Music, Connection, and Growth with Lojo

Welcome to the Ambiguous Truth. I'm your host, Anthony Mistretta. This episode is a conversation with a friend of mine who I actually met at a pregame — he was DJing, had an extremely diverse repertoire of music that he was mixing. I think you'll come to learn that he has an even more diverse repertoire of conversation topics and interesting takes on life. Please welcome my friend, Logan Jones, aka Lojo. And now, onto the show.

Well, welcome. Thanks for being here, Lojo — or Logan, I'll let you introduce yourself however you want.

Alright, my name is Logan, aka Lojo. Local DJ on the side, clinical research manager by day, originally from the East Coast, landed in Denver during COVID, and I've been having a blast since I moved here.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. So yeah, you mentioned that you're a DJ. I want to take us back quite a few years — we were having a conversation while walking through the park a couple of weeks ago, and — no, was it at the show? I think it was at the show when you first mentioned that you were at Ocula.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

That's when you first mentioned that you rapped. But even before that, what was the first thing that you did in music — or, in exploring the creative arts generally, maybe not even music?

Yeah, I think creative arts first would probably be art itself, like drawing art, you know? I was pretty big on that when I was young — did that throughout middle school and high school. Musically, I actually played the saxophone as well, in eighth grade.

You still play?

No. I probably haven't touched one in, gosh, 20 years — it's been quite a while. But that was the first thing I did musically. I mean, I would be down to get into it again. My dad used to talk to me about it all the time — he's a huge blues guy. And he would always say, "you're only not interested in keeping up with the saxophone because of what they're making you play — if you got together with one of my buddies and let them show you how to jam on one, you'd be much more interested." And I think I just kind of fell out of it in high school and never picked it back up.

So you were too rigid with your — playing, and that's not the point?

Playing Hot Cross Buns wasn't doing it for me, really — I wanted to be ripping solos and stuff. The stuff I was jamming on was really not for me. I started off on clarinet for a year, got my Squidward on a little bit, didn't really care for that. Then I switched to saxophone for my eighth grade year — and that was my last year doing band, because my middle school required you to either do band or chorus. I was like, well, I'm absolutely not doing chorus. And then when I went to high school, I just kind of fell off from band. I think, at least in my area, band had a pretty bad stigma in high school. I was a multi-sport athlete, so it was like, I don't think I can take time away from that.

What was the stigma?

Like, you're a nerd if you're in band or something like that, you know? When I was a lot less mature, those things had a lot bigger of an impact on me. Now I don't care about any of that at all. But back then it was a whole different time in your life.

Yeah, when you said "in your area," I thought it was going to be something unique to your—

I mean, I don't think — as a saxophonist in a fucking band, I don't think I was the coolest kid. No one was.

Okay. And then after that in high school, is that when you really got into rap?

Yeah, not right away in high school. I kind of grew up in a little bit more of a diverse neighborhood, and the majority of the people I hung out with were big rap fans — me and my younger brother, that was kind of what we grew up on, not from our parents but just on our own. The music we really enjoyed while we were growing up was rap and hip-hop, so that was pretty much all I listened to until I got to college. Having such an appreciation for it, when it was the only thing I listened to and it was that dominant in my music intake, really inspired me to get into it myself. And I remember the first time I tried it, I was like, alright, I might be a little better at this than I thought. I just decided to stick with it because I was surrounded by one of my best friends at the time, a guy named Jeffrey — me and him used to just rap every single time we hung out, and keeping with it got me excited about it, because sometimes you'll say a line and get really excited about it. Then after that I just picked it up more and more from there, and in college I just went kind of crazy with it.

So how did you find your way into electronic music?

Electronic music, I actually got shown the way, I'll say, in college by some friends. I got introduced to pretty much every other kind of music in college aside from rap. I remember some of my friends used to rag on me freshman and sophomore year because I didn't know anything at all about rock — not even the main stuff, like Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, that kind of stuff. I was really unfamiliar with everything, because ever since I had a car, I always had an aux cord, so I never listened to the radio — like, pretty much never. So you're not hearing that unless I'm playing it, and I was only ever playing my kind of rap. I didn't listen to Dark Side of the Moon until my sophomore year of college, for the first time ever.

That's such an interesting point, and it parallels what we were talking about before this conversation — around being grateful that we grew up both with and without technology.

Because I haven't even thought about that. Yeah, the radio is dead. I know people who still listen to the radio.

I do think, regardless of whether or not it's dead, the reality is that the internet has enabled so much more exploration of music — Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube, SoundCloud, and before that was LimeWire and other things like that. There's so many ways to increase that reach. So yeah, that probably makes sense why it feels like there's more edge-case music, and things just become more and more niche —

— they can grow internationally without having to be like a globally recognized band with distribution of CDs internationally. That's fucking hard.

No, it's crazy — Spotify, you click a button and then it's distributed.

Yeah. And they'll curate, like, things you missed, or artists you may like. We didn't have anything like that. I used to go burn CDs off Walmart.com — you'd pay like however many cents a song, and it's like a 10-track CD, and you could pick a custom Walmart-generated graphic for the cover. That was my primary way of listening before I got my first car.

Do you still have those CDs?

I might, honestly, somewhere.

That would make some cool — not to get ahead of ourselves, but if you produce an album, that could be some cool cover art.

Yeah, that would actually be really cool — like a blurry car driving in the middle of the night, some stock photo, like a microphone stand or something.

Yeah, yeah, that would be awesome. So — I want to hear more about your relatively recent transition into production. Not just mixing, but now doing more production. What spawned that interest?

So production, for me, is something — I don't want to say always, but since I first got into rap, I guess a little more background: I got into rapping because I was a beatboxer in high school. When I used to go to parties and that kind of stuff, I would always be making beats, beatboxing for people, and a lot of times people would be rapping and I'd be making the beat, and I'd be like, man, I want to rap too, everyone's rapping, I'm just making the beat, I want to take a turn to rap. That's kind of how I initially got into rapping. From making those beats, I used to sometimes get in trouble in high school for making beats on the desk — I always had an interest in that, making beats and making my own flow. And I've since had an interest in production, but I never had the means to get into it until recently. I maybe could have gotten into it cheaper in college, but I just didn't feel like I really had the means — financially —

Financial means?

Yeah, financial means. I mean, maybe mental as well — I might not have had the space for it, but it's something I kind of always had in the back of my mind. And once I started DJing out here, I met so many people who have so many different interests and do all kinds of things — producing, DJing, working — and I was like, there's nothing stopping me from it now. I think it was easier when I was younger, when I had a lot more instability, a lot more uncertainty in my life, where it was an easy excuse to say, oh, I'm not going to start producing because of this, or I can't do it because of XYZ. But it was last year in March when I first got Ableton — I was like, there's nothing stopping me at this point. Even if I don't have the exact amount of time or the best setup right now, I've been thinking about it so long, it's something I need to just go for. And that's that.

What I do know about you is that go-for mentality seems to hold true in other areas. I was talking to one of our mutual friends about when you first wanted to be a DJ — Frankie was saying, "Lojo is great because he just reached out to everyone, you could tell he really wanted to become a part of this ecosystem and made a point to network." So I feel like that mentality has always been there. Do you feel like that just — I have an idea, I have something I want to go after, and I'm going to chase it — do you think that's something that's always been a part of you?

Yeah, I'd say so, for sure. I think it's been a part of me in different aspects, shown in different ways. I think it really came about in high school — my first two years of high school I was extremely shy, didn't know that many people. I can't think of a specific moment when that changed, but I remember my junior and senior year deciding, I'm going to be more outgoing, I'm going to talk to people, I'm going to do more things. And then my whole life kind of did a 180 at that point. I exerted myself into other activities too — tried new sports. I was pretty much only a football player for most of high school, and then junior year I did tennis, track, soccer, swimming my senior year — I was like, I'm just going to try new stuff and see if I enjoy it. I carried that over into college, and even more so now in my adult life.

Yeah — like a combination of open-mindedness and an excitement to just adventure and try things, and being open-minded enough to say, I've never tried this, this could be something I'm interested in, rather than being biased against it, like "band is for nerds."

Yeah, exactly — it's like, maybe it is, maybe I'm one, but maybe it's cool.

Right, here, yet — very cool. Can you share some of your — you shared a story of you rapping, and there's some wild shit that went on. Can you share that?

Yeah, I definitely can. So I have quite a few interesting rapping stories. I used to be a lot more loose, I'll say, in my younger days than I am now — I feel like I'm a lot more level-headed and in control now. But one time—

Your rap would also — what I heard, those three songs, I think that aligns with some of the lyrics.

Yeah, I mean, a lot of those lyrics are not necessarily lies from back then. So that'll give you a little bit of a picture of how different things might have been, you know, ten, however many long years ago it's been now. But I think probably my craziest rap story was — I was at a party, I was on a staircase actually, outside the party, a multiple-level staircase, I was in the middle of the stairs, rapping — pretty drunk, rapping for a lot of people, had a whole group of people surrounding me. And these three characters come up, and you could tell they're just not part of the crowd, kind of walked up off the street — they didn't go to the college, they were just party-hopping, bouncing around. All three of them came up into the circle, got their way to the front, and just came up to me and started talking trash to me right away — didn't say anything to anyone else, just immediately came for the attack. And back then, I was not taking that at all — I was a pretty avid battle rapper in college, I used to never back down from a challenge. So as soon as I heard one of them say something, I directed my freestyle at them — it was three guys, and I went down the line to each one of them, just going crazy on them. They weren't very happy about that, didn't expect it, caught them off guard a bit. And one of the guys actually pulled out a gun and held it to my head, and I just continued to rap. I think he thought it was going to scare me or deter me from doing what I was doing. He was holding it to my head, and I just kept going, and it made it that much crazier, because everyone was like, whoa. It was pretty wild, and I think a fight ended up breaking out — I wasn't involved, but he pistol-whipped someone or something after that. So that's definitely up there with one of the crazier ones.

That's wild. Why did it not scare you?

I think back then I was in a lot different of a headspace than I am now. It's almost — might be a little dark, but it's like a "nothing to lose" headspace — I'm just out here doing my thing on my own, living life to the fullest, I don't care what happens at that point in time. I think now I still enjoy living life to the fullest, but I'm a lot less reckless, in the sense of not caring what happens to me. At that point in my life I was more in that mindset where it's like, what happens doesn't matter, I'm just going to do my thing, and that's going to be that.

Thinking of music as expression — a lyrical form of expression with rap, and then now more of a melodic and rhythmic form of expression with production. It sounds to me like you found the music before you felt the expression — it's not like you wanted to go from lyrics to melodies.

Yeah.

It happened the other way around. Given that you made that transition, do you feel like there's any gaps you cannot fill through production of electronic music compared to the lyric-creation process of rap? And on the flip side, are there things you feel you can express better through electronic production than you could through lyrics?

Yeah, that's actually a really good question. I think for me, I'm still so new to electronic music production — even though I've been into electronic for maybe eight or nine years now, it still feels new to me, because when I was 12 I was listening to rap, I grew up with it, there's so much more of a longer history there. So I think for me personally, I don't necessarily have the tools yet to express myself the way I would want to with electronic music. It's a lot more difficult for me to invoke the kind of feeling or emotion or message I want to portray in an electronic song, because I'm so basic at the application of it — I know what I want it to sound like, I know how I want to make it, but the skill it takes to get there, I'm not there yet, because I'm so new to that level of production. I got Ableton last year in March — got the basic intro version, barely spent much time in it last year. Then end of November, December — my birthday's in December — my birthday present to myself was I bought a brand new Mac and upgraded Ableton fully. So this is really my first year where I have all the tools to do production. I'm still so new to it, I don't have the application yet. Rap, I feel like is something I kind of always have — it's easier for me to express or evoke emotion with that because I have the tools for that already, even if I'm rusty or haven't done it in a while. I still feel like I have more comprehensive tools in that platform than I do with electronic at this point. As far as comparing them — some people might disagree, but I feel like you can evoke emotion equally with both. There's a lot of newer rap I'm maybe not the biggest fan of, but it still evokes an emotion or portrays some scenery. I think electronic does that too, but I wouldn't say one can evoke emotion more than the other.

Yeah, I think that's fair. In my personal experience, one of the things that's really drawn me toward electronic music is its ability to, in many ways, invoke more emotion than some of the music I was accustomed to, even without lyrics. I've always — coming from band, specifically jazz, jazz was my love in high school — in terms of creating music, it was always, I love playing jazz, but it always felt like there was just — I don't know, there was a deeper connection with electronic music to the emotion than I felt even through jazz.

All right, I got a question for you, actually. That deeper connection from electronic music — do you feel like that's relative to your life experience? Like, maturing and going through the things you've been through — because I'd say the same for me, opposite, with rap — some of that stuff, obviously can't relate to all of it, but there are things in there I think I can relate to more than some electronic music, if that makes sense.

Yeah, that's a good question — I've never thought about that. I don't know — if I had found Ben Böhmer, for example, a decade or two decades ago, would it have had the same impact on me? No, I don't think so. I think it was important for jazz to play the role it played in my music career, to teach me — honestly, I think probably because I have a tendency to be much more logical and rigid, jazz was a huge learning opportunity for me to escape from that. But getting back into playing some jazz and trying to improv, it feels like there's a bit of a disconnect from where that creative juice used to be, where I could improv — now I almost feel like I'm losing that, or I've just been out of practice, I've almost lost that creativity and flow, and I find myself going back to almost the theory basics — very basic theory, like, let's just play over the pentatonic scale in this song, rather than thinking about it as a big picture and coming up with something more fluidly. So — to answer your question, I don't think it would have had the same effect. I don't think that appreciation would have been there ten years ago.

Yeah, absolutely.

I also think there's a composition component that I find fascinating — if you think about Mozart or Beethoven or Bach, or any of these incredible composers hundreds of years ago, part of the genius behind them was that they were able to, without having an entire ensemble in front of them, picture with a single piano what an entire string section or orchestra — for anyone who composes back in the day before technology, to be able to theorize what sound is going to be made — that is a whole other level of genius, where today we take it for granted that you can just press a button and have 20 different guitar sounds, an entire orchestra playing something, an entire string section playing these three notes, building this beautiful string choir — you push a button. So I think the composition piece of electronic music, while it's still accessible, is more accessible than it was 100, 200 years ago or more. I think maybe because of that, it's almost like the creation of music is more ubiquitous. I recognize, through band, how difficult it was to create and compose music — I could never in a billion years do that. And now, meeting a lot of people who are producers, it's like that hurdle came down, and now it opens the door for people who may not be the savants that Mozart or Bach were to still be creative geniuses in their own right. I think that part of the appreciation for composition stems from a band background, and had I not gone through those years of band, I probably wouldn't have appreciated electronic music, because it truly is a composition — you're not just writing lyrics, you're creating an entire chorus.

I don't know if that even answers the question, but I think it does, yeah.

Yeah, that's kind of my take. I'm curious what that evolution looked like — both in terms of the music you consume, and how the music you now create is a bit different. How has your concept of music evolved through the years, as that's changed?

I feel like that kind of reiterates — evolution throughout your life. For me it's like a growth in mental and emotional maturity, and letting walls of judgment down. The more mature I grew, and the more in touch with myself and with the world in general, I had a lot more acceptance — not just for music, but people in general. When I was younger there might have been people I would have judged, like "that guy looks weird," and now I'm like, that guy's cool because he's expressing himself differently. I think that plays into music for me too, because I would give music a chance I never would have before — in high school I'm not getting in the car and putting on Beethoven, but now I have Bach on vinyl that I listen to when I'm chilling with a glass of wine, and it's a whole different appreciation for that kind of music. Right now my favorite genre is progressive house. If you'd asked me that seven years ago, I'd have said, get out of here — I didn't even listen to house music three or four years ago, what the hell is that? It's in tune with a whole different part of myself — it's relaxing, uplifting, ethereal, brings a whole different vibe. I don't have to listen to crazy dubstep all day, or anything like that. A much more open mind has caused me to have a lot more interest in a wide range — I listen to a lot of foreign music too, there's some French bands I listen to, I have no idea what they're saying, but it sounds awesome.

All right, so I'm going to bring this up because I was a little hesitant to touch on this subject, but I'm going to add an addendum to your question, and it ties in nicely to where I want to go with this — I think it's important to note the usage of drugs. I think drugs have definitely changed the way that I experience music.

From festivals — maybe not even festivals, but the reason why I moved to Denver — do you know this?

I don't think so.

Okay. So I took a national park trip from Joshua Tree, all the way through Arizona, Nevada, Utah, and then Colorado — Denver ended here for like two weeks, this was years ago. As a thank-you, my buddy let me stay at his place in Denver for two weeks, and I just got to frolic about. As a thank-you, Ben Böhmer was playing at Red Rocks, and I was like, oh dude, I'm going to get us tickets, we're going to go — he's not a fan of his music, but whatever. And a buddy of mine back in Atlanta gave me a tab of acid, maybe two — doesn't matter, but he gave me some amount of acid that I could share with Stevie. So he took it, and we went to the show. It definitely kicked in at the perfect time — as we got there, as the artists got more intense, it was like Cree — you know, French guy, French-Ghanaian, I think. Then, man, I don't even remember — I do remember Bob Moses, but I did not enjoy that performance. But when Ben Böhmer came on, the hour, two-hour set, whatever he played, I just remember not being on planet earth. There was a moment — I'm in a new city, this is the first day I think I got into Denver, I'd been traveling out of a bus for two weeks prior, definitely not feeling like Atlanta was home anymore. And I remember just closing my eyes, listening to his music, and a forest appeared — and it wasn't like a normal forest, it was like everything was outlined in primary colors of light, red, green, blue, around everything. And I remember falling back in this dream state and being caught by a tree that just grew along my back as I fell — it kind of caught me in slow motion. And then it provided shade, comfort, safety, and I knew that's Mother Nature — I felt like literally the world was saying, you're safe here. And pretty much in that moment I was like, alright, I'm moving. As soon as I got back to Atlanta, packed up my bags, put it in storage, made a beeline back out here. So I think the usage of psychedelics, and even recreational marijuana, has allowed me to appreciate things on a deeper, much different level. I think that's a big factor that drove this evolution.

What is it specifically about electronic music that tickles me so much? I don't really know. I have an answer, but we've had conversations about that, and I'm curious —

Has psychedelics played a big role in your life as well?

Yeah, absolutely.

I'm curious, from the music perspective, has that paralleled your shift from rap towards EDM? Has the type of drugs kind of shifted, has what you've been looking for shifted? And then, fundamentally as a human being, how has your perception of the world shifted?

Yeah, I'd say 100%. The way it shifted my perception as a human being and my view of the world ties directly into the way it shaped my change in music. I think the biggest takeaway I have personally from psychedelics is continuing to push myself to be more open-minded. I had a lot of closed-mindedness before that, a lot of judgment and opinions I was holding onto for all kinds of things — people, places, music. Doing psychedelics caused me to let my walls down and accept a lot more into my life. That played a direct impact on accepting music into my life — before that it was like, there's not going to be anything as good as rap for me, no one's going to be putting it down like Waka Flocka, that's how I used to think in high school. Then the first time you take some mushrooms and listen to Pink Floyd, you're like, hold on a second, there's a lot more out there than you think. Listening to those types of songs under the influence of psychedelics gives you a little more appreciation for the music — not that you can't appreciate it without, obviously, but you get more in tune with the message they were portraying, what they were trying to put into the music, because that was the transitional period for the United States and drug culture — and globally too, the sixties, seventies, the big acid movement, the Grateful Dead sort of pioneered that as well as a lot of other psychedelic bands back then, and that brought psychedelics to the forefront and introduced it heavily into the scene. You can really understand that kind of music as, these are all people almost all at the same time experimenting with somewhat of a new drug that people aren't necessarily familiar with, pushing the boundaries of human creation, human thought, how far they can push their mind — performing while under the influence, writing songs under the influence — it was really a transcendental period of music. And I feel like you can really listen to and feel that in that kind of music.

Yeah, totally. All right, third time you've brought up the open-mindedness — so I think it's very clear that's been a big shift in kind of everything, from music to even career. Aside from the psychedelic influence, what other practices do you explore on a regular basis to try and further that open-mindedness, or things you do to improve in that area, like gratitude practices or something like that?

Yeah, for me, again with the open-mindedness — going to different shows, maybe going to a band I've never heard of before, going to see a local band, trying to meet a new group of people, get a new experience from a whole new group. But I think the biggest impact for me in the last four or five years has for sure been therapy. I know a lot of times, especially our parents' generation, therapy has a really bad stigma — like, you don't go to therapy unless you're crazy, no one goes to therapy or they're going to get a lobotomy, back in the day. It was really intimidating for me to get into it — I'd thought about it for a while, had a lot of struggles in college and a lot of things I was dealing with, and I really didn't get into therapy until 2021. I had a tough breakup then, was going through a lot, and I was like, I'm going to give it a shot, see what it's like. Since then it's been monumental for the amount of growth I've made in the past couple of years. I think that in itself has really transcended the open-mindedness, because it gives you a whole different perspective. I even said this to Frankie the other day — I did a lot of things I wasn't proud of when I was younger, but I feel like I've always been a good person at heart, I just at some times in my life didn't have the tools to be the way I wanted to be. Therapy gave me those tools — to understand how my actions make this person feel, instead of it just being about me, me, me, how I feel, how this hurts me — it's like, well, how do my actions make the other person feel, or how does that person I interacted with feel about that interaction? Having that different switch on perspective really gave me a lot of tools to operate the way I've wanted to navigate the world for the last decade or so.

I feel similarly — there's definitely things I've done in my life I'm not proud of. I wish I could scratch them off the record, but you can't, so instead you have to learn from them. But I haven't really thought about it from the perspective of not having the tools to —

— live the life you want.

You said specifically, "live the life" — you didn't have the tools to live the life you wanted to, to be the way you want to be to the world.

Yeah. Be the change you want to see.

Yeah, exactly.

And it's funny, because I used that exact example as an apology to someone — I had a falling-out with a friend a couple of years ago, and we reconnected about a year ago. When we reconnected, I said, look, honestly, at that time I did not think I was doing anything wrong — I truly felt I was in the right at that moment, felt like I was doing the right thing. And I told them, I'm telling you that at that moment in time, I did not have the tools to handle that situation properly, and I apologize for that. It's not that I wish I would have done something different, because at the time I didn't have the tools to do something different — so it's framing it in a different way. Not that I'm not taking blame, but that I didn't have the capability to treat that situation properly at the time.

Yeah, and it's a great apology because it's objective — sometimes you can apologize and have it come from a place of emotion, where it almost seems like you'd want to feel some guilt —

Yeah, or some pity, perhaps.

Right. But that's — no, I recognize my fault, I recognize it was in this capacity, but also not being too hard on yourself, and realizing it's a journey, you've got to learn. Do you find that you're someone who lives with regrets?

I try not to. I think there's some things I regret to a certain degree, but I think — kind of what we just came off of discussing helps me reframe it in a place of not regret, but thankfulness — even if it's something horrible or really bad, I'm thankful for that experience because I've grown so much from it. Like my first relationship in Colorado ended terribly, and at the time, and shortly after, I had a lot of regrets about how I handled it. But now, looking back on it, I'm thankful that I treated it that way, because it showed me how not to act moving forward — trying to reframe my thoughts to use things as a learning experience, to not put negative connotations on mistakes I've made, because everyone makes mistakes and you're never going to be perfect. If you sit around all day regretting everything you've ever done — you know those memes, "I just sit in the corner and think about every bad thing I've ever done" — thinking of it or framing it that way is going to have a negative impact on your life, and it's going to cause you more difficulty moving forward. But if you frame it as, I learned that's not the right thing to do, or that taught me how I can treat it differently moving forward, it gives you a more positive outlook on your mistakes. That's the mindset I try to have moving forward now.

Yeah, definitely — I think it's dangerous to get caught in the trap of, "shit, if only I'd done this."

Right — well, I mean, kind of "if only," but — you also learn from it.

You mentioned the growth you've gotten through therapy — what are the areas where you want to put your emotional bandwidth towards now? Does that make sense?

Yeah, that does make sense. For me, I just try to put my emotional bandwidth towards relationships and interactions that are going to be beneficial for me. That's been something I've picked up on a lot — for example, you meet a girl, try to talk to her, she's not interested — you don't put your emotion or mental energy into pursuing that, because she's clearly not going to show the same mental energy or emotion towards you. I've been practicing that a lot within the last year or so, and it's kind of fully reshaped my life as far as friends I interact with. Some people I might have cut off, or don't talk to as much anymore, because I'm putting my energy into people who are putting energy into me, or people who are genuinely having a positive impact on me — I'm chasing those connections rather than just, I've been friends with this guy for ten years, let me just keep texting him because we've been friends so long. Realizing that might not be a relationship for me anymore, and that's okay, because things change, people go through different paths and change. But I want to ensure I'm surrounding myself with people who are going to be positive impacts on me, and positively supportive of what I'm trying to do — if I'm not trying to go out and drink 20 beers, I don't need someone telling me I suck because I didn't do that, I want to be like, that's cool, do your thing. I have friends who do things differently than me with substances and beers now, because I've taken a huge step back from a lot of that, but I don't have anyone pressuring me like, "you're lame if you don't drink 15 shots tonight."

Shook that fucking beer.

Yeah, exactly. So even if you're not on — you don't have to be on the exact same plane as everyone you interact with, it's just people who are supportive of you and your journey.

I think that's such a great distinction, because I catch myself thinking, is this someone I don't actually want in my life because they're at a different place — I know that's not true, that I want them in my life, but it's hard, because you realize maybe they're in a different place.

Right. But no one's ever going to be at the same place as you all the time — at the core, if there's growth you can see through each other, and there's a friendship and there's love, then it's okay if you're in slightly different places.

Yeah, absolutely. But there also has to be — I think generally, some values that align, some common thread that keeps you coming back to that person. Otherwise, what's the point?

Yeah, exactly. It's definitely been — we talked about it last time walking through the park — the challenge of finding, it's come up a lot lately actually, just the challenge, especially as adults, of finding people who want to just have a walk in the park, and that's the event, right? They don't want to just have a walk in the park and then go to a bar — like, it's almost like it has to be doing something, social drinking or whatever, rather than just, how about we just connect as human beings?

Right.

And it's like — for me, it might be a broad statement, but I feel like people do that because they're worried they're not going to be entertaining enough, or maybe society's convinced them that just their company is not going to be enough for someone. Not saying everyone's like that, but there might be some level of, I'm not confident enough in myself to entertain this person, so let's go somewhere where I know we can do something, like drink beers and listen to music, know there's going to be a band or other people here. But I find a lot of enjoyment — when you invited me to that walk in the park, it's like, I know this is a guy who's going to be comfortable hanging out, talking, getting deep, on that kind of level. If someone just invited me for a beer, you can never tell — can you have deep, great conversations at a bar? Absolutely. But it's hard to gauge when it's someone who wants to do something, versus there being only one thing to do, which is enjoy each other's company. That's on a different level than a normal interaction, I'd say.

Totally. Yeah, I've never thought about that before, but that's an interesting insight — probably not generalizable to everyone, but I do think there's almost a —

— like, I need a fallback, I need something to fall back to that's entertaining when I run out of things to talk about. But I think — the irony of this statement, people talk too much, and here we are — but no, I do think there's also beauty in just silence, never — I'm just going to get out into nature and just —

I haven't died to you — perfect opportunity, right? That's — I think that's one of two that I remember. Wait, I think I know where the applause is —

— definitely one of those people who's like, school and work destroy your creativity. I definitely buy into that — I drink that Kool-Aid.

You've had a lot of experience with rap, and then you got to college and experimented with a broader variety of music — do you feel like your desire for creativity, for expressing and exploring that side of you, has always been there and been constant, or do you think it's something that ebbs and flows, or you felt it waning and you're like, I need to get this back — how has your journey through creativity kind of evolved?

I think I've always had a sense of creativity I've been yearning for, but I'd say it ebbs and flows as far as the level of intensity, how much mental space I have for it. I was a really good artist in high school — I was actually supposed to go to art college, and then I didn't, because I just didn't have a passion for it. The reason I didn't have passion for it is I was really phenomenal — I could draw anything exactly how it looked, perfectly. But there wasn't enough creativity for me in that — my big issue was, I was really good at looking at a picture and drawing it exactly like it looks, could look at a painting or a scenery and draw it, paint it identical. But I had no creativity in the sense of, I couldn't just get a blank piece of paper and draw an octopus that looks sick, or a phenomenal mountain landscape without a reference. And that was the main reason I got out of it — I discouraged myself from it. I felt like, if I'm not able to just sit down and create something awesome without looking at anything, then almost what's the point — if I can only just copy images. I know there are people who are famous from painting landscapes and that kind of stuff, but for me, I really wanted to be able to draw a giant squid or something exactly perfect on its own, without a reference. And the difference between the things I drew with no reference and the things I drew with reference was like it wasn't even the same person. That was the number one factor for why I took a backseat from that.

So you kind of felt like the creative process — you had the technical skills down, but the creation act, the ingenuity, the novelty of the drawing process wasn't really there. You were just really good at executing the technical side.

Yeah, exactly. I had a lot of friends back then who'd say, you should do tattoos, you should do this — and I'm like, for me, could I do it technically? Probably. But it's not as fruitful for me if I can't — if someone comes to me with an idea and I can't just rip a sick rendition of that idea off the head, you know?

So what did you transition to when drawing art wasn't for you?

That was right when I got into rapping really seriously — I was doing art pretty seriously in high school, and rapping relatively seriously too, in the parking lot after high school, rapping in my car with a bunch of people, at parties and stuff. And I was doing art because I took art as a class, AP Art, doing the best art my senior year. Then after that, when I got to college, I didn't take art at all anymore — I kind of split my creativity between art and rap, and with art I wasn't feeling the creative side as much, it was a creative outlet but wasn't really pushing the boundaries of my mind. When I got to college, without having that, I really honed in on rap, because it was really pushing the creativity. Not to make a general statement about everyone who freestyles, but from my experience, most of the people I interact with who freestyle aren't actually freestyling — I'd say maybe six or seven out of ten people who freestyle in a cipher are spitting something they've written before, or reciting a verse they wrote previously. A lot of times you can tell, because of the cadence of the flow — if you're a freestyle rapper, you can tell. I'd be like, alright, this guy's saying something he wrote before, this guy's spitting a released verse or something. For me, I always was genuinely freestyling, making it up as I go, and it was really pushing the bounds of my creativity. I used to sit in a room with my buddies and they'd give me random words, and I'd freestyle and rap with those words — kind of just practicing and having fun. That was the big differentiator for me when I used to battle people in college — I used to crush people a lot, because a lot of people would just say stuff they'd memorized or said previously, and I would start rhyming stuff off somebody's shirt or something like that, and you can't really say anything about that. That was a really big push for me creatively, because a lot of times it was nerve-racking — a hundred people surrounding me and I'm making stuff up as I go, and it's like nothing can be bad, because if you have one bad line, that was not good — so everything has to be coherent and make sense, and you're making it up as you go the entire time.

So it sounds to me like creativity, in your eyes, has a sort of necessary spontaneity component to it — it's more than just your ability to, because if you're writing lyrics to a song, which you have done, you've written lyrics, you've rapped — but if you're operating under the guise of a freestyler, it almost sounds to me like you perceive that as, if you're drawing a landscape you're looking at, well, technically you're doing the skill right, but you're lacking the ingenuity, the creating something from nothing. And it sounds to me like this "something from nothing" is the thing you're really drawn to in art and creativity.

Yeah, 100%. I think that's another reason I've really been enjoying producing — because you open Ableton, and there's not just a song in there waiting for you, you have to build every single drum individually, every single snare, everything you can build in there individually. So I think that's a big thing for me — being creative from nothing. When I open the DAW, I'm starting from a completely blank slate, I have to create every single piece of the song and make it come together cohesively. It's kind of the same thing with rap — when I used to be an avid freestyler, sometimes I'd think of my first line, and then after that everything was just spontaneous, on the go, looking at stuff and saying, oh, rap about a color I just saw, a thing I saw. For me, it made it a lot more exciting, a lot more exhilarating, maybe more exciting to pursue, because it was more fruitful for me. My thought was, not that anyone can't write sick raps, but if I write down a verse before and just memorize it, what's the point of doing that? That's not going to be any fun — but it's fun when there's a bunch of people surrounding you and you're just making it up as you go, and you say something killer, it makes it much more meaningful, because I just made that up completely.

Yeah, not like — I wrote that two weeks ago and memorized it.

Yeah, and you just happen to be wearing a shirt with the word on it.

Yeah, exactly. Oh yeah, that's interesting. So how do you feel like you were able to express emotion through rap, and then how do you feel you're able to express emotion through DJing and production?

For rap, I think the emotion I was expressing was just my creativity — I'd say an emotion, some of my songs I recorded back then portrayed some of my lifestyle back then, as we were talking about earlier. But it was really a big, hype emotion during the rap battles — you're really going to town on someone, it evokes a lot of excitement, how passionate I was about it. It was my way to express my appreciation for that music — I'm going to show people how good I can rhyme these words, because I have such a deep appreciation for this kind of music, showing my excitement for the genre, my association with the words — the amount of time I put into doing this, the amount of hours I've been freestyling, what I grew up on. It kind of spoke to my background — I grew up freestyling in high school, a lot of the things I went through back then, so it's almost like an ode to some of my younger years that I can carry forward and adapt as I move on. For DJing, producing, I think I'm still kind of getting there — I have a couple of songs I'm kind of proud of, but I'm still working on the technical skill for those emotions. But DJing, I just think it's so nice to be able to curate the energy for an entire room — most of the time the last couple of years, when I'm hanging out with friends or at a party, I'm usually always playing the music. That's how we met — I just went to a festival last weekend, I was playing the music the entire time at camp. I think I've always had a joy for curating the vibe, I guess, for lack of a better word — that's DJing to me. Everyone here is dancing because of the song you're playing, everyone's having a good time because of what you're choosing to play, and I feel like that is the art of mixing.

I wanted to talk a little bit about tech and AI, both in production and with DJs — like, Spotify has their DJ.

I mean, Spotify sort of in a sense is a DJ, with their Discover Weekly and stuff.

But I feel like I've come to this — my mental framework for leveraging AI is, while it can do a lot of tasks, and as a developer I obviously use AI a lot — that's because it's objectively better than me in every way. Maybe not — I'm just going to say it's objectively a better developer than me. So I think my framework for when to use AI is, when it does something humans are trying to do but will never be as good as a computer at — like, why would you use a human when you can use a computer for something that's computational and far superior as a computer. But there's also a lot of things I fundamentally believe computers should not do. People texting with their girlfriends and asking ChatGPT — we talked about this at the park — I get that you can do that, but that's not setting you up for long-term success, because when you have a conversation face-to-face and AI isn't there — sure, you have Ray-Ban Meta glasses and all that stuff — but if one party is completely without AI, or even both parties are, how are you going to communicate as human to human? I don't want to communicate with my girlfriend or whomever through fucking Meta glasses — I want to communicate with them human to human. Hence why I'm doing this shit — that's literally why I'm here.

So you mentioned what makes a good rapper or a good producer is your ability to create from a blank slate — I see a lot of ads for AI tools used for production where it's just templates and stuff. How do you feel — and you're actually entering a weird time, because now you're kind of starting production, and so is AI —

Yeah, right — we're learning at the same time.

You're learning at the same time. Do you feel strongly that AI detracts from your ability to create, especially given your definition of creativity, or do you feel like it's yet another tool in your kit, and if you don't use it, you're falling behind?

I would say I don't necessarily feel that it detracts from myself personally, and I'd hope other artists feel the same — I mean, calling myself an artist might be a little extreme at the moment, but I'd hope other creators or people in the music scene feel the same as me, because regardless of how much AI learns, regardless of how much technical ability it obtains, or how much it can understand or copy, the one thing it will never have is the human experience. I think that's the main reason people enjoy and listen to music — because you're listening to someone's experience, getting the perspective of that artist. AI can copy a perspective, but it's never going to have a human perspective. That's the big differentiator that no matter how much technology advances, will never go away — there will never be an AI song about an experience they actually lived through, or a human connection you can really relate to from a person who wrote that song. I think there's a genre for everyone — objectively, there's music people don't enjoy, but there's music that can relate to everyone in some way, and they're listening to those artists because they can relate to them. One of my favorite bands, Of Montreal — very weird, eclectic, interesting, their lyrics are so crazy and out there — one of my favorite bands on the planet, just because I can relate to them so deeply, some of those crazy thoughts and the emotion they invoke in their songs really reminds me of times I used to go through, such transitional periods in my life. That's a feeling you can only get from another human writing a song, because you're really feeling their experience — it makes me feel like this guy lived through things I lived through too, or I can relate to the way they're saying this song.

100%. I think that's something you'll never get from AI. And even if it can simulate that emotional experience a human has, you still know that's not the human's experience — that's not the actual human being, so even if it feels like a human experience, you know there's not a human behind it.

You asked me that question about my evolution of the next experience of music, and I think a big part of it — a reason I think I've shifted towards more deep, melodic progressive house — is because I actually think, with heavily lyric-heavy music, you're forced — it's almost like reading a book where it's painting a very specific, clear picture of a specific situation, a breakup, a heartbreak, a big win, or whatever. With electronic music, it's sort of an emotion that is painted, that is presented, and then you are reminded of a time when you felt that emotion. It's almost the opposite — with heavy lyric music, say country or folk or classic rock, it's bringing you back to a time and then you experience that emotion. With electronic, I almost feel like it's, let's actually just bring the emotion to you, and then you can think of times that invoked that emotion.

Do you feel similarly?

I think I would agree, yeah. It causes you to have your own experience, and that's why it's so widely palatable to such a diverse group — I meet all kinds of people from all over the world. I'm a big Above & Beyond, Anjunabeats fan, and when I go to an Anjuna event, like last time I was at The Gorge, I met people who came from Singapore — people from all over can relate to the same style of music because they have different experiences. It might have reminded some guy of a time when he was in love, or someone of a big win at work, or someone who lost their mom — it could be a big impact on someone's life that they recall for that song. But like you mentioned country — someone made a song about drinking beers at the farm, there's not many other ways you can feel that other than, I remember that time I was drinking beers at the farm.

Yeah, and so when I'm drinking beers at the farm, which I was doing last weekend, I was enjoying some country music. You know what I want while I'm drinking a beer and building a gym in 100-degree heat? I want some drum and bass.

We got into drum and bass later, but not the moment for drum and bass.

No — those, the way you said, are tailored to a specific experience.

Yeah — when I listen to Black Sabbath or Ozzy Osbourne, I want to smoke a cigarette in a dive bar. I'm not thinking about the time I fell in love — I'm thinking, I want to go pound beers and smoke cigs inside. That's the feeling it invokes for me.

Totally. And I feel like there's a bit of a — I don't know if "double-edged sword" is the right framing, but I almost feel like, listening to you say Black Sabbath is like dive bar — I feel like there are certain songs, or even genres, that I listen to, and after I listen to it I'm like, fuck, I'm in a dark place. Do you feel that?

I feel that with some music, for sure — there's some music I think I won't listen to unless I'm having a tough time or whatever. I just mentioned Black Sabbath — I was listening to Ozzy Osbourne this morning on the way to the gym, like, this is what I need right now to get me going.

That makes sense. Yeah, I was talking to someone about 30 Seconds to Mars today, and I'm like, that's probably one of the softer rock bands I'll listen to when I'm lifting heavy — because I definitely — I'll listen to some more classic stuff, but if I'm listening to rock, it's usually some pretty dark shit.

I wasn't screaming — screaming in my ears —

Yeah, like screamo or something. I'm not listening to that while I'm drinking tea, you know? I've got the gym, fighting for my life, fighting my demons, and someone's like, bro, bro, bro.

Yeah, oh, 100%. Do you know who Chelsea Cutler is?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

She's definitely — when I start putting Chelsea Cutler on, I'm like, oh, I'm in my sad boy.

Oh shit, what's going on, Anthony? But on the flip side, there are times when I think I tend to listen to some sort of song and I'm like, oh shit, this is —

Yes.

This is, like, beautiful.

100%. I think that's maybe why I've grown so much more into electronic music — it's palatable for me through all those emotions. Like you were saying, I'm sad, I went through a breakup, maybe I'll put on some R&B, some Luther Vandross or something I wouldn't normally listen to. But with electronic, there are parts of it appropriate for every one of my feelings — liquid drum and bass, I can listen to that any feeling, sad, happy, angry, whatever, it's so soulful and ethereal, I can feel so many different things from it. And with progressive house, I listen to progressive house and liquid drum and bass primarily while I'm working — it's music I can work to, but it's music I can go see a show to, music I can listen to at the gym, music I can listen to when I wake up in the morning, music I can go to bed to. There are so many different facets I can apply that music to — I think that's why it's eclipsed into one of my favorite genres, those are my two favorite genres at the moment, because I could listen to them any time. Last weekend I went to Pretty Lights Music Festival, and the entire weekend I listened to liquid drum and bass, the whole entire time — no one was like, oh, change this, no one was like, I don't like this. It just fit the vibe perfectly the whole time we were at camp.

Where were you again?

Buena Vista, for Pretty Lights Music Festival.

Pretty Lights, that's it — I hadn't seen him in over a decade. I saw him in 2015, the last time, in Hampton, Virginia, the Hampton Coliseum.

Okay. And then he had his whole drug thing, and he retired, and then he just came back, I guess, two years ago maybe now — I think he played at Hulaween last year.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, he did — I'm not sure if he's going to be there or not — still some concerns.

I think within a year or two is his resurgence — this was his big, this was his festival, he's the one who curated it and threw it. My friends are huge Pretty Lights fans, and it was an awesome time.

Have you thought about doing any sort of concert or festival curation, or doing anything on the event side?

I would like to. I feel like it's a little intimidating to get into — it takes a lot of connections, or a lot of capital, and there's not necessarily a way around that. Would it be impossible? No. But it would be extremely difficult for me to throw my own festival right at the moment. Could I do it? Probably. But could I do it to the scale I would want? Definitely not right away. Could I throw a small one? For sure. But I think I need to build more into my music career before I'd be able to do something like that. As far as a festival goes, I'm not sure that's something I'd necessarily want to do — there's a lot of responsibility and backlash that goes into that. I would like to choose a lineup for one — I think that would be sick. But that's an ideal world. I was literally just thinking about this today — I want to start getting into doing some of my own shows around Denver, I feel like I'm at the point now where I can start doing that. Just something small, like Larimer Lounge, Treehouse — I was literally thinking today about doing a drum and bass event there, because that's something I feel like they don't do a lot of. They have a lot of bass music, and they do house only on weekends, but I think a drum and bass event would be cool there, and at this point I could probably make that happen.

I'm also all for just branching out from purely house — it feels like such a house-dominant city.

It's house-dominant. I mean, literally — not to call them out too much, but I'm playing Larimer Lounge on Friday, and in the booking they were like, we only do house music on Fridays and Saturdays, nothing else, if you want to do bass or something else, it's got to be a weeknight. That's why I'm thinking, maybe I could do a Thursday liquid drum and bass night, and if that goes well, maybe they'd start doing it on the weekend.

But I agree — I think the main reason for that is because house, in my opinion, and EDM, is the most widely accepted, the most palatable.

There's a lot of bars and clubs that will just play house. Europe is different, because they're ahead of the times, amazing taste. But in the United States, you're not going to walk into a club and just hear drum and bass, unless you're going there to see a drum and bass DJ specifically — you're not going to walk into Temple or something and just hear it playing on the speakers. That's not going to happen. House is safe.

Yeah — when I first started listening to electronic music, it very much started with house, because the idea of some of the spwonky stuff I listen to now — someone just played that for me five, ten years ago, I'd be like, what the fuck is that, that's not even music, that's noise. And now I'm like, that's the most beautiful music I've ever heard.

Face-melting.

Yeah, you can't just play that at a rooftop bar. But not many people are going to complain about techno and tequila — someone hears that, they're out at the bar drinking, they're not going to have any complaints about that.

But you know, like a drum and bass roller or something, a face-melter, and then all right, you guys need to take a step back, let's chill a little bit.

You're a big DnB fan, aren't you?

I'm a huge drum and bass fan — that's one of the genres I got into relatively recently, and it's changed my whole perspective, I'd say.

How long have you been on the production side?

Like a year, I'd say.

Okay — like, really seriously into it, like six months?

Okay. And so — what do you produce, what genres? I produce mainly progressive melodic house and drum and bass — the two I'm most passionate about. I've been working on some hip-hop too — I was talking about this earlier, I want to get back into rapping, my goal this year is to produce my own beat and record my own song, rapping, maybe an EP. But I've made a couple of hip-hop beats, mostly been doing drum and bass and progressive melodic house.

In Soccer Moms, you had a line — spitting bars till my body drops. I don't remember what came before that, but I remember that one — I was like, oh, this motherfucker, I don't hear him spitting bars lately. But I'm curious, do you think — there's an interesting thought there about the concept of permanence. Do you feel like there's anything in your life that you did back in the day that you will see through till death?

That's a good question. Alright, I've got to clarify — that line is actually my buddy Fabio's.

Oh, that's not yours?

Yeah, he did the first verse on that, and second verse — no, he was my partner in crime in college for rap, he was phenomenal.

So were you the third one?

Yeah, yeah — I have a ton of respect for him, he's a phenomenal rapper, me and him used to go back and forth all the time. I love that verse actually. But no, I think for me — it's hard to say, really hard to predict the future because I've had so much change in my life. But rap, I feel like, always has a part in me — I've just really gotten back into wanting to rap a lot this year. This is a whole different conversation, but I feel like my ex, that I was with for a couple years, sort of discouraged me from listening to it, because she wasn't a fan of it, and that made me detract from it. That's always a part of me, and I was really excited to get back into it this year, after we broke up, because I felt like I'd been ignoring that part of myself for the last couple years. That's something I feel like I'll probably always listen to, to some extent — I might not listen to the newest rapper, but old school or things I enjoy, that's a part of me I feel like I always get back to. Even rapping myself — I don't do it as much anymore, I'd say I'm pretty rusty now, but it's something I want to pursue, I want to make my own song this year, release a couple songs. It's something I always kind of have a yearning for. That's the one thing I think I'll probably stick with forever — electronic music, I probably will too, but as far as DJing, I'm not going to DJ forever, I mean, maybe I'll be the 80-year-old who takes off, you never know. But I feel like that's the one thing I can say consistently is probably going to be a staple for me — even if I was 60, I could see myself listening to some rap, because for me it really evokes a lot of emotion, it's meaningful to me — reflective of my past, reflective of my future, something that's always kind of been there for me.

Yeah. What do you think your biggest passion is in this world?

That's a good question — I feel like it changes, to be honest. When I first moved out here, my biggest passion was music — that was literally the only reason I moved to Denver. I came to visit one time, was like, this is sick, they have a million shows, every artist known to man comes here, it's awesome. And I think now, more so, my passion has shifted from music into making connections with people — I really have a passion for making genuine connections. I think we were talking about this at the park a little bit — that's something I'm really passionate about now, enjoying time with other people, spending quality time, meeting people and enjoying people. I've had so many great friends I've met out here, I'm always passionate about trying to spend time — like, last night I was mixing with my buddy, tonight I'm doing this with you, tomorrow maybe I'll get a drink with my other buddy — I'm just really trying to experience life and experience other people.

That definitely resonates a lot with me — there've always been signs that I've liked the connection piece, like I'm always someone to chat up some random stranger at the gym or the grocery store, just make a little quip and see if it turns into something. But I don't think I realized how deeply that connection part mattered to me until pretty recently, and now I'm like, shit, that is actually a huge —

— purpose in this world, connecting with other human beings. I think the way you just said that resonated with me perfectly — that feels like almost my purpose too. What's the point of being alive if you're not going to make genuine connections? I think DJing, getting up in front of a stage and mixing, obviously there's a level of connection there, a deep connection, but it's a connection to an entire group of people, not a deep connection with one individual you're meeting, locking eyes, sharing similar space — it's a different kind of level, a different way to connect with people. You're connecting with the night itself, not a person themselves. When I'm DJing Friday, for example, playing at Larimer Lounge, I'm connecting with Friday night — all the people in that place, the Friday-night vibe, that's what I'm connecting with on that night. I want to have a deep connection with that, because I want to show my passion for it — it's not, let me just go out here and play music for these people for an hour, it's, I want to really play stuff I feel like people are going to actually enjoy, what's going to make someone's Friday night. Like, what would I want to hear if I walked into a bar on a Friday night — I think that's how I do a lot of my sets. And I think letting go of your ego, for DJing, is really important, and something not a lot of people can do — a lot of people will have a set in mind, they'll practice it and go play it exactly like that no matter what, look at the decks the entire time. What I like to do is practice, sure, but I have freestyle in my sets — that way I have the ability, whereas if you practice a set meticulously, it's extremely difficult to switch up a song, because you have everything planned out for the whole cascade of the set. But if you're a little more loose, a little more of a freestyler, which is the way I like to do it — everyone has their own style — it gives me the ability to adapt to the crowd. There's been a couple times where I play a song I think is awesome, and I look up and I'm like, oh shit, people are hating it, and I'm like, let me change this up really quick. Or I'll be playing a certain vibe and think, it's time for a different vibe, and I bring in a song for a different vibe, then look around like, maybe I should go back to the other vibe. The last time you saw me at Larimer Lounge for that progressive house show, there was a part where I was going to bring it into more trance-type stuff, and people were feeling the melodic house so much, I looked up and was like, I cannot do that. I had this little plan in my head to play two or three trance songs, I was like, I think they're going to be awesome right now, but I can tell I cannot switch this vibe right now — so being able to adapt like that in the moment is, for me, really curating and feeling the room a lot.

Which also ties back to the idea that creating something from nothing is that spontaneity — because whether you're freestyling, or not just tracing something, not just practicing drawing a mountain over and over again — you're saying, I'm actually going to adapt and respond to the crowd and to the energy and figure out what to play on the spot.

Do you know Rick Rubin?

Yeah.

So I just finished his book, The Creative Act, and he says you're not a good artist or a bad artist — you are acting as an artist, so you're either acting as an artist or you're not. It's just a way of life, a way of being, an act, rather than something you can execute on poorly or well. Part of that mentality is understanding that the creative act, the approach to creating something new, is purely a function of your own desire, your expression of emotion, your expression of self — not based on other people's perceptions, nor should it be based on how you think it's going to be received. True art should purely be self-expression, regardless of outcome, regardless of how people take it or don't.

Now that seems pretty contradictory to the role of a DJ — almost the antithesis. So how do you feel like you're still able to create, express, emote through mixing — not the production side, but specifically mixing — that still allows for alignment with your audience?

Well, I would almost disagree that there are opposites, really, just because even if I am adjusting to the crowd, I'm still doing music that I picked — it's still my choice, my creative take on it. So even if I'm not playing every single thing that's on my USB, everything is something I curated myself, something I'm interested in playing. So if I have to pivot to adjust to the crowd, it's not me giving up my creativity or conforming to the crowd — it's me picking something else from my bucket that I think is going to be more enjoyable for them. So it's not taking away from my creativity, because everything on my USB was curated by me — I don't have anything on there I didn't just sign up for a song list or something, I've handpicked every single song. So it's still creative for me, because maybe it wasn't my first choice, but now I have to think on the spot and think of something else from my pool that I'm going to bring out that they're going to enjoy.

So I would disagree in the sense that it almost forces you to be more creative in the moment, because it applies constraints.

Yeah, it applies constraints.

It's not that it's forcing you what to create, and there's no signal that you know definitively they're going to like the song, so you still can't ever know the outcome — but you're absorbing those constraints, understanding your conditions better, and then leveraging that new knowledge to create something that's going to ultimately be received better by that audience.

Yeah, I think that's why there's a big difference, at least for me personally, between taking requests versus reading the crowd. There's a lot of good money in wedding DJing — that's something I've never been interested in, because I don't want anyone telling me what I have to play. Even the times I've had to pivot at certain shows, like I mentioned, it's not like anyone's come up and said, "yo, this sucks," or the promoter's like, "you've got to change it up, this isn't good" — it's a feeling, you just have to feel the crowd. I can see how people are moving, how people are interacting, and that's something like, okay, maybe I'm going to do something a little different here. It's not like someone's coming up and saying, play drum and bass, or play tech house — I mean, I would love if someone told me to play drum and bass, but you know what I mean — DJing for a more curated event specifically, versus a show, is a little different. I think I'm a little more choosy with some of the opportunities I have, because if someone tells me to play a certain genre, I'm okay with that, but I want to be able to play whatever I want within that field — I want to have a level of creativity where I can go in there and play a Lojo set that I'm happy with, not, "hey, you have to play this song, or this many tech house songs." I've been trying to really surround myself with opportunities where I can play that kind of stuff.

Yeah, I appreciate that insight — that makes a lot of sense. I've also experienced, and I won't mention the name, but there's an artist that from a production perspective I absolutely adore, but I saw him live, and — someone told me beforehand, not the best live performance, and I was like, I like him, I'll see him — and throughout the show I was just like, he doesn't get it. There's just clearly a disconnect — the music he produces is beautiful, but there was an utter lack of connection between him and the entire audience. There was — he was playing something that in his mind was objectively, or subjectively, good music, but there was no emotion through it, no connection with the crowd, no understanding of it. I wasn't even staring at his deck — I think there's maybe a little bit of, I don't think "lack of empathy" is the right word, but there's just a lack of, maybe, emotional awareness of how it's really received.

Yeah, I think in electronic music scenes specifically, there's a really big overlap of DJs and producers, and it causes people to always consider "DJ producer" as one thing together. But not everyone who can DJ can produce, and not everyone who can produce can DJ.

Yeah, totally.

There are some people who've gotten famous from only DJing, and then maybe started producing after they got famous, but they got famous because their song selection is so good that they grew to the top from just picking songs and DJing — the common misconception a lot of electronic music fans have is that they always go hand in hand. Sometimes there's a killer producer who can't DJ at all, or has the technical ability to DJ but doesn't have the soft skills, the understanding, the feeling for it. I always tell people — I literally just told this to the guy I was hanging out with last night — the technical skills for the basics of DJing are really not that difficult. The biggest part of DJing is knowing the songs, knowing when to play what song, knowing your music, having a good playlist — that's the number one most important thing. The actual — I could teach anyone how to mix two songs together. When you get into adding effects and stuff it gets a little more touchy, but as far as doing a basic transition and basic mix, it's really not that difficult at all. The most difficult thing is being able to curate that playlist, feel the crowd out, get the right songs in the right moment, understand your role in the night, how you're going to play the energy for the crowd — it's the softer skills for DJing. The technical skills can only get you so far, but without those softer skills, you're only going to make it so far.

What is your role as a DJ?

I think it depends. For me, my role that I usually try to play is, I try to play things people are not listening to a lot — not that I'm against playing hits, everyone loves hits, everyone loves bangers, everyone loves great songs —

They're for a reason.

Yeah, 100%. But every single set I play, I try to play, depending on the vibe, a minimum of a couple songs I'm fairly confident not a lot of people know — I want to show people new music, things they're not listening to. I have a progressive house series I do on SoundCloud, where I release mixes monthly and feature local artists on those mixes — local progressive house artists I respect and really enjoy. It's been going very well — I usually do a mix of myself, like 20, 25 minutes, and then the guest mix after that. I just had my guest who's coming out next week, Alchemy, and he asked me, how do you do your mixes, do you want me to send you the track list first, do you want to give your mix first? And I said, honestly, I'm so confident in the tracks I'm picking for these, I record it ahead of time — out of every single one so far, I've never had to re-record.

Wow.

I don't want to jinx myself — not saying I know every song ever, but there's been four or five in a row where I record my mix a week ahead of time and they don't play the same song. I feel confident in this collection of picks — the person on this is not going to pick one of those songs.

I've heard discography is probably the hardest part of DJing.

100%. You have your song list, but you also have to organize it — I have a good collection of liked songs on Spotify, I'm confident in my liked songs, but it's just 5,000 likes, there's no rhyme or reason to it. I have a couple of playlists, but it's not great.

Whether rapping or producing or mixing — do you find that there's a time, a place, an emotion, or something that you tend to fall back to and continually try to showcase through your music?

If I had to choose one — I don't even know if I could qualify it as an emotion, but I think for me, I try to show a deep and genuine appreciation for the music. That's the baseline I try to give — I was even talking to my dad about the music itself, for the music itself, and a passion, maybe. I was talking to my dad about it last year, actually, when I first got into DJing here and it wasn't going crazy, but it was kind of taking off a little bit. I had a goal for myself last year to play one show — and then I played, I think, 17 shows last year. I told my dad, this is really taking off, way more than I thought, I'm having a lot of fun, this is awesome. And he said something that really resonated with me — he said, it's because people can tell you're passionate about it. There's some people doing it only to make money, or only to be cool, or, I want to be the man of the night, or I want to get famous — and for me, those are the wrong reasons. Would it be cool to be famous? Sure. Would it be cool to blow up? Sure, but that's not why I'm going out there. I'm going out there because I truly and thoroughly enjoy music, and I'm really excited to share it with people, and I get a ton of enjoyment sharing it with other people. I had a work meeting two weeks ago, we had a little coffee break to get to know people, and I was talking about DJing, and someone said, that's a really cool side hustle, it's so interesting. And I told them, I wouldn't really even consider it a side hustle — for me, a side hustle is something you're really giving a ton of work for some sort of goal, really pushing yourself and giving all your time away to something. For me, it's so enjoyable, it doesn't even feel like work. It's crazy to me that I get to go play songs I'm passionate about for an hour and then get paid for that — that doesn't feel like a hustle. I'm excited to play, I'll play a Wednesday night, I'll play a Monday night — I don't care if there's a hundred people there or two people there, I thoroughly enjoy playing the music. I think that kind of shows, and that might be some of the reason it's going the way it has been, because people can pick up on that — people can tell if you're genuine or not, they get a good read on people, they may not even know they're picking up on it.

I think that really pinpoints the underlying force behind the creation of this podcast — just the recognition that every human being has so much potential energy to create something amazing, so long as it aligns with their values and who they genuinely are as a person. And when it doesn't, it's palpable — whether you can sort of observe that — I hate to throw this under the bus because I don't like it anymore, but I feel like there's a shift in Rüfüs Du Sol that happened before their last album released, where they were no longer creating music from a genuine place of passion, and it shifted to an obligation to create because they have fans. I remember when they released a teaser song, I heard it and thought, what the fuck is this, this is trash, this is not the artist I love, it's not the artist I have a — records with, right, because I think it's so cool to own their albums and merch. And I remember when they released the album, I was like, this sounds like if you gave AI all of the sounds of Rüfüs Du Sol and said, create an album that uses their prior discography, create something from it that sounds like — here's our sound samples, make a widely palatable album.

Yeah, that's the Chat GPT prompt.

That's the prompt. And then — I don't even know the name of the latest one, not Bloom, that's Ben — but it doesn't matter. My point is, people may not recognize it or understand why they pull away from something, or why they're drawn to something, but I do think it fundamentally comes down to that authenticity piece.

Yeah, absolutely. I think that's something we unfortunately do see a lot with artists — not everyone, obviously, but there's a lot of artists that once they get a taste of that money and fame, they'll do anything to keep it. So it's, the record label is going to tell you how to write this album, and we're going to do exactly what they say — and it takes away from the rawness or creativity of that artist, because they're doing it for the money. I think that's why a lot of people in the seventies fell in love with psychedelic rock, or some of that classic rock when it was first starting out — they were really sending a message, it was pretty much an "F you" to the music scene — we're going to do whatever we want, we're going to go crazy, smash guitars on stage, rebel. People were like, it's nice to see people not conforming to what society wants them to do. You see some of them get famous and fade away from that, but in the early, raw years — when Led Zeppelin first started, or when the Grateful Dead was doing Planet Parks and stuff in the late sixties — that was just a raw, genuine appreciation for creativity, and it wasn't capped by record labels trying to say, this is what we know the people want, you guys are going to have to make your next album like this.

Right. Yeah — if you get a chance to read The Creative Act, I think you'd like it.

Yeah, you know, I mean, that's like —

One of the very strong storylines, like three points in the book, is just how imperative it is that art — whether drawn, painted, musically created, digitally created, whatever — it's creative, and therefore it's expression, and it's not an outcome. It's an input.

Yeah, absolutely. And that's definitely been a theme of a lot of people's lives, mine included — just appreciating the process. It's a cliché at this point, "the process, not the destination," or whatever, but it is so true — when you lose touch with the experience and the process, it's clear, people know it, you can hear it in the music.

Yeah, absolutely, you can see it in the art —

— but I think when you have a strong conviction behind who you are, what kind of art you want to create, it makes it a lot easier to continue that through fame. I think it's when you get fame before you truly understand yourself that it becomes a problem to hold onto that true identity, because you're not really certain in it, and you're questioning it. But you do see artists who can reach extraordinary levels of fame and fortune and still create really amazing pieces of work.

Yeah, absolutely, despite that — or it actually becomes more of a lever. You were mentioning how you recently got the ability to produce things — you said it's basically always been something you've wanted to do, but now you actually have the means — for some people, they're able to capitalize on those means and create something even more incredible through additional resources, like fame, fortune, reach, and money can get you a lot of things, but if you don't know what you're shooting for, it can really take you down.

No, 100%, I'd definitely agree with that. I think a big difference in art is people making it for themselves versus people making it for other people — when you're making it for yourself, for your own expression, that's what really shows through. A big artist I think I've seen that with a lot is Tyler, the Creator — when he first started, doing that horror rap, it was crazy, super crazy, and he's changed so much since then, it's been absolutely crazy how much of a difference that's made in the progression of his albums. Another rapper you see that with is Mac Miller — when he was rapping in high school, he was going in like all that kind of stuff, and then as he transcended, he did a lot of different things musically — some slower, kind of singing stuff, some jazz-type stuff, incorporating live instruments. And people are like, he's changed his sound, we don't like him — but they don't understand these people are growing the same as we are, they're growing as artists, and just because someone changes their sound, it doesn't mean — maybe you won't support them anymore, but if you really truly support that artist, you should have some respect for them transcending their ideas and their sound. It's not, I don't like him anymore because he doesn't make high school rap bangers — it's, I have appreciation because look how much he's grown, to where he can musically do a whole different thing and still have his own flavor to it.

There's a movie I was watching the other day, The Intern — and I'm so bad with actors and actresses, I've seen — okay, so the main character, the female lead, was talking to the main character, the guy — this is so embarrassing because they're such big actors, but regardless, they're talking, and — the Meet the Fockers guy is talking about, I believe, his wife, or his past wife — I guess he's a widower — and was saying it was just amazing because basically they just grew together. And then the female lead was like, that's so beautiful, that's everything I really want, is just to grow with someone. It's like — I feel like "growing with someone" is not a healthy expectation. It's impossible. You're never — or if it is, then you're probably forcing growth in a direction that isn't true to you, or encouraging growth on their part in a direction that isn't true to them. You're going to grow the way you're going to grow as human beings, and there are so many influences — genetic influences, familial and upbringing influences, current influences on you — so many things that are going to change the way you grow. You cannot possibly expect two people to perfectly grow together.

100%.

But that isn't to say you can't appreciate their growth, and perhaps there may be components of growth you don't align with — so if Mac Miller changes his style, changes the conversations, the lyrics he's having, you can dislike that because it's not something you appreciate — but that's very different than someone losing sight of the purpose. There's a difference between growing in a direction where you're like, hmm, that seems interesting, that doesn't seem like the Mac Miller I knew, versus, I wish Mac Miller was like the good old days — well, don't wish someone not to change, don't wish them not to grow, you're all evolving constantly, and it's silly to expect someone's not going to. It's sad — you don't want someone to stop growing, stop evolving.

So when do you feel like it's distinguishable, when that change stems from growth and wanting to explore something in a different way, versus outside pressures to conform? How do you feel like you can distinguish that as an outsider?

I feel like it's extremely difficult to articulate, honestly. For me it's just a feeling — it's hard to put into words, or put a definition on how to feel that. But it's a feeling I get from the music — I don't feel that sense of creativity, or I don't feel their passion for it anymore. It's really difficult to put into words — an example, a band called Goose used to be one of my favorite bands. I saw them here three or four years ago at the Art Park, and it was absolutely phenomenal, so amazing — that was right when they were still kind of just getting started. And now they've gotten so big, I'm really not a fan of them at all anymore with some of the latest stuff — the last time I saw them, I left like 20 minutes in. It's sad to see that happen to people who were so young and creative at some point — that'd be an unpopular opinion, I know they're an amazing, popular band, a lot of people enjoy them, but for me it just lost that sense of rawness and creativity from the first couple times I saw them, before they cascaded into how large they are today, playing Bonnaroo and Hulaween and all that. When I saw them just getting started, there was a lot more rawness and creativity, ripping 40-minute solos, a lot more soulfulness in the music. There's probably some people who'd disagree with that, but for me personally it's the feeling I get from the music, and the feeling I get from it now is not what I got from it five years ago. I can't put a pin on exactly what that means, but that's how I relate — like for Mac Miller, going back to that example, some of that new stuff may not have been my style, but I can appreciate it, I could really feel the emotion, I could tell he's really trying to say what he wants to say, showcase the musical talent he has in a different way, a way he's passionate about. It's not like the label saying, let's make this song about falling in love — I at least felt it was really raw about his experience, what he's been through.

Two things — one, it's the emotional connection, or the emotional response to the music, right? And if you're accustomed to a specific emotional response, and then you listen and don't get that, you can't perhaps articulate that, but you can feel it, you can understand that's just not the same. But it's really hard when you see an artist in an intimate setting and then they grow to a point where intimacy is sort of a thing of the past.

And that's something where even if they're creating music that's authentic and aligns with their core, and you feel like, that's the music I want to hear, there's still a different emotional response when the intimacy is just utterly lacking.

Yeah, I think that's a good way to put it. But on the flip side, I think artists, regardless of size, will still make an effort to have those types of settings, if they truly are about the music.

That's a good point.

For example, probably my favorite progressive house artist is Marsh — one of my biggest inspirations for producing, one of my favorite artists to listen to, absolutely phenomenal, and he's huge, globally known, plays gigantic venues, sells out everywhere. Last summer he played Regenerate Festival here at Civic Center — this humongous crowd, gigantic, globally known artist — and he played at Larimer Lounge Treehouse afterwards, for free, for like 50 people. That's the kind of thing where, no matter how big he is, he's not scared to go have an intimate moment — I was two feet from him with 50 people there. I've never seen an artist that big in a setting that small, and that to me showed a true passion for the music, because he's not getting paid a boatload for that show, might not even get paid at all — he's not worried about the money, or how many people he can have in his Instagram story for the show. I'm going to share with people who really enjoy my music. That was really cool and special for me — this guy is gigantic, and he's going to come play at a venue that I play at, it was just unreal. And it's for free, they're not selling tickets, not making any money off it — he's doing it because he's passionate about sharing that music.

Yeah, it's true — I think there are signals when the passion is lacking, and signals when it's still there.

Yeah. Even Above & Beyond do a similar thing — they're humongous, and they'll do, like, when they do their giant events, they'll do a deep-day the day before, and you can get tickets to that — sometimes it'll be on a boat or something with like 20 people, and they're gigantic. I went to their event in LA a couple years ago, and they had a pre-party at a rooftop bar that was really small — just those kinds of things, showing appreciation, that we can still do it on a small scale even though we're gigantic, we don't have to always sell out stadiums.

Yeah, that's a fair point. What's the best piece of advice you've ever received?

Oh man, that's quite the question. I love this question — that's a really good question, it's an easy one to just throw at everyone, but it really throws you for a loop, because it makes you think about all the advice you've received in your life, and, man, what really had the most impact, what really truly shaped things the most. It's kind of hard to put into the right words — I'm definitely not going to word it as eloquently as she did, but when I first started seeing my therapist, one of the best pieces of advice she gave me was that the thing that matters most is my interpretation and my experience of certain things. I was thinking, this person hates me or something like that, and she was like, well, that's what you think — you don't know that for certain. So you can't stress yourself out about things you don't know are certain — you assume people's feelings, like, this girl hates me, or, I screwed this guy over, he doesn't like me anymore — but you don't know they feel that way unless they tell you that explicitly. If you spend all your time worrying and thinking about them feeling emotions you're making up for them, you're only going to detract from yourself. I think that flipped the switch for me and really transformed how I interact with people — if someone ignores you at the bar, you say hi to someone and they say hello back, it's not, I'm all day thinking that guy hates me, I'm weird, I did something wrong — you don't have any idea what's going on with that person, you can't articulate their feelings for them unless they explicitly say, "you're a weirdo," or "you shouldn't have said hi to me." It's not worth going and worrying yourself to death over. I think it's made such an impact because it's so relative to so many other interactions — anything from saying hello to someone passing at the grocery store, trying to get a girl's number — no matter how any of those interactions play out, it's not anything to negatively detract from yourself. It's not, I did something wrong, or there's something wrong with me because that didn't work out — you're just assuming that, you don't know that for certain, so you're worrying yourself over uncertainties. That was a big reframing in how I think.

I love that. It's so true — you don't know what people are thinking, what's going on in their heads, and if you make decisions based on assumptions you make on them, that's not a great way to live life.

No, it's like — I'm not going to respond to this guy because I think he hates me, but you don't know that, maybe he had a long day.

Yeah, that's interesting, I like that, that's a good one — I'll take that little chunk.

Yeah, I think that was, for me — I feel like the last four years have been the most transformative growth years I've ever had in my entire life, and that was the beginning, when I started seeing my therapist, right after that, it just helped reshape so many things. Like, I had roommates I lived with when I first moved out here, and we had a situation where I moved out and didn't really express it the right way, and everyone dealt with it in a difficult way. There were like two or three years where I was like, they hate me, they're never going to want to reconcile with me, there's not any recourse here. Then after going to therapy, I got to the point where I reached out to them — I remember one of them, my buddy Will, we're actually really good friends now, always have been, he said, we've always been friends, I was there for you, I was waiting for you to reach out. That whole time I was in my head like, he hates me, they don't want to hear from me, why would they want to hear from me after that. Then it's like, man, I could have reconciled this two years ago if I didn't get so caught up in these preconceived notions of how they felt about it.

It's so easy to just draw a conclusion and then create some sort of fictitious reality in your mind.

Yeah, I think — I was a lot less emotionally and mentally aware then, too. For me, at least in that case, a lot of times that stems from trying to take the easy way out — it's super easy to be like, that person hates me, we're never going to fix that, other than trying to do the work to actually fix it, own up, and be confident enough to say, hey, I made a mistake, I did this incorrectly. Like we talked about earlier, I didn't have the tools to handle that properly — but as I got — I didn't have that, it was super easy to be like, they hate me, that's it, we're never going to talk again, goodbye. That's the easy way out — just shut it out and ignore it. But when you face your problems head on and really deal with it, that's truly the only way to move forward.

It sounds to me like you've put a lot of energy towards self-growth, and creating this best version of yourself. Do you feel like that's something that's going to stand the test of time and you're always going to prioritize, or do you think you'll get to a point where you're like, you know what, I think I've focused on this enough, now I'd like to turn my energy elsewhere?

I feel like it's probably going to always be a priority to me at this point, because it's had such an impact on me in the last four or five years, it's something I can't let go to the wayside. Maybe it won't be as much of a priority, but I don't think I'll ever be like, I don't need to do that anymore. I personally feel like there's always room for growth, always ways you can change and adapt — it's not like I have to change everything about myself, I feel like I'm in an extremely good place mentally, and I just went through a hard breakup in January, and I've dealt with it phenomenally well, better than I ever have with anything in my life, and I've had a phenomenal year, a lot of transitions, a lot of great things happening. And even with all that, I think a common thing people do is they go to therapy, get through something, and then, "see ya, never again, therapy." I still go consistently, because I think there's always something to learn, always a different perspective to be had — sometimes maybe I'm just venting, opening up to my therapist, not getting a lot of advice because I'm just talking a lot, but even still, that experience for me is growth. It's not, I'm healed now, I dealt with this so well, I don't need any more. So maybe I'll decrease the frequency — I'm going once a month or once every three weeks now instead of once a week or something. But I still think it's important to have that, because even if two times in a row it's just me venting to her and her listening, maybe that third time she'll give me a sentence or a piece of advice, and I'm like, you know, I never thought about it like that, or something I can grow from. So I think it's important to do things like that even when you don't need them — it's not just, I'm having a horrible time, I need to go to therapy to get through this. It's more of a maintenance factor, something you can continue to pick up pieces from and learn from — not, I just went through a heartbreak, let me go back to therapy for a couple months. It's a continued investment in yourself.

100%. And as much as sometimes the number of subscriptions that exist frustrates me, I do feel like a benefit of subscriptions is that it sort of instills in your mind that there's value attached to the continued usage of something, right? There's value in Spotify — I literally use it every day, so it makes sense that I pay for it on a monthly basis. But I think you can almost take that to appreciate the investment in yourself, and growth, and therapy — or I've been seeing a life coach recently, which has been great, because I think that's what I need more.

It's funny you mentioned that — some people get to therapy and then they stop —

Yeah, I kind of have that experience, really — I was going through something really, really hard, and I stuck with it for a few years, right, but then I got to a point where I moved to the other side of the world, and I was like, okay, I'm just going to stop this, because logistically it's going to be a pain in the ass. So I've been looking for something to — I don't want to say fill the gap, but I know there's growth that needs to take place personally.

Like your next step.

My next step.

Like your life coach — that's your step after therapy.

Exactly. I've had my therapy chapter, but I need a little bit of something else, and I know there will 100% be another therapy chapter — for sure, not forced by a horrible breakup, not forced by losing everything that I thought my world was — all I did was work and a girl and nothing else, both of them in the same week, like fuck, right. So I don't think I'll ever get to a point where it's that dire, but there's a season for it — I'm reading a book called Make Money Easy, by Lewis Howes, do you know who that is?

I'm not familiar.

I'm not going to get into a whole lot of detail about the book, it's not really relevant, but one language he often uses is this concept that there's a season for X — meaning, specifically in the book he talks a lot about how there's sometimes just a season where you need to find a job to make money to pay bills, and then there's going to be a season where you're able to pursue your passion and really find a job that aligns with what you want out of this world, your purpose.

And so I think thinking of life as more seasonal has changed, and definitely for the better, the way I experience things in my life — recognizing there's a winter season when I'm snowboarding, and then there's a summer season when I'm socializing and going out more, playing more sports, being more active, and in winter I'm just this little — I don't know, this little hermit. Everyone is around here — like, I moved into this apartment in January — I mean, this studio, very clearly my apartment — and I didn't know any of my neighbors. Then within the past couple days, I've just seen more of them, starting with little smiles and hellos, and then today I met — she had a little puppy, a Doberman, holy shit, one of the cutest little things I've ever seen, literally fresh out of the womb, three months old, little Doberman puppy, the paw is the size of my hand but tiny, so, so cute — and Goose is his name, and I was chatting with Goose and Goose's owner, and it kind of dawned on me in that moment — I was like, you know what, I was being so hard on the city of Denver, like, people are just not social, and it's really a function of the season. No one's social in the winter, everyone's going up to the mountains alone or with a small group to snowboard, ski, whatever — I met people through that, but it's not a place where, in the winter — even in Atlanta, people are hibernating in the winter, not doing anything, no one wants to go to the park and meet someone when it's negative 10.

You know what I mean — well, there's three feet of snow outside, and you're brushing off snow in the morning like, fuck this shit.

Yeah, people are going to the park to play volleyball, that's very clear — my buddy today just said, man, this summer is going to be fun, I'm tired of having plans every week, and I was like, welcome to summer in Denver, that's what it is — everyone gets all their plans out now, because they can't when it's negative 14, you're not able to do those plans, so everyone gets all their socializing out at one time, and the winter is where — winter is a rule of lockdown with the people you already know. For me, summer is meet new people, go out, try things — in winter, you go to dinner with some friends — I'm not a skier or anything, I'm a little —

I feel like I'd break my ACL or something if I tried to.

But winter is like, I'm playing video games with some friends, or back home I'm going to dinner with some homies, or we'll go to a sick concert — I'm down to meet new people, but not as much as in the summer, because, like you're saying, I feel like people are a little bit more, maybe subconsciously, closed off in the winter, because it's a time for shelter, a time for safety, a time for —

— what you're comfortable with. Go internal.

Exactly — you're exploring yourself a little bit more.

I think it was particularly difficult for me — I'm just drawing these connections now, I really haven't thought about it until this moment — but I think it was particularly difficult for me for two reasons. One, I decided to move to a new city in January — I mentioned I moved here, but that was years ago, then moved away, whatever — but for all intents and purposes, I chose to move to a new city in the dead of winter, so it's understandable I'm not socializing as much. And I missed winter — in winter of 20, what is it, 25, so '23, I moved to Australia at peak summer, and they don't really have a winter, and then I came right back into our winter. So it was like 18 to 24 months of basically — we'll call it 20 months — of just summer. And technically I was in Perth in the winter, but winter in Perth, we're still doing weekly swims in the ocean.

You swim here in winter, you're in trouble.

Yeah, you're freezing, literally. It was just a bit jarring to go for half a year without winter, and then come back and experience the intense winter of a state like Colorado without having any experience close to that for 20-some months.

For me, I kind of feel the same way — I really enjoy having seasons. A lot of people are like, I want to go to San Diego because it's beautiful — I mean, yeah, it's phenomenal there, it's beautiful, but sometimes it's — I'm sure I'll probably regret saying this when winter comes, but it's nice to wake up sometimes and see your breath, it's nice when I go to the gym in the morning before work, I'm super cold in my car, it's just a whole different vibe, a whole different thing. And I like seeing snow — it's cool to wake up and everything's covered in white snow, it looks phenomenal. I personally feel like there's a feeling and essence that winter brings that no other season can — there's nothing like waking up at 6 a.m. on a snowy winter day and you can't hear anything, the snow capsule is so much more sound, there's so much more quietness — I'm literally getting chills — so much more peace, it's almost ethereal, like it just absorbs everything, there's no insects, no birds chirping, all you can see is the snow, you can hear your footsteps in the snow, that crunch. That's something you cannot get without winter.

There's a Daniel Tosh stand-up where he's talking about seasons, and he's like — he lives in, I guess, LA, definitely California, but probably LA — this is years ago, I'll never forget this bit — he's talking to someone about seasons, and they're like, I love the seasons, and he's like, yeah, so do I, that's why we skipped the shitty ones. And it's funny, because it's true — probably in LA, or further south, like you mentioned San Diego, they really don't get seasons, it's sunny and somewhere between 60 and 100 every day, forever.

I would get bored as shit.

100%. I learned that in Australia — I was like, fuck, I love seasons, I love the cold, I missed it, the only thing I wanted to do was snowboard.

Yeah.

And I wasn't a big snowboarder beforehand, I just felt a calling to experience the winter.

100%. And it's so funny how many people — I catch myself with this too, I'm not laying blame on anyone else necessarily — people have a tendency to fear change, yet there are so many examples of the necessity of change, and the healing power of change — whether it's seasons, or growth as a human being, or whatever, there's just so many examples of the power that change holds. I love fall — being from Atlanta, Atlanta has some cool things to offer, but I think one of the best things Atlanta has to offer is fall — there's festivals every weekend, stuff going on. Atlanta's brutally humid, so it's the one season — fuck, it can be humid in winter too — it's one of maybe two seasons that isn't humid for a month or two. And the colors, since there are so many trees in Georgia — like we get yellow, you know, aspens and other trees out here, orange, red, yellow, some green leaves still on there — everything, it's like from a postcard or a picture book.

100%.

So it really is just truly breathtaking, and I've grown to really, really appreciate that part of Atlanta.

Yeah, I find that Tosh thing so funny, because when I first heard it I was like, yeah — and now I'm like, I don't agree with that, I love the seasons, the change is where the beauty is. And even if you consider it a shitty season, one of the biggest things about Denver that makes it so enjoyable to live here is how much fun the summers are — and I truly believe the summers would not be that fun if the winter wasn't so harsh.

Of course.

It's like — you know, the great 50 Cent once said, joy wouldn't feel so good if it wasn't for pain.

And it's like summer wouldn't feel so good if it wasn't for winter.

100%. You wouldn't enjoy summer so much, want to go out so much, have such an awesome time, if it wasn't for being locked inside at negative 10 degrees. If it was 70 degrees every single day, some weekend you might be like, oh, I'm not going to go to that pool party this weekend, because it's going to be like that for the next six months. But when winter is coming up, I'm going to go to that pool party, because there's not going to be another one for a couple months.

True. It pushes you to do more things, have more excitement in your life, when you only have a certain period of time to do that. Activities like rooftop bars, going for a walk in the park, playing volleyball — those things wouldn't be as enjoyable if you could do them any time you want. If any single day you could pick, "six months from now I'm going to go play volleyball" — but here, you have a three or four month period where it's going to be extremely nice, everyone's going to be out, everyone's high energy, on the same feeling — that's when I really want to go out there and enjoy it, and that's what makes it more enjoyable. This is even including college, which was an amazing time — I think I've had the best summers of my life since I've lived in Denver, because it's just so much fun, everyone's really on the same page, so many things happening, and I think that harsh winter really brings that out.

100%. What is pleasure without pain?

Exactly — you can't have the good without the bad, you definitely need to experience that.

100%, and I think — going back to some of the things we've already discussed — I think that's another reason why I was able to handle my breakups so well this year, because I was really resonating with those sad feelings, appreciating those feelings. I wasn't like, oh, I'm so sad, the world's over, I hate feeling like this — it was like, man, I'd say this is part of being a human, this is part of the human experience, this is a part of life. Me having these feelings is proving to me that I'm alive, that I'm experiencing life. When I'm listening to those sad songs or whatever, those songs are not ever going to hit the same as they are right now, for this — and that's a whole different way to scope the appreciation for it, instead of just pushing it off as, man, I'm so sad, everything sucks — it's, I'm going to listen to stuff I know is going to really hit me deep, that might not hit me that deep again, or if I'm in a different state of mind. So I think being able to flip the frame on that, and appreciate it in a sense, knowing that when I get happier after this it's going to mean that much more to me, is really a different way to shape it. And that's what really got me through a lot of the tougher times this year — having that mindset.

Yes. I heard this — I don't know if it's a quote, but a friend of mine in Perth said, "to be human is to feel." I think that really perfectly articulates —

Yeah, exactly what we've been talking about — with AI, or DJing, mixing, production, whatever — that is the unique part about being human, that we get to. And I think you mentioned the sadness, and almost being grateful for it — it's like being a little bit more, call it introverted for lack of a better term, in the winter, focusing more on self, hibernating, emoting, feeling a bit more sorrow and closed off — that's not only a bad thing, that's also a good thing. And I noticed in my own body, my body changes a lot in the winter — I definitely put on some pounds in winter, I love food and I'm not stopping my eating even if I'm not as active. I don't change anything in the summer, other than the fact that I'm playing hockey three days a week, basketball a day, volleyball a day, running, working out, hiking — there's so much fun shit to do, I can't eat enough food because I'm constantly active. And then winter comes around, and I'm accustomed to this lifestyle — it's okay, it's okay to get a little fluffier, it's okay to evolve with the seasons, it's okay to feel that sadness. And I think one thing that's been on my mind, that I'm really trying to shift, is just having better gratitude practices. And one of the things that shifted in my understanding of gratitude is that gratitude is, in my opinion, sort of the understanding that everything in life is a double-edged sword — that everything is both good and bad, with every yes is a no, with every no is a yes, or with every yes is a no to everything else. And so, when you experience sadness, you're obviously experiencing a hurtful, painful emotion, but it's a fucking great thing we're able to experience that — because if we couldn't experience that, if we're not grateful for that sadness, then we couldn't experience elation, we couldn't experience beauty if there isn't something we don't appreciate aesthetically. I think part of gratitude is just that conscious decision that there is a pro in it, even when it's hard to identify that pro.

Yeah, absolutely.

I think I was well sat — cool. Lojo, thank you so, so, so very much for joining, I thoroughly enjoyed the time talking to you. That was phenomenal, great conversation.

Thanks so much for having me. Yeah, truly good.