oh we met each other at the right time and like this song like when we're like we're trying to finish this project and we have to write it in this amount of time like everything just happens kind of naturally there's not a lot of fighting I think it's kind of cool about you know and where you are now like you're like oh my god I just dropped in dude your fucking show at Tri is so sick and it just came in at like the right time like it was the time you

40:23 Chris Hackman and Xuan Nguyen It's so cool. yeah it was the time and it and i like that i like you know there's there it's not to say that they'll like never have friction or not to do like hard things but there's like a certain effortlessness that comes with other things that makes you feel like no that's kind of the path you're supposed to be on i agree with that you know all things i agree with that yeah Um,

40:46 Chris Hackman and Xuan Nguyen let's see what, what, let's, let's basically like maybe one or two more questions. Let's talk about future. Like what are goals? Where do you want to grow, you know, maybe professionally as a musician, but also like personally, where, where do you want to be like as a creator, as a creative? Um, are there new skills that you want to pick up? Are there new things that you want to explore?

41:06 Chris Hackman and Xuan Nguyen I'm just going to loft that over to you and see if any of that lands. You know, I... The way the palace tour happened this year

41:18 Chris Hackman and Xuan Nguyen Yes. is that I learned so much. Oh my gosh. Okay, so to back up last year, we were shooting a music video for a song called Everything I Never Wanted.

41:32 Chris Hackman and Xuan Nguyen Mm-hmm. And we were dressed up as vampires and we're in this little cabin in the middle of the woods staying up all night. And a dear friend texted me. And said, hey, do you want to go on a tour playing bass? It's an indie band. It would be at minimum a week, but as long as a month. no

41:55 Chris Hackman and Xuan Nguyen The it was just that question and it was like in three days the first Yeah, show and

42:00 Chris Hackman and Xuan Nguyen you have three days to learn 90 minutes of music.

42:02 Luke F. Walton Oh my

42:02 Chris Hackman and Xuan Nguyen i knew

42:03 Luke F. Walton god.

42:03 Chris Hackman and Xuan Nguyen i knew like i have to text that i have like probably minutes to text back if i if i want this to happen and obviously it was a yes um even though i didn't know what the band was until they sent the music and It was insane. I learned 90 minutes of music and got on a plane and I'm like listening through

42:28 Chris Hackman and Xuan Nguyen Oh my god, to yes. try to have it like on the Uber to the first to the like day of soundcheck slash rehearsal.

42:36 Chris Hackman and Xuan Nguyen Cool. But Cramming it for the test. was it was a moment where it felt like a that's magic you

42:51 Chris Hackman and Xuan Nguyen Yeah, can't yeah, make it happen um i was just like subbing but i got the craziest voyeuristic like inside outside view of palace i

43:03 Chris Hackman and Xuan Nguyen mm feel like it was one of if it wasn't their first headline u.s tour it was one of the first and certainly

43:09 Chris Hackman and Xuan Nguyen -hmm one where they were really starting to blow up and I got to see like the Cool.

43:15 Chris Hackman and Xuan Nguyen amazement and wonder of their eyes like oh my god this is really happening Yeah.

43:20 Chris Hackman and Xuan Nguyen and it was also obvious that it wasn't happening because of some traditional grind of like posting three times a day on TikTok and like here are the best practices of marketing your music although do those know about them and learn them But it's because they were just taking a leap of faith and

43:43 Chris Hackman and Xuan Nguyen Mm-hmm. writing music that is from the heart and it reached so many people and then there were gatekeepers that helped them and

43:53 Chris Hackman and Xuan Nguyen Mm-hmm. really took care of things that you just can't do alone. Mm-hmm. And I, it really hit me like. I'm not going to hustle my way to where I'm trying to go. I just need to put the music out, dive in. Whatever happens, happens. If magic strikes, if lightning strikes, awesome. If not, also awesome. I went for it.

44:20 Chris Hackman and Xuan Nguyen Mm-hmm. Yes. And that's, I don't know, that's where I am. Yeah. As far as your question of what's next,

44:28 Chris Hackman and Xuan Nguyen Yeah. just finish the album and finish the next album, Great. throw them out. market them and share them as best as we can and if lightning strikes sweet long

44:44 Chris Hackman and Xuan Nguyen Yeah, be ready for it. Yeah. answer you No, it was good. I'm captivated. I don't even want to answer now.

44:53 Chris Hackman and Xuan Nguyen don't have to I feel like future plans take a bath. Yes. Brush my teeth. It's too hot for a bath. I

45:00 Chris Hackman and Xuan Nguyen i don't know. did take a bath the other day like i was like i don't have a bug i know it's hot but i want to sit in some steamy ass water i

45:12 Chris Hackman and Xuan Nguyen don't know i liked it it was weird it'll switch to cold though they'll be cold baths have you taken a cold bath

45:19 Chris Hackman and Xuan Nguyen No, not I've like iced myself like done an ice bath, but I haven't done like a pleasurable cold bath

45:25 Chris Hackman and Xuan Nguyen like a pleasurable like not freezing but just you know if it's really hot Yeah, just like some

45:33 Chris Hackman and Xuan Nguyen I'll do it. slightly I'll do it cooler than room temperature it's kind of really nice

45:37 Chris Hackman and Xuan Nguyen Yeah, it it sounds pretty nice I cools you down yes can and then I can use my bath bombs

45:45 Chris Hackman and Xuan Nguyen oh that is only yeah only if you make that sound Yeah, when you put totally. it in that's

45:52 Chris Hackman and Xuan Nguyen I am a bad fan, though. our future we want to release an album where every song ends with he doesn't know that that's our future but i do i'm just

46:05 Chris Hackman and Xuan Nguyen Barreling a stalker towards that future. Well, now I know. So everybody keep on the lookout. You'll know it when you hear it.

46:16 Chris Hackman and Xuan Nguyen Definitely. That's awesome. I'm really excited to hear the record. Please, please let me know. I'll be following. I encourage all the listeners to follow along as well. I'll put your guys' links in the bio, on the post, and all that good stuff so people can hear the music.

46:35 Luke F. Walton For those following along at home, my music is at scoobertdoobert.pizza. That's where you can find

46:42 Chris Hackman and Xuan Nguyen Oh. my links. Hmm.

46:44 Luke F. Walton What are you guys' handles? Where can people find more? I'll link it up. Say it just in case people are driving and they don't have a chance.

46:52 Chris Hackman and Xuan Nguyen Sure. Find us at The Real Human Barbie and at VV So Hot. And if you find either one of those, you'll find

47:03 Chris Hackman and Xuan Nguyen You'll the other find one the of other. us. Good points. We're brother-sister cousins.

47:08 Chris Hackman and Xuan Nguyen All of the above. Mother, daughter, father, son. That's us. We are our own father.

47:18 Chris Hackman and Xuan Nguyen time travel arc well thank you both so much for joining is there anything else you want to leave the listeners on any parting wisdom favorite quote

47:30 Chris Hackman and Xuan Nguyen Just remember that you really rock and you kick major butt. So just keep doing that and that's dope.

47:41 Chris Hackman and Xuan Nguyen I needed to hear that. Thank you. You are so lovely. Thanks for having us. Thank you both so much.

47:47 Chris Hackman and Xuan Nguyen This is a treat. I really appreciate it. Until next time, we'll have to do another one after you drop the record. We can talk about everything that went into it.

47:55 Chris Hackman and Xuan Nguyen Sick. See you guys. Bye. Thanks so much. Peace. Be well.