Bartees Strange

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Bartees Strange On 'Live Forever' & Why "It Shouldn't Be Weird To See Black Rock Bands"

Speaking to GRAMMY.com, the D.C. songwriter and producer discusses his musical upbringing, his journey towards making 'Live Forever' and what he says to anyone who asks about his "genre-defying rock music"

Hannah Jocelyn

GRAMMYs

Sep 26, 2020 - 7:40 am

Bartees Strange is clearly a student of all things indie rock, and that was clear as soon as his introductory EP, the National covers project Say Goodbye To Pretty Boy. Inspired by a concert where he was one of the only Black audience members, he wanted to re-interpret their catalog and connect it to his own experience. While working on the project, he would slip in references to Bryce Dessner’s project Clogs or even other National songs he didn’t cover. A close listen to "Mr. November" reveals the chord progression of Sleep Well Beast highlight "I’ll Still Destroy You."

You just need to hear "Mustang" to understand how versatile Bartees Strange is, but also where his primary loves lie. "Mustang" started as a country song but evolved into something that takes inspiration from 2000s rock like the Walkmen’s "The Rat," while introducing unexpected time signature changes and glimmering synths. Then an unexpected hardcore breakdown at the end of the track hints at the chaos to come over the next half hour. Live Forever, his debut album releasing via Memory Music on Oct. 2, pulls together elements of country, rap, IDM and rock into something unlike any record out this year. Despite comparisons to TV on the Radio, his eccentric approach puts him just as much in line with iconoclasts like St. Lenox and Young Fathers.

The references to indie rock continue: "Mustang" quotes the Antlers' "Epilogue" ("you’re screaming and cursing")—but it’s more an album about Bartees’ personal journey. Growing up in Oklahoma, Bartees worked for non-profit organizations while moonlighting as a drummer in various bands. Second single "Boomer" documents the moment when he finally felt at home in Brooklyn, the title not referring to the oft-mocked generational term but a period of time Bartees felt like he was "booming." Other songs like "Mossblerd" directly address his status as a Black man operating in a space dominated by white men—that title is a combination of "Mossberg" and "blerd," itself a portmanteau of "black" and "nerd," over a heavily compressed noise collage. It’s fitting, because Live Forever is essentially a series of musical portmanteaus.

Speaking to GRAMMY.com over the phone, Bartees discusses his musical upbringing, his journey towards making Live Forever and his suspicion of labels.

How are you holding up? You just got a new job at a studio? And I remember hearing that you were working on a new record with Will Yip producing?

Will and I are talking about doing our next record together, and I'm going to pre-produce it in October and just see what I pull out. But I finished a bunch of it already, I’m just trying to see what the next one will be like. I'm excited about it. I just moved out of my old spot, which was my apartment. It’s been really cool to have bands reach out and want to work with me. I’ll be producing a bunch of bands and artists through the year while keeping up with my stuff. I always wanted to do this so I think it will be fun.

How did you discover music was a passion of yours?

I found music through my parents. My mom's a singer and my dad is a really avid music collector and like speakers and record players and he really liked that kind of stuff, even though he wasn’t a musical person. I got to hear a lot of interesting things that way, but my personal journey with music and being able to really seek it out and buy the things I want probably started when I was in middle school. I was one of the only Black people in my school where I was going. There were a bunch of people that were into heavier music, they were into Glassjaw and a bunch of Christian hardcore bands, all the Tooth & Nail bands and As Cities Burn. They also looked different, they were like a little bit more diverse [of a] crowd. And then all the white people looked really f**king weird and I felt like I could kind of slide into that crew and kinda be a little more anonymous. I was just kind of sick of sticking out all the time. But it was through that, that I found At The Drive In and a ton of other bands that really changed my life.

I read that your mother was a Jubilee singer. If at all, how does what your parents grew up listening to (and performing) inform the music you’re making now?

Legacy is something that weighs heavy on me. Like, I always grew up hearing about my mom singing when she was younger and all over North Carolina. Everyone knew my mother, and I would remember being a kid and every time we go home in North Carolina, I was listening to her sing in all these huge churches. As I got older, I learned more about my mom's side of the family, and all of these people who were tremendous singers and vocalists and guitar players and bass players, and all the way back as far as like anyone can think. And this is like Chitlin' Circuit, era, Black music in the South.

My first solo project I ever put out was a six-song folk album that was all about just connecting country music and blues and all of these like super Black sounds together. It's definitely in the backdrop of the music I make.

Before we get to the full-length, I want to ask about the National EP for a second, Say Goodbye to Pretty Boy. On "Lemonworld," you changed the line from "I was a comfortable kid" to "I'm an uncomfortable kid, but I don't think about it much anymore." Can you talk about that change and those kinds of easter eggs?

The EP is called Say Goodbye To Pretty Boy and in my theme of the record is like, I felt like I had always been precious in my previous life. Like before I really started taking music seriously, I was very precious. And I felt like I was trying to be this person that I really didn't like. And a lot of the record was about saying goodbye to that. It's like me sneaking in saying that I'm growing, I'm moving on, and I'm feeling better about who I am and I'm more comfortable now.

It's just fun songwriting to put your own kind of feel into it and to reference things. I always kind of think of it as like sending smoke signals up to people that I want to work with one day, like there's shit that I did in the National record purely because I wanted Aaron Dessner to hear it. I was like, “Yo Graham, we should do this, it's a Clogs reference." It's just nerdy shit that I enjoy. I guess subconsciously, I want people to catch t, but I don't plan for that, you know?

Have you thought about making a record with Aaron?

Oh, I'd love to. I mean, I just don't think Aaron has ever considered doing that with me. She probably would imagine he's pretty busy, but I would love to work with him.

Tell me about the timeline of recording and releasing Live Forever.

In December, 2018, I hit up [No Earbuds founder and indie publicist] Jamie Coletta and I was like, "Hey, I have this song, but I also am about to go and record an album. Would you be down to work with me? Like at all?" She was like, "I don't want to commit to the album, Let's just see how this single goes." And so we released that single ["In A Cab"] and then I went and recorded the album. I went for like almost two weeks in February and recorded 17 songs. And then me and Brian DiMeglio started mixing it right after that. And he and I shot a bunch of versions back and forth, like over the next month, probably a month and a half. And then we got it mastered by Jesse Cannon, who's in New York and he's a great engineer. It's a cool studio up there.

And then, I circled back up with Jamie and we were like, cool, we've got a record. Let's see if we can build a team around it and see if we can find the label. We shopped it for a long time and no one really was that into it, to be honest. Like, I think people thought it was cool, but maybe it just wasn't the right time or something. And then we just kept on going and we got some booking help and eventually like we got it to Will and then he was really, really into it, like super pumped. And that was honestly like right before we put out Pretty Boy. So we were shopping the album around for almost a year.

It must have been frustrating to have this whole album ready to go without actually releasing it!

I really felt like I wanted to take the time, I know I've seen a lot of bands release music and I've been in a lot of bands that released music and we always did it way too fast. And Jamie gave me great advice. She was like, "We should take our time. Like if it takes a year, like it takes a year. They're like, we're gonna just get it to as many people as we possibly can." And it worked. Eventually, we found somebody, but I think in that year I also locked down the Pretty Boy project and recorded it. So, we had a label to do one release and I think that was like a really great thing to happen. I think it was like a good way to introduce my music. So it all worked out somehow.

There are several left-field experiments like "Flagey God" and "Mossblerd." Can you talk about that song in particular?

I really wanted the album to be like an exploration of sounds. And I feel like I naturally am writing a lot of different things all the time. Like it's always been hard for me to just be write hardcore songs or just punk songs or whatever. I felt like with songs like "Kelly Rowland" and "Mossblerd" and some of the more beat-driven ones, it's hard for me to say that there's like a through line between those and like the rock songs. But I remember looking back at the projects and saying, "I don't have to be afraid that all these songs sound different" because the through line I think is just me, just that I made them. And that it's my story and my voice and my experiences. I think beyond that, there's no sonic element that makes everything similar. I'm just kinda pulling it together.

One of the differences I noticed between you and a comparison point like TV on the Radio is that their lyrics are less directly about Tunde Adebimpe’s life and more conceptual. Meanwhile, on Live Forever, there’s an in-joke about your PR work ("I lie for a living now that’s why I can’t tell you stuff"), there’s an Antlers reference, there’s even a reference to the Hershey Relays. That kind of storytelling about your own life is very rooted in rap. Was that contrast deliberate?

Yes. I think that was very deliberate. One thing that I love about hip-hop for me is, I know what's going on. Like, shit is very clear. All of the messages are sharp and succinct and clear and if you're not familiar with the lexicon, I guess that's a barrier, but if you are familiar, you can know what's happening. And I feel like in rock music, you could be talking about anything in a rock song, but if it's arranged right, it can just be great.

And I wanted to bring that type of approach that's normally used in hip-hop with writing lyrics and making things super clear and concise. "Boomer" starts like a DaBaby song, like right on beat one. Like there's no intros, it's just like, boom, like we're in the song [and] I'm rapping, you know? That was something I wanted to do a lot. I did it on "Mossblerd" too. Cause I thought that shit was genius. Like those DaBaby songs are so simple and they start so fast and so quickly, it's like a freight train. And I was like, "How can we do that in a pop punk format?” Which in my mind is like a freight train, but just in a different way. Those were some ways that I was like, "Maybe I can smash these two ideas together." And I liked how it sounded.

When you're writing, are you thinking in terms of "this is my National song, this is my weird trap song?" Or is it just like, "I'm going to make a loop or a piano part and just see what happens?"

So I normally start with a loop or a piano part. Once I work that section, I just start collecting sections, like, so like literally in project files. Then, once I like have as many sections and ideas collected, I just start arranging them and when I can hear it and I can look at it and say like, "Oh, it would be sick if I was rapping. Or if there was a drum and bass beat here." I go through incrementally like that. But I definitely don't think like, "Oh, let me make [this kind of] song." I'll just think like, "I love when DaBaby does this, I want to try and find a way to do that on a song."

You’ve spoken extensively about how your race informs your songwriting; what does it mean to you for someone to "sound Black"?

It’s hard not to say that most Western music doesn’t sound Black. Many of our most popular forms, pop-rock-dance-soul-funk-gospel-country-folk-blues, hip-hop, all seem to be rooted in Black people. Or at least shaped by formative Black artists.

I think that it's kind of strange and impossible to be expected to stay within a genre. And I feel like genres, and how they've played out, just in the categorization for Black artists, it's all just kind of set up so we'll lose. When Tyler, the Creator put out Flower Boy and Igor, I remember listening to them and being like, Whoa, these are pop records. Like, these are huge, super future-facing pop records, you know? I don't see how naming them all Urban [helps]. I think that Black people that are just, you know, the shit and it shouldn't be weird to see Black rock bands. Like, there should be tons of them. It shouldn't be weird for them to also have hip-hop influences.

That sounds like it ties into "Mossblerd."

And also just like how genres grow to impact your life and how you see yourself and the contributions that your community makes. I ended the song talking about my nephew who is a pretty outstanding rapper. But I remember being 16 and Black, and I know a lot of young Black guys that all thought they were going to be rappers and we were just going to sell drugs and just be rappers you get that from the shit you see on TV. And it's all tied back to genres and what we're telling people that they can accomplish. So it can be kind of dangerous.

That's why when people ask me, Oh, what's it like making "genre-defying rock music." I'm like “All that is just Black music and I'm Black," and that's it, that’s the whole thing.

So someone wants to get into playing music—maybe they’re also into the National and those kinds of bands but don’t see themselves in it. Do you have a message for them, the kind of thing you wish you heard when you were 16 and thinking you were going to be a rapper?

I didn't know what I could do or become until I saw it.

And I remember seeing Bloc Party and TV on the Radio and bands that had people that looked like me and how much it meant to me. And I think that was really important and something I've just learned in making music is that sometimes you just have to be your own biggest fan, and you have to build the thing that no one else knows is real yet. You might be the only one for a while that knows that you have something special to offer. And that doesn't mean that you're wrong. I spent a lot of time, in my teens and 20s, playing in all sorts of bands, trying to fulfill myself because I didn't trust myself.

And I didn't believe that my music was worth making because I didn't look like other people. And my voice was so resonant. And I just sounded like a church kid in a hardcore band, which is weird to hear my Black voice over these riffs. You just feel like you can't do it cause no one has seen it, but you might just be on some shit that other people can't do. And you have to learn to trust yourself and really learn to go with your gut early. And then people will just form around you because you'll be doing something that is genuine and from the heart. And that's the hardest thing, to create things that actually connect with people.

Is there anyone you want to shout out?

Melanie Charles. I think she's the best vocalist and hip-hop producer... ever in New York. I would want to shout her out. Taja Cheek and her band, L’Rain. I really loved their music. Felicia Douglas. Felicia is in Dirty Projectors, but she's got two side projects that are amazing. I look up to those people quite a bit and their music is always super tasteful and excellent. I’m loving everything Dancer is putting out, I’m loving everything Pinkshift from Maryland is putting out. I'm not sure if there are [more Black bands] now or if people are just elevating those people more. But I do know that there have always been people of color and Black people in rock bands and they just didn't always get the same opportunities. So, maybe it's like a little bit of everything.

Matt Berninger's Optimistic Malaise

Grammys Newsletter

[From left]: Bartees Strange, Anjimile and Jordana Nye. Photos courtesy of Julia Leiby, Maren Celest & Grand Jury Music

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Bartees Strange, Anjimile & More On What It's Like To Release A Debut Album In A Pandemic

A variety of rising artists sit down to discuss the unusual and inopportune circumstances of releasing a debut record during COVID, and what it takes to make the best of an impossible situation

Mike Hilleary

GRAMMYs

Oct 27, 2020 - 1:36 pm

Video-chatting through her phone, Wichita-based singer/songwriter Jordana Nye shows me a tattoo she recently got on her right forearm. Written in small red ink is a single word: "numb." "I feel like I've just been kind of numb throughout the whole thing—like my tattoo," she says. Laughing at herself, almost as an aside, she quickly adds, "The decisions you make when you're in quarantine."

The "whole thing" Nye is referencing is of course the increasingly fragile state of the music industry as a result of the coronavirus pandemic, a global health crisis that has in just a few short months forced the closure of concert venues across the country, the cancelation of festivals and tours, and manifested an overwhelming sense of uncertainty for the untold number of musical artists that make recording and performing songs their livelihood. While established, high-profile acts such as Bruce Springsteen, Lady Gaga, and BTS are fully capable of releasing a new album in the middle of a volatile and complicated environment and experience little to no impact on their financial bottom line and cultural cachet, those like Nye, who only just made her first steps into the industry with the release of her debut album Classical Notions of Happiness in March, are finding themselves mentally and professionally hobbled at the exact moment they are trying to introduce themselves to the greater music listening community.

In addition to Nye (who has followed Classical Notions of Happiness with the EP Something to Say and has a second EP … To You scheduled for release in December), a variety of rising artists, including Christian Lee Hutson (Beginners), Anjimile (Giver Taker), Bartees Strange's Bartees Cox Jr. (Live Forever), and Nation of Language frontman Ian Devaney (introduction, Prescence) all sat down to discuss the unusual and inopportune circumstances of releasing a debut record during COVID, and what it takes to make the best of an impossible situation.

The Initial Shock

Jordana Nye: I kind of went through like the worst depression. I mean, you just gotta keep swimming. It's hard to sometimes. But you get medicine, get therapy, talk about stuff. That's what I did, and it helped a lot. I couldn't even do anything for maybe three months straight. It was the worst.

Ian Devaney: It was kind of disbelief, especially when I realized how long it would go on and I realized what that would do to small and mid-sized venues. I was like, even when we do come back from this, the landscape is just gonna be so totally different. What does this mean as far as these businesses as independent hubs in the community? But my brain also just zoomed out to the corporate consolidation of touring above the D.I.Y. level basically. Are the only people who are going to be able to keep their venues open the ones who aren't as artist-friendly?

Bartees Cox Jr.: After we released my EP Say Goodbye to Pretty Boy, it was crazy. We got invited to play this WNYC soundcheck live show thing on March 12. And then we also had a show in New York on March 13. And this was when the shit was really going down in New York. And we were there, we played the thing, and we were all like, "Dang, this looks like it's gonna get really serious." And then after the EP came out, my team and I were like, "Well, do we just not do anything for a year and a half? We have momentum now. We should just ride this and keep writing." And that was just it, let's just follow the wave. It's working right now. So why why stop, you know?

The Road Is Closed

Christian Lee Hutson: Just from my perspective, the thing that seems to help debut artists the most is supporting other artists on tour, and that element has been completely taken out of the picture. Having your name tied to whatever the act is you're opening for and getting a chance to be in front of new people that might not have heard you on whatever streaming playlist, that aspect is probably the most damaging.

Ian Devaney: I've always been someone who feels like Nation of Language captures more people through the live show. And so when it became clear that we weren't going to be touring for a long time, I was like, "Oh, I guess we're doomed. I guess we'll put these things out and maybe some people listen to them, and then it will just fade away and we'll get on with the next thing and wait. But I was very shocked and flattered that the record started doing much better than I ever thought. That was very exciting. I feel very grateful for that.

Bartees Cox Jr.: I'm glad that we put Live Forever out now, instead of right at the beginning of the pandemic, because I don't think people knew what the f**k was going on in March. I saw some bands, put some records out that were really good in February and January who had huge tours booked all summer. I feel like this really hit them in the chest. That just takes so much like gas and energy out of you.

Ian Devaney: We were three shows into a tour, when they were like, "OK, everyone has to go home." It wasn't just disbelief that a dangerous thing was happening, but disbelief from the whiplash of the fact that we were about to be on the road for a month. But now, I'm back in my apartment. There was confusion and then, yeah, just real sadness of not knowing when I'm gonna get to do this again.

Christian Lee Hutson: Doing my first real headline tour, that was supposed to happen. I was supposed to on it right now, actually. In June I was also going to tour with one of my favorite bands, The Magnetic Fields. I was excited to spend a month with them. Those are two things I feel like, "Oh, man, those would have been cool." And hopefully, in a world where we're safer, those things can still happen.

Ian Devaney: I was really looking forward to playing the Seattle show on our canceled tour. KEXP seemed like the first radio station that consistently was reaching out to us and playing us on a regular basis, and we kind of developed a close relationship with them. And to me they've always been sort of one of the gatekeepers of like, "Oh, I'm in this level now. KEXP knows about my band." And so, them just being excited for us to come and us getting the sense that people just driving around in their cars during the day were hearing our music—and that being such a strange thing to wrap our heads around—it felt like we were gonna show up and be like, "We've arrived."

Jordana Nye: I was going on my first tour. I felt unprepared. I was also really nervous. And then when the COVID stuff started, there was a surreal moment where I was like, "What? I was just about to do something that could impact my life in such a big way and now it's gone." I was told there was gonna be hotels.

Christian Lee Hutson: Not touring is a huge change in my life in general. I've been touring with other people or just on my own for the last 11 years in my life. So to not do it at the one time I've finally released an album and not be doing it feels hilarious.

Bartees Cox Jr.: I keep telling myself, "It's just delayed. You will get to play the record for years. It will always exist." It won't be the same, but I also think when shows open up, people are gonna be really hyped to go to shows. The bottom line is, it'll be okay. Again, I have no choice. It's hard to like dwell on that. I knew that would be the case, before I put it out.

Fiscal Feasibility

Anjimile: I would describe it as not an ideal time, but I also have never monetized like my music career in a major way. It's not like, "Oh, no, all this money I usually make is gone!" [Laughs.]

Christian Lee Hutson: My wife and I are both living on unemployment and savings right now and just kind of hold on as long as we can, just hoping that touring can come back before we're in a crippling amount of debt.

Ian Devaney: The unemployment insurance is currently supporting me. When we left for tour the restaurant I was working at I said, "I understand if you won't have a space to me when I get back," but they were like, "We I think we'll be able to work the schedule," and I thought, "Perfect." But then the reason we came back was because everything was shutting down. And so I got an email suggesting we should all file for an appointment, and we'll see what happens.

Jordana Nye: At least I have my job back in Wichita. I work at a brewing company called Norton's. They're super involved in live music and it's a great place. I was like a barback during the summer. And now I'm a dishwasher. It's humbling.

Team Building and Content Alternatives

Bartees Cox Jr.: I just feel sometimes [as a new artist] you're the only one that knows that you have something special, and you just gotta build around it. And then all of a sudden people just show up around you. You have a team and you have a plan. But you got to make the first step.

Anjimile: It definitely changed the scope and nature of the promotional cycle. When it became apparent that touring was not happening I was like, "OK, so I guess we'll have to get creative and do other things to generate and maintain interest in this record."

Christian Lee Hutson: I think everyone was just flying by the seat of their pants, like, "We'll do the best that we can do and we're just gonna do everything that we can as we think of it." Those were really the kind of conversations that were had. The funny thing about all of this is all you can do is throw your hands up and just do it, surrender yourself to it. And I feel like everyone has a label and Phoebe and me and my management, everyone has been pretty good at just being like, "Alright, we're just gonna roll with it."

Anjimile: I'm also working on building a team. I now have a booking agent. And I'm talking with managers for the first time and that's super exciting. I'm doing all these behind the scenes team building stuff.

Ian Devaney: We've actually, in the middle of the pandemic, gotten booking agents. And they were like, "This is weird, but we an tell people about the band for when things open back up. We can get your name into circulation of who's being considered for what." You can get the sense that they are ready to just throw us intensely on the road, and we are ready to do that as well.

Bartees Cox Jr.: Will Yip, who runs memory music, was just like, "This thing is super fresh. It's good no matter what. You got to just trust us." I was the most apprehensive because no one's ever cared about my music or anything I've ever done. So I was like, "Well, OK, if this is what you think, I trust you guys." And they were all just so passionate about it and they just worked so f**king hard. My publicist Jamie and manager Tim, they just really pushed the record really, really hard. Teams are so important. I didn't know how important they were until really this year, how much how much it helps to have a label and a manager and a publicist that love you and love your record, and are going to put in extra hours and go the extra mile. That was the difference-maker. I think that's why it didn't matter what was happening around us because yes, it's an election year, yes the world was literally ending, yeah there's a pandemic. But this record is f**king good. And it's not the first time a great record has come out when things are really bad.

Anjimile: I got hit up by a U.K. booking agency first, and they were like, "Hey, obviously, there's no touring happening right now, but we love your sound and we're looking into the future to see where you would fit in certain clubs, and we just want you on the team." The same thing happened with my new U.S. booking agent. She was like, "We've been following you for a couple years, seen your name everywhere. Booking doesn't really exists, but I want to work with you and get you on the team and we can talk about slowly building what a live Anjimile thing looks like."

Ian Devaney: I think part of it is letting fans know that we're not stopping. It often helps me emotionally invest in a band if I can believe that the band is really in it to keep moving. I don't know if that makes sense. People will email us or reach out through Bandcamp and things like that. And it's always just really nice to hear people's stories of how they've enjoyed the record.

Jordana Nye: My team taught me to just try to keep working and keep busy until we get a sense of what the hell is going to happen—and just release music because it's really all you can do. Anything you can do, you just have to do it.

Anjimile: I think the main idea for me is just galvanizing and continually engaging my social media presence. My social media numbers have climbed substantially as a result of this release, which is exciting. And not to sound like a f**king music industry business guy, but content is helpful, and so I'm just trying to create chill content without losing my mind. We're about to have a contest. We've got a video coming out. Hopefully people can sit at home and watch. I want to try and create content that folks can engage with at home. Part of our merch is boxers. We were like, "What about hats?" "Well, nobody's gonna see the hat." "What about fanny packs?" "Nobody's going anywhere." "OK. Boxers. People will be at home wearing them." We're just trying to be as creative as possible.

Jordana Nye: I've got some music video stuff in the works. There's a new one coming out that was filmed in my home of Wichita for "I Guess This is Life," and my best friend is in it with me. It's very, very sweet. And I can't wait for it to be out. But I'm also shooting a music video out here in L.A. for the track "Reason." It’s going to feature me walking an invisible dog on a leash. I'm f**king excited for that. I can't wait.

Ian Devaney: Our manager has been really kind of fantastic and diligent. In his mind there's still people who don't know the record. And so just because it came out in May, doesn't mean we're not going to keep working it as though everyone knows it, because they don't.

Mental Health Whiplash

Christian Lee Hutson: It's like, for debut artists, what do you have to compare it to?

Bartees Cox Jr.: I almost feel like more people are listening to music now than they were before, like really listening through albums, and really interacting with them.

Christian Lee Hutson: I think it would make me crazy to sit around and just be like, "Damn it, I spent all this time on this and of course when my record comes out, this is what happens." I mean, I'm actually kind of encouraged by the response to the album just in general, because I feel like it's such a weird time for music to come out and I'm happy that anyone has found it at all considering it's come out in the most turbulent year in recent memory. That aspect I feel positive about, like it was weirdly worth it, even though I'm not doing all of the things that I thought I would be doing a year ago.

Bartees Cox Jr.: I mean I've never had fans like I do now, and I'm doing all this during a pandemic.

Ian Devaney: In a strange way, I'm glad we're putting music out now. I feel like we are, as much as anyone can, engaging with the madness and sort of being defiant in the face of the madness and not giving up on trying to be creative and trying to dream big about what we can do in the future.

Anjimile: It feels surreal, but at the same time I've released music locally in Boston over the years. And nothing has ever come of that. And so releasing an album nationally with a label, I think my expectations were actually pretty low. Usually when I put out music nobody cares, you know? Why should they really care? And this time some people cared, and I was like, "Holy f**k." Even that that was beyond my expectations. And so I don't know, I'm just kind of trying to go with it. Because even though things feel weird, and at times, unfair and strange I don't know what is going to happen in the next three months, six months, nine months, right? I'm just cautiously cautiously optimistic about what will happen next. Because I do think that so far, things have actually happened right on time. Even though shit is really weird right now, and I don't know what's going to happen next, maybe something positive in my career will occur. Who knows?

Bartees Cox Jr.: I was talking to a friend about this. You look at these areas in music, or in America, like Vietnam War era music or these other big social phenomenon and the music that came from it, I think that one day people will look back on this quarantine pandemic era and think, "All these records came out during this weird ass time are interesting because of it."

What Comes Next

Bartees Cox Jr.: I was thinking that bigger artists that need bigger studios are gonna kind of be hamstrung by this where more D.I.Y. people can just be like, "Yeah, I'll write another record."

Jordana Nye: Going on tour, getting experienced would have helped my career a lot in way. But working on new music is also helping it.

Ian Devaney: For Nation of Language, we're planning on putting out a seven inch either like, December or January. So we've been working on two songs, as well as songs for the second record.

Anjimile: At this point, in the year, I have a lot of songs written, some which I think might be good. And so I'm just stacking up demos at the moment, trying to make sure I have like the juiciest tunes available.

Jordana Nye: I'm still just making music and content, and it kind of tells me that I can pretty much do anything that I set my mind to, which is comforting, especially in dire times when I feel like I'm not doing anything at all, and I feel like I'm a loser. People are digging the new stuff so I'm super excited for that, and makes me want to do more with different genres and just play around with them.

Bartees Cox Jr.: I'm gonna really take my time. I put out two records this year. I don't feel like I gotta like, hustle. I just gonna just keep working try to make some money and hold it down.

Christian Lee Hutson: I'm honestly just writing a lot and I am recording a lot of stuff at home. Early on in quarantine, I was just like, "Alright, in order to tell the days apart, I'm gonna record a different cover song for fun every day." So I did that for a while until I got bored of that. And now I'm just demoing and recording new stuff. It's the only thing I really know how to do. And I'm grateful that there's a lot of time to do it. Something I noticed observing other friends' album cycles in the pre-COVID world is the amount of time that they had to actually write and follow up their debuts is actually pretty slim, which I feel like I have a lot of time to accomplish that.

Capturing Los Angeles' COVID-Closed Venues

Lin-Manuel Miranda (L) and host/creator Hrishikesh Hirway (R) in "Song Exploder"

Photo: Eric Veras/Netflix

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Beat By Beat: How "Song Exploder" Unlocks The Intimacy Of Music And Creativity

Based on the popular podcast, the newly launched Netflix series dissects classics and current hits one layer at a time, while host and creator Hrishikesh Hirway finds the human connection behind it all

John Ochoa

GRAMMYs

Oct 20, 2020 - 4:54 pm

Most people know "Song Exploder" as the popular podcast giving die-hard music fans a deep, inside look into the sonic mechanics behind their favorite tracks. A whole new class of music-heads now knows "Song Exploder" as the new Netflix series bringing the creativity behind music to the digital screen.

Originally launched as a podcast in 2014, "Song Exploder" dissects classic and current fan-favorite songs, with guest artists breaking down each individual track and element in detail to paint an intimate audio portrait of their art. The podcast, which has accumulated more than 60 million streams and downloads over the years and has hosted guests like U2, Selena Gomez, Björk, Fleetwood Mac, Solange and many others, now breathes new life as a Netflix docuseries.

Introduced on the streaming platform at the beginning of October, "Song Exploder" adds an even deeper layer of storytelling and personal insight to the songs being deconstructed beat by beat. The show's inaugural four-episode run features Alicia Keys ("3 Hour Drive"), Lin-Manuel Miranda ("Wait For It" from "Hamilton"), R.E.M. ("Losing My Religion") and Ty Dolla $ign ("LA"). (Last week [Oct. 15], Netflix unveiled its next slate of guests for the show's second season, set to debut Dec. 15: Dua Lipa, The Killers, Nine Inch Nails and Natalia Lafourcade.

Whether in visual or podcast format, the core of "Song Exploder" remains the same: "an intimate portrait of an artist telling the story of how their artistic mind worked through creating one of their songs," host and creator Hrishikesh Hirway tells GRAMMY.com.

GRAMMY.com chatted with Hrishikesh Hirway about the human connection behind his new "Song Exploder" Netflix series and how he hopes the show will inspire others to create their own art.

You have an endless supply of songs from which to choose for any given "Song Exploder" episode, podcast and show. What needs to stand out in a song in order for you to develop it for "Song Exploder"?

The first step in the process is really identifying the artists before even getting to the song, because, frankly, I don't know necessarily which songs might have the best stories. The most famous songs don't necessarily have the most interesting stories, and the people who know that better than anyone are the people who made the songs.

But what I can try and determine is which artists seem really interesting and thoughtful, good storytellers, and who are also beloved by a lot of people. That's kind of where I start. And once I can get an artist onboard to talk about a song in this way, then I start the process of trying to narrow down which song it's going to be with them.

I feel like I don't know what the story [of the song] is all the time. There are a lot of songs that haven't necessarily been delved into, and frankly, I'm always interested in something like that ... where the backstory [of a song] hasn't been canonized and "Song Exploder" can be a place to tell it for the first time. So I really am relying on input from the artists ... The question that I ask them, frankly, is: Which of your songs do you feel the most emotional attachment to?

Ultimately, the most interesting stories, I think, when it comes to making songs or really making any kind of art, are about people and their feelings and the things that inspire them to make something at all. Even though the show is about music, it's also a portrait of each of these artists. In order to tell you something insightful, especially for it to be something that could be interesting to people who aren't people who make music themselves and also aren't necessarily even familiar with the artist or the song, it has to be something that connects to something in the human experience that feels significant.

I always try to make "Song Exploder" a show that reflected a broad range of genres and artists and backgrounds. So there's kind of almost a guarantee that you couldn't just get people hooked on the show based on who the artists were and what the songs were; I want everybody to watch every episode and listen to every episode of the podcast because I think that it's a worthwhile conversation to have. I think the creative process is something that's really fascinating in and of itself. It's an example of how people react to their own experience, to actually decide to make something based on their ideas, what they lived through, what they love ... The thing that I'm actually most interested in is that kind of emotional experience: the emotional attachment to the act of creating a piece of music.

Michael Stipe of R.E.M. in "Song Exploder" | Photo: Courtesy of Netflix/Netflix

There's a moment in the R.E.M. episode where frontman Michael Stipe gets almost emotional listening to his own voice on the band's classic, "Losing My Religion," and hearing the song elements broken down and presented to him in such an intimate manner, even after so many years since the song's release. How do you go about getting artists to open up to you and dive into their art so deeply?

I think one thing that helps is that I'm not really approaching [the interview process] head-on, certainly not right away. The questions don't start off front and center in like an emotionally investigative way. I think I have to earn their trust first, and part of that is from talking about the mechanics of the process first. That's the entry point in all these conversations. One of the reasons why having the [song's] stems is important, not just in terms of letting the listeners know what's going on in the song, but in terms of being able to facilitate that conversation with the artist.

Of all of the questions, the hardest one to answer is probably, "Why?" "Why did you decide to make the song this way? Why did you write this lyric? Why did you choose this chord progression?" That's the hardest [question], but it's also the one that I'm most interested in. But it's a little easier to start off with, first of all, "What?" "What are we listening to?" And then to ask them, "OK, how did you make it? And when did you make it?" All those basic factual questions are a way to just let them and me submerge ourselves into the memories of making that song.

Once they're there and able to relive some of the experience of it by hearing the actual evidence of the stuff that they did on that day—hearing their voice, hearing the instrument, hearing the actual track that they recorded around that time—it's a lot easier to ask them to then dig a few layers deeper and ask what was going on in their lives and how that might've fed into some of those creative decisions.

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You're now juggling the show and the podcast. How do you decide what songs go on the podcast format and what goes in video format?

Well, the podcast is a lot of work for a podcast, but that means that I'm still able to turn around an episode in a few weeks, whereas the TV show takes a much longer time to put together. There are just so many more components to it, and it's so much more work.

Part of the pitch for doing the television show is that I was trying to ask these artists to take a leap of faith, [like,] "This is something that's going to take a while to make, so you can't tie it to your promotional calendar, necessarily. I can't guarantee that it'll come out on such and such date to coincide with your single release or something like that." It was really more like, "Would you like to participate in this thing where there'll be this really meticulously crafted mini-documentary about this work that you did, and it's sort of evergreen."

That's a different pitch than with the podcast. Although with the podcast, I say all those things, too. I say it's evergreen and it's always better when it's not necessarily tied to your release schedule and more like when people have had a chance to live with the song a little bit. But one of the advantages of the podcast is it can be a little more nimble because it's a little easier to put together.

So this is a long way of saying that a lot of times that question is answered by the artists themselves or their publicists or managers, who are looking for a very specific outcome or timing, or they have something in mind, and that could be a matter of scale. It really depends on the circumstances of the artist and what works for them.

Fans who've been following the podcast for a while will find a totally different experience when they come to the show. There are two types of storytelling when I hear "Song Exploder," the podcast, and when I watch "Song Exploder," the docuseries. The podcast is very audio-heavy: You get to really hear all of the isolated bits and pieces of the song. The show has a lot more historical and cultural context, sort of like a mini-documentary for a song, and you also hear from a lot more voices beyond just the recording artist. Beyond the visual element, what do you gain in terms of storytelling through the show?

I think one of the things that you mentioned is absolutely key to the TV show, which is that often on the podcast, it's just a single voice or maybe two voices together … But with the TV show, because the timeline was so different, there was a chance to stop and say, "OK, who do we really want? Who are all the voices that are involved in the creation of the song?" Maybe not just the artist, but also the collaborators that were essential to making the song.

Having that kind of breadth and depth, it isn't always afforded to the shorter turnaround time and the scale of the podcast. But here, to really immerse the audience and give a really full picture of what the song was, having those other voices in there was really important. For [the] Alicia Keys episode [about the song "3 Hour Drive,"] we traveled to London to film with [the song's guest vocalist and co-writer/co-producer] Sampha and the [song's] co-writer/co-producer Jimmy Napes because we knew that they were going to only expand and flesh out the story.

I think a part of it is also a matter of craft, too. When you're working in audio, you're kind of only working in one dimension, which is time. You're just relying on one sense, hearing, and you're just basing everything on how long things take; the rhythm comes from just that one sense. But with TV, you have to also give a rhythm and complexity visually, too. You can't just transliterate the podcast into a TV format, where it's just one person talking, mixed with the isolated stems, because it wouldn't work; it would get very boring very quickly. So in order to have that kind of texture and nuance, we wanted to involve all those different people and try and give a little bit bigger of a picture than maybe what comes out in the podcast.

Do you see the podcast and the show as separate entities or related in the same family? Do you need to engage with both formats to fully appreciate or understand what "Song Exploder" is trying to do?

Oh, I don't think you have to engage with both. Of course, I would love it if people did, just because they're both things that I've put a lot of work into, and you want people to enjoy the stuff that you've worked on. This is not a great analogy, but I think it's sort of like reading a book or watching a movie that's been adapted of that book. I don't think you need to read the book to enjoy the movie, and vice versa, you don't need to have seen the movie to have full enjoyment of the book. But maybe you'll get something out of the experience of taking both in. Maybe it changes the way you feel about both.

This is, of course, a little bit different, because it's not even the same story that's being told. It's really just taking the core concept, which is an intimate portrait of an artist telling the story of how their artistic mind worked through creating one of their songs, and taking that concept and expressing it in these two different media. So it's much looser even than something like an adaptation of a book to a movie.

What artist or what song is your holy grail for the podcast or the show or both?

I don't have one holy grail—I think I probably have about a thousand. Anytime I start listening to music, I start wondering about it. That's not new since I started "Song Exploder"; it's the other way around. That's always been the way I listen to music. When I fall in love with a song, I want to hear it from the inside out. I want to hear what the individual tracks, what the individual stems sound like. I want to know what the ideas were that inspired all of these things that I'm falling in love with. "Song Exploder" was just a way of me being able to actually make that happen for myself. So anytime I'm listening to music and I hear something great, you could put it on the list.

Ty Dolla $ign in "Song Exploder" | Photo: Courtesy of Netflix/Netflix

What is your ultimate goal with "Song Exploder"?

I wish people would either watch the show or listen to the podcast and come away with a feeling that they want to make something themselves. Part of my aim with the show is to democratize the act of creation a little bit. I think it's easy to look at very successful artists or very successful songs or any kind of art in any format, where it has reached a certain level of success, and think that there's some uncrossable boundary for everyday people that keeps them from making something as great as those songs …

I think the best feeling that I always get from finishing working on an episode is something akin to that. That like, I just want to go make something, and it doesn't just have to be music. I think that anybody who is interested in making anything at all, to get something from the show, just the idea of going from nothing but an idea and following that all the way through to a finished piece of art, I hope that might be inspiring to everyone.

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Matt Berninger

Photo by Chantal Anderson

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Matt Berninger's Optimistic Malaise

On his solo record, 'Serpentine Prison,' the National frontman's introspection belies optimism

Caitlin Wolper

GRAMMYs

Sep 24, 2020 - 9:07 am

Matt Berninger is a self-proclaimed optimist—which, given his songs, might come as a surprise. Best known as a vocalist and songwriter for GRAMMY-winning indie-rock standard bearers the National, Berninger’s lyrics are often mired in reptilian fantasy or drunken exploration; there’s a flickering television or a stiff drink, a miscommunication or a revelation. Similar malaise follows in his side projects, from the band EL VY to the score for Mike Mills’ short film I Am Easy To Find.

To harp on those examples, though, would ignore Berninger’s witty, sardonic, self-mocking tendencies: there’s nothing quite like hearing "It's a common fetish for a doting man/To ballerina on the coffee table, cock in hand" or "I’m a perfect piece of ass" wedged in an otherwise morose track.

Berninger tells me he always feels optimistic, "even in the worst." Right now, he feels hopeful about America and about art, more than ever before—though "it’s probably going to get darker before it gets brighter...somehow I actually am genuinely optimistic." He points to recent releases, from Bright Eyes’ Down In The Weeds, Where The World Once Was to Cardi B’s "WAP" to Fiona Apple’s Fetch The Bolt Cutters to Taylor Swift’s Folklore (produced by National bandmate Aaron Dessner) as proof that songwriting is at a peak.

"Artists I know are making their bravest most interesting, most honest work right now, and that's what artists do: when everything is chaos, they interpret the chaos," Berninger says. He adds, genuinely: "It’s not a political song that’ll change the way someone votes: a love song will."

But you can’t reckon with global issues before you reckon with yourself: that’s what Serpentine Prison, his first solo album, tries to do.

"Everything I’ve ever written—at least, the good stuff I’ve written—I’m always reckoning with myself, and that's political: reckoning with my own fears and reckoning with my own desires and my own problems," Berninger says. "Mostly, when I write, I'm just trying to sort myself out."

All the same, he calls Serpentine Prison the most collaborative album he’s worked on. Produced by Booker T. Jones (a GRAMMY-winning record producer and musician), Berninger brought in a number of artists, including Scott Devendorf, Walter Martin, Matt Sheehy, Gail Ann Dorsey, Sean O’Brien, Harrison Whitford, Hayden Desser, Brent Knopf and Mike Brewer. His wife and frequent collaborator, Carin Besser, wrote alongside him.

At first, when Berninger went into the studio with Jones, it was to make a covers album. He wanted to record songs he loved as a way to get out of his own head.

"I started sharing some originals [with Jones] that I’d written with a bunch of different people, sort of orphan songs," Berninger says. "By the time we went into the studio to make this covers record, we had more originals than covers." (The covers will be included in the album’s deluxe edition.)

The originals that make up Serpentine Prison are true to name: labyrinthine explorations of the psyche, they oscillate between pleading and desire, between dependency and assertion. Even the somewhat silly-lined opener "My Eyes Are T-Shirts" ("My eyes are T-shirts, they’re so easy to read") quickly turns into a paean ("When I see you, something sad goes missing").

The hypnotically meandering "Silver Springs" is a duet in parts; "Distant Axis" worries over timing and communication; "Oh Dearie" wallows, warning others away so they don’t get dragged down: "Name the blues, I got ‘em/I don’t see no brightness/I’m kinda startin’ to like this."

On The National’s 2005 album Alligator, Berninger sang, "I had a secret meeting in the basement of my brain/It went the dull and wicked ordinary way." Serpentine Prison seizes on this image, combing through depths for quotidian answers.

In an interview with The Creative Independent, Berninger said all good songs are either about love or fear: on his title track, that fear seeps over love. "Serpentine Prison" is deeply overwhelmed and exhaused, grappling with global disaster, mental health, and identity: it’s a winding self-exploration. The song’s biggest concern? Passing on these worries and this instability: "I don’t want to give it to my daughter."

It harkens to Berninger’s hypothesis about human interaction: We’re all water, and any moment you meet a person, whether they say hello or curse at you, that affects your own water’s color. Your identity, your life, is altered; in the tiniest ways, we’re constantly changed by the touches of those around us.

"You always have to be writing about your own water, and, in doing that, you’re writing about everyone that’s made you you, and you’re writing about your world, you’re writing about your politics, you’re writing about your history, you’re writing about your future," Berninger says. "All of those things are ideas and you do manifest whatever it is, but it's all you. It’s all you, and you’re everything."

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Chorus practices outdoors this year at Countryside High School in Pinellas County, Florida.
Photo courtesy of Christy King

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Puppy Pads And Slit Masks: How COVID Changed The Look Of Music Education

COVID-era problems put pressure on teachers to work creatively, while fearing for the future

Emilee Lindner

GRAMMYs

Sep 21, 2020 - 9:01 am

Those living in Kingsman, Arizona, shouldn’t be surprised if they hear 30 kids yelling simultaneously from Lee Williams High School. That’s just Shannon Bascombe’s marching band letting out their COVID-19 frustrations.

"The kids were like, ‘Hey, Ms. B, can we, like, scream into the void for 10 seconds at the beginning of practice?'" Bascombe recalled. "'Yeah, sure, I’ll give you guys 10 seconds to just yell it out.' … Then they’ll start learning drill."

The coronavirus pandemic has made returning to school this fall a touchy debate. With each district whipping up its own tentative plan, students are either attending school armed with masks, learning virtually from home or doing a half-and-half schedule. They’ve pushed start dates, altered schedules and introduced new technology. Several schools GRAMMY.com contacted for this story set a date in September or October to reassess and adjust, aiming for in-person instruction by 2021. Needless to say, a little scream therapy is warranted—not just for students, but for teachers, parents and administrators as well.

So how does music education fit into the new school plans? Unlike math or history, which can rely on individual study, collaborative ensembles like band, chorus and orchestra cannot. With social distancing measures in place, getting a band of 50 students placed six feet apart in one room is, well, impossible. Not to mention the whole aerosol concern with kids blowing on their horns. Online group rehearsal doesn’t work either, due to latency issues.

With those difficulties in mind, districts across the country have already cut arts programs. And those teachers who still have their jobs are feeling the pressure to keep them by proving their worth.

"[Parents are] OK with the core teachers being at home and being able to give assignments," says Jake Olimpi, marching band and orchestra director at Marple Newtown High School in Pennsylvania. "But what is the art teacher doing, what is the music teacher doing? They’re getting paid and where’s the result?"

That pressure, atop the duty to keep students safe, healthy and engaged has become the new challenge for teachers, who are also haunted by the pandemic’s long lasting effects on music education.

Masks On Instruments And Puppy Pads

The spread of aerosols, a.k.a. air and saliva, forced the Centers for Disease Control to recommend the six-feet social distancing rule months ago. But when it came to the performing arts, there was little scientific evidence on how singing and instrument playing contributed to aerosol spread. A study from the National Federation of State High School Associations (NFHS), published without peer review in July, gave music teachers some answers.

Conducted by the University of Colorado Boulder, the study found that instruments released fewer aerosols if they were masked at the bell. They found even fewer aerosols when the player wore a slitted mask. In order to return to in-person ensembles, authors of the study also suggested these points:

Musicians must stay six feet apart (nine feet for trombonists)
Bell covers should have a Minimum Efficiency Reporting Value (MERV) of 13 (although any covering is better than none)
Spit valves should empty into absorbent sheets like puppy pads
Rehearsal times should be limited to 30 minutes
Instructors should wait one HVAC air change between classes
HEPA filters should be in rehearsal spaces
Outdoor rehearsals are recommended over indoor ones

With the scientific guidance, teachers got to work crafting what fall 2020 would look like… and now that school’s back in session, music classes certainly don’t look like they did before. At Bascombe’s school in Arizona, they’re following the NFHS guidelines nearly to a T.

The students at Tarpon Springs Leadership Conservatory for the Arts stick to their cones and try out their new bell covers.
Credit: Anna Ottens

"When they come into the room, they have to wash their hands, drop their stuff off," Bascombe says. "We go through the symptom checker from the Mayo Clinic every day when they walk into the room… All of the doors are propped open so the kids have minimal touch. There's hand sanitizer everywhere. Mouthpiece cleaner everywhere."

Bascombe's woodwinds, brass, percussion and colorguard all get their own room. Every Friday, she spends an additional hour and a half disinfecting each room, including the bathroom her students use.

At the Southern Nevada Homeschool Performing Arts, program director Bonnie Buhler-Tanouye says brass players wear slitted masks, akin to "boys' underwear," and flute players wear shields. She says parents are willing to do even more in order to get their nearly shutdown Las Vegas music scene rolling again.

The students at Southern Nevada Homeschool Performing Arts wear face shields and slitted masks on the first day of band practice.
Courtesy: Bonnie Buhler-Tanouye

"One of the parents I was talking to the other day, because I was reminding her of masks for her trumpet player, she said, ‘You know what, put me in a hazmat suit, if you have to. Whatever we have to do to get back to playing music together,'" Buhler-Tanouye recalled.

The NFHS study deemed outdoor rehearsal better for dispersing aerosols. Summer band camps served as positive test runs for the rest of the school year, with students respectively keeping their distance. Water and sunscreen breaks are frequent and essential. In Pinellas County Schools in Florida, humidity plagues practices, but kids are happy to endure sweating for a chance to play together, says Jeanne Reynolds, performing arts specialist for the district.

"If you teach in Florida and you're a band teacher, you become a meteorologist," Jeanne said. "'Cause it’s not just hurricanes; we’ve got pretty good thunderstorms, so you have to know when to get out of harm’s way. Which we all do."

What happens when the temperature drops? When playing outside is no longer an option, bands will be forced to limit the size of their ensembles, based on dimensions of their rooms and state guidelines. Some schools have already taken band class off the schedule completely, exchanging it for smaller groups, broken up alphabetically or by instrument.

Smaller ensembles introduce two problems, though. First, smaller groups equate to more classes, meaning teachers' course loads have increased. Music programs like the one at Bergenfield High School in New Jersey rely on a large staff, which allows them to assign one teacher each to virtual and in-person classes for all of their ensembles. Bergenfield’s band director, Brian Timmons, considers his program lucky; not all schools have the resources.

Second, teachers must find music for a ragtag chamber ensemble. For example, if groups were split numerically by students' names, a director might end up with a flute, three trombones, five bass clarinets and a french horn in a class, and music for a combo like that is rare. Thankfully, publishers like Alfred, Hal Leonard and RWS Music Company have flexible arrangements that can be split into a few basic parts, and have become more available during COVID.

The supply of cleaning materials Shannon Bascombe uses to disinfect the band rooms at Lee Williams High School.
Courtesy: Shannon Bascombe

But will the music ever get performed? State guidelines vary, but indoor maximum capacity has been limited to as few as 25 people per room. Gathering an audience would be infeasible.

Perhaps concerts aren’t even necessary. According to Timmons, it’s time to shake up the dusty format anyway.

"Music education has been so performance-driven all the time," Timmons says. "And we never take time to explore the other things like the chamber playing or the composition or just ear training in and of itself or theory."

Students taking virtual band obviously don’t have to deal with these new precautions and guidelines, but they also don’t get to play together. As Timmons says, they’re working on individual assignments, like learning music production, which allows them to sew together an ensemble, piece by piece. Timmons' students will work on a shared online workspace to record music. It gives students the power to collaborate remotely, he says.

"They can listen to each other’s part and say, ‘OK, our articulation is not punching there. We’re going to have to rerecord this section,'" Timmons says. "I have three teenagers of my own. I watch them killing it on TikTok. If you can do that, there’s no reason why I can’t teach you how to do this."

And then there’s the fact that some schools are taking little to no precaution. Music teacher Nathan Smith says he was fired from Oakdale Academy in Michigan after expressing his concern over the safety of students and staff. The private Christian high school is not requiring masks this fall, per a letter sent home to parents.

"I had so many plans for this school year," Smith said. "I certainly wasn't ready to leave without seeing any of my kids again."

The Lost Generation And Long-Term Effects

It’s a struggle to keep current music students engaged, but it’s a completely new challenge to get more kids involved. Recruitment requires getting instruments into the hands of fourth graders and presenting the allure of a polished, performing ensemble—hurdles made higher by COVID.

Lackluster recruitment will have damaging effects on the future of music education, says Robert W. Smith, a composer, arranger and professor at Troy University, who has written hundreds of works for high school-level ensembles.

"We cannot have a lost generation of musicians, and we’re about to have it," Smith says.

If too few young musicians join band, orchestra and choir programs, the ensembles will see dwindling numbers in each subsequent year, all the way up to college groups.

"This is like aftershocks of an earthquake or second and third waves of a tsunami," Smith says.

Current music students also face the loss of competition and adjudication—third-party feedback that lends itself toward improvement. Many in-person music competitions have been canceled for the fall. On the upside, some organizations have offered virtual adjudication, where students and ensembles can send in their performances for assessment.

But the long-term effects aren’t all bad. Timmons insists that it’s only shifting focus for COVID-era students to prepare for a more viable music career—one that isn’t totally based on performance (though still valuable), but digital skills.

"If you’re going to be successful in music, you have to have a basic understanding of how digital audio works, even if you’re a classical-style player," Timmons says. "You gotta have an understanding. If we can teach them how to use a digital audio workstation, even if it’s some kind of cloud-based thing, recording themselves and then as a chamber ensemble recording their own product, we’re kind of unlocking skills."

All of this means that music educators are getting even more creative than before, out of necessity.

"Music teachers by nature are problems solvers. It’s what we do," Timmons says. "Listen, troubleshoot, feedback, adjustment, listen, troubleshoot, does that sound good? This is just another problem to solve. It’s just a little more problematic than fixing the intonation of a chord."

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