Serj Tankian

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27:50Discover more with Chase Sapphire Reserve at chase.com slash sapphire reserve. Cards issued by JPMorgan Chase Bank and a member FDIC. Subject to credit approval. Terms apply. We're back with more from Serge Tonkian. Do you still like playing piano? Would you say that's your main? Yeah. I like playing both piano and guitar, but I probably play, most of the time I'm in the studio using my controller, my keyboard controller, to basically play all sorts of instruments, to compose using all sorts of instruments. But I do have a piano. I have a nice Steinway, both here and in New Zealand. And I love recording that once in a while and just sitting and playing, just to come up with ideas for something.

28:34It's a really fun way of just creating a tone for a new project or something like that. Yeah, that's so cool. So you have a solo album that you're putting out in the next couple of months. Yeah, in September, we're putting out an EP called Foundations. And it's almost like a companion to the book because it's chronological. So there's songs in there. The first song we released called AF Day is from 20 or plus years ago that I had recorded. And I just cleaned up the drums and the guitars, but left the original vocals for this archival kind of sound because your voice changes over many years. And there's some other songs.

29:15Our next single is going to be Justice Will Shine On, which is about the Armenian genocide and my grandparents. It's a cool, heavy track. And then there's some more melodic tracks that will come out later. They're all from different periods of my career. I just wanted to put them together in a way, just like the book is a story of different times in my life. I know it's been a while since you've answered this question. I don't know if the answer is different, but are there any plans to record any new System of a Down music? Not at this time, no. Does that make you feel sad at all, or is it totally fine because you're occupied creatively?

29:57Yeah, I mean, creatively, I keep on making music and making art and doing creatively what I'm meant to do. And if the opportunity arises for us to work together in an egalitarian fashion, and the right way with the right vibe and the right influence, then we'll do it. In 2020, we put out two songs because there was the invasion of Artsakh in Armenia happening by Azerbaijan during COVID. And people didn't know about what was going on. So we used the band and putting out new music as an opportunity to spread awareness. And we were successful in doing so. So hopefully it's not just the decimation of our people that's going to take Systemo down writing new music.

30:45But I think when that time is, and I don't know if it is ever or if it will be, that would be amazing. But I don't get sad by it because to me, it is what it is. When it's right, then it happens. When it's not, it shouldn't happen. Would you be okay with a band going on without you with like a different singer in your place? Absolutely. I've offered them that opportunity and been very supportive of it many years if they wanted to do that. If they wanted to continue in a way that I didn't, for example, if they wanted to tour a lot and I just want to do a couple of shows here and there because I'm not into touring a lot, it's to be fair to them.

31:25If they wanted to do that, I'm totally open to it still. I'm not sure they want to do that. They haven't until now. And I think it would take something away from the prestige and legacy of the band itself. But as friends and as someone who cares very much about my partners, I would be okay with it. What do you think it is about you all as individuals, the alchemy of you together that makes you so great as a unit? Everything that each person is from their personality to their playing style to how they think, how they feel and the combination thereof makes System of a Down what it is. If you take any particle away from this compound, it's not going to be System of a Down.

32:10It could be called System of a Down, but it's not going to really be System of a Down. Yeah. Even the stubbornness and the, you know, the creative differences, everything, the push and pull, the manicness, the calmness, all of the above is what makes who we are. That relationship, does it feel similar to sort of like other long-term relationships you've had in your life? Do you count it among like the other long-term relationships you've had? Well, I definitely count it. I mean, my relationship with the band guys is longer than my relationship with my wife. It's longer than, you know, not as much as my parents, obviously.

32:50But it's been, you know, it's like 30 years, you know, and I'm 57. So yeah, I mean, there are long relationships and friendships and partnerships. But I don't necessarily compare them because it's a different type of relationship. It's art with business and personal as well, all wrapped in, which makes it a lot more complicated. I love the stories about recording toxicity at Rick's place and sort of how it felt haunted. And that, I guess, was the same space that the Chili Peppers recorded Blood Sugar Sex Magic. We actually recorded Toxicity at Cello Studios, which are now East West. There are elements of Toxicity we did record at the Miller House in the basement studio.

33:42Yeah. And then we finished Steal This Album also at the same place. And then we moved to the Laurel Canyon place for Mesmerized, Hepatitis, where the Chili Peppers recorded, which is the one across Houdini's place. Okay. That's so cool. Yeah. And it was haunted, for sure. Really? So I was there late at night one day, just playing keys by myself up at the top of the house. And I heard these fucking doors slam and there was no one there. And I was just like, fuck. Yeah, I was like, and it wasn't the wind. It wasn't the wind because all the windows were closed. Like there was, I can't explain it.

34:22It was just one of those where I just go off, bag out. You know, come back tomorrow when there's people here, but I'm not staying here now. You know? Yeah. And I love the story that you told about Tom Petty coming by and hanging out. What do you remember about that? Rick was having dinner with him that night. And Darren and I were working at Miller Drive at the studio in the basement. And Rick brought him down just to say hi, which was really sweet. And Darren had rolled a joint. and he was pretty cheeky by offering. He was like, hey, you want to smoke one? And he was like, oh, no mind if I do.

35:04And he came down, smoked a joint with us and listened to a song and gave his input and liked what we were doing, which was very encouraging, very sweet. Those are the things that would happen if you recorded at Rick's Place, right? It's pretty amazing. I got to meet a lot of people there as well. I mean, that's how I met Tony Canal, who was a friend of mine from No Doubt and Gwen and just so many people would just drop in and he'd invite us to dinners with different artists and whatnot, which was amazing. It's like Kismet. Him walking into our life as artists, as a band, really changed. I'm ever so grateful to him.

35:46We'd be doing whatever and at the end I'd go, I'm never going to forget what you've done for us. I always feel that way. I always feel grateful for him entering our lives and, you know, and changing it to what we have now. He came to our show in Las Vegas for Sick New World, which is a festival we've been doing for two years with Live Nation. And he was just rocking out and it was so nice to have him there. It was just felt like, you know, it's been 30 years, you know, it's like, you know, just him being there and going, wow, man, like we've come so far, you know. And it's been a rocky road in a lot of places.

36:25It hasn't been cement, you know? But those rocks actually made our, I don't know, in a way made our feet stronger and able to walk better in a way, you know? Like you see all this stuff looking back. What do you think it is that he is able to do when he's listening, when he's laying down and listening to music with his eyes closed? What is it that he's able to hear as someone who's worked with him for so long? What's the feedback that he gives? I think he has an incredible intuitive understanding of the music and art that's being displayed. And I think if he loves something, he almost sees it from a fan perspective, which is a very deep perspective.

37:06So he's not thinking, at least in the beginning, in terms of capturing performance, he's not thinking this could be louder. There are producers that really get into the nitty gritty of mixing and this could be this way, maybe bring the chorus this way. that, you know, for him, he just goes, wow, that part of the song is the strongest. I want to hear more of that. It's such a simple thing to say, but it is incredibly powerful and minimal. And if you actually go with it, 99 % of the cases, it'll make the song way better. There are times where maybe it might not. And he usually is the first to say, that didn't work.

37:42Glad we tried it. So his approach is not cerebral. It's incredibly intuitive, which is what music itself is. you know and so as a producer bringing that and and he's got this incredible way of making artists feel comfortable in their own skin and if an artist feels comfortable they are going to produce better so it's the combination of those two things I think as far as I'm concerned yeah do you remember when you first started working with him when you were recording the first album any of his feedback overall for your sound or for any direction maybe he wanted to see you to like go in more of a certain direction when i produce my own records now i hear him in my head going pronounce it better pronounce it better you know literally he wanted to understand every word if you're trying to throw away a word on purpose that's one thing but he was really into hearing every aspect of it you know like he would he would spend a lot of times with our takes like our general takes that we do as a full band so that we know which is the best drum pick and then we do basically you know record over with guitars and bass and keys and what strings whatever we're adding and vocals he'd spend a lot of times with me with vocals i think he gives it a lot of credence and so he's still in my head going pronounce that better pronounce that better you know because it's important.

39:09Words are important. When you're screaming, how do you protect your voice? I feel like if I even talk with a loud voice for a small period of time, my throat hurts. How do you protect your voice? And is that one of the reasons why you do the loud, soft thing is to protect your voice so you don't have to just like scream for four minutes straight? You know, I really don't know the answer to that question because I'm still, you know, if you leave me to my own devices, I might lose my voice, you know, but I try not to scream as much and I don't scream as much as I used to compared to the beginning of the band's career.

39:45And I have created a couple of techniques, screaming and growling techniques, which don't hurt the voice. You know, like instead of growling hard, I could do zero voice effect. Just a little dryness, for example, you know, just it's inhaling by cupping. Yeah, there you go. The screaming thing though is different. That's the growling thing. The screaming thing is different. With screaming, if I try to scream when my body's not ready for it to push, emotionally, not so much physically, but emotionally, if I get angry in that moment and it's a screaming part, my body just gives it to me and I scream perfectly.

40:27But most of the time I'm pretty mellow, even when I'm on stage doing these songs. So sometimes the scream will come out like King Diamond, which will be like three octaves higher, but a clean voice. And I just laugh and I go, I couldn't even scream that, you know, like, cause the voice changes, you know, when, when I started, when I would try to hit a high note, my voice would crack because it wasn't trained. Now I can hit a high note without cracking, but then the recordings are with cracks. So everyone's like, oh, what happened to his voice? Where's the heavy? The cracks sound cool. Where's the heaviness, you know, where's the growl?

41:00Where's the scream, the thing, you know, And it's not there, but sometimes it's there. I don't know. Funny thing is the more I rehearse, the better my voice gets, the less it cracks, the less hard it sounds. Yeah. So I always have to rehearse very little before a show. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But then if you do too many of them back to back and you're not well rehearsed and your voice is not well trained, then you'll lose your voice and that kind of thing. I've lost my voice on tour, but mostly from getting sick rather than blowing it myself. Do you listen to heavy music? Mm-hmm. I still do. There's also a big debate on Reddit about your Spotify most listened to artists.

41:39Oh, so that's really funny because my kid also listens to my account and there's like songs with farts in them and like, you know, like songs about booty, booty, booty, you know, that kind of stuff. You should hang out with my kid. He would love that. They just, he just loves funny shit. So if they've been listening to it, then they're going to be, they're going to be whacked. I love finding out new artists that are different than anyone I've ever heard. There's a few songs from Falling in Reverse. I don't necessarily love all their stuff, like the dancey stuff, but there's a few songs and their videos that are amazing.

42:17I follow this band called Polyphia. That's an instrumental band that have heavy and non-heavy music, like a lot of R &B, incredible guitar playing and stuff like that. And a bunch of bands. Like I'll go back sometimes and just listen to Napalm Death or just like, you know, crazy, you know, death metal music just to play for my son so he can understand that that's a sound and he likes it. He likes a band called Dance with the Dead that no one knows. They're an instrumental kind of dark synth slash metal band. Oh, that sounds cool. I took him to one of their shows, for example. There's so much music out there right now, you know?

42:56I know. It's crazy, isn't it? If you don't go with whatever just a pop thing is and just actually do a deep dive, unfortunately, you would think that the Spotify, Apple Music algorithms would teach you a lot of bands like that, but they actually don't. Their curation isn't as great as I think it could be. I know. It's very limiting and it pigeonholes you and it's really frustrating. It is. yeah it makes me miss like a good curator a good dj a good dj or or a good indie record store where you walk in yeah and they have a little section of all the same weird shit similar weird shit and you could tell from the covers and the guy behind the counter goes oh that's really cool it just came out like let me play it for you that kind of a thing yeah it's we're still missing that curation thing after one last quick break we'll be back with more from leah rose and serge tankian In today's super competitive business environment, the edge goes to those who push harder, move faster, and level up every tool in their arsenal.

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47:23Cards issued by JPMorgan Chase Bank and a member FDIC. Subject to credit approval. Terms apply. here's the rest of leah rose's conversation with serge tonkian i was wondering when you sat down and you started to think which moment to open the book with how did you pick a single moment from your life that to sort of like kick off the entire book my last poetry book i released called Glaring Through Oblivion. I started the poetry book off with a kind of long form written narrative, like an essay. And it was very much like the activist speaking, you know, and I think it had a strong effect on how people perceived the book initially.

48:10And so for me, that lesson, I think brought me into, you know, when I wrote the memoir, I wanted to put something in there that was the blueprint for the whole book. You know, the looking for justice, anti-authoritarianism, speaking truth to power, freedom of speech in the United States, war, you know, fear in a democracy, censorship. All of those things that have carried me as an activist throughout my life and as an artist thereafter were in that first chapter, you know? And so, you know, it kind of made sense. If you could explain to us the moment that you found that really represents all those things in one, where everything sort of is crystallized, and then what you came away from that moment thinking you wanted to do differently.

49:02So that moment was after 9-11, when we were all traumatized by the terrorist attacks on the United States of America. I remember feeling out of control. I felt like everything was out of control, like the world's out of control. what's next nuclear war like what's going to happen just fear you know and it was a time where I had traveled to New York the night before 9-11 because we were doing our promo for toxicity our second record with system of a down and we had we were at a signing at virgin records in in a times square and a bunch of fans had passed notes like they'll do little trinkets past notes, little letters.

49:43And I had come home the night before and read one of the letters. And it was a very depressing letter by a young man. And I felt really, really sorry and bad for him. And I called him from the house phone without blocking my number, which kind of insane at the time. They were just starting to block numbers. It was a new thing. We're talking about 2000, 2001. So I called this young man, had a great chat with him. And I felt like I kind of you know brightened up his day mood and whatnot and then i've slept and then the next morning my girlfriend at the time called me and said turn on the tv call me later and i saw the second you know plane going into the second tower and just like couldn't believe what was going on suddenly the phone rings i think it's my girlfriend but it's this guy from new york just losing his shit and screaming and i'm trying to calm him down whereas inside i'm looking at you know the tube and going The world is like just complete chaos.

50:43So it started that way. But for me to get a grip on what's really happening, I had a very common task of writing about geopolitics and posting it to the band's website at the time. And I did that for September 11 and posted an essay called Understanding Oil on the band's website. Now at the time, there was a lot of, you know, people were really angry, people were hurt. and so there was a lot of emotions prevailing. Myself and a few other artists were really the only ones who spoke out against America's geopolitical tanglings with the Middle East and their repercussions. And so no one else was speaking about it but a handful of artists and we know them including the Dixie Chicks and Rage Against the Machine and Tool and whatnot.

51:31And we all got shit for it. And the shit that I got for it was while we were about to start tour a week after 9-11, where there's still dangers of terrorist attacks and all this stuff, we were getting a lot of hate from Americans for calling out the US government's policies over the many, many years. And so it was a really, really stressful trying time. We were in Colorado and I got on the phone with Howard Stern because his crew was coming after apparently my essay, even though it was taken down off the website and they hadn't really read the essay themselves, but hearsay, they were kind of criticizing my words.

52:08And I was there to defend them, make sure that we don't get death threats with the band, make sure we can continue touring, make sure that my partners wouldn't hate me forever. And it was just horrible. And the lesson I learned from that was that it is very easy to speak truth to power when public opinion is on your side. But that truth does not change when public opinion is not necessarily on your side. And you have to do it even more then, even if they hate you, even if all of them hate you. And that's the unfortunate thing, that we're in a world right now that information is a commodity, a commodity that's propagandized and used in every direction that you can think of.

52:53And the educational level of our society has dwindled since the 1980s, Reagan era. And so we're in a situation that I call the uneducated majority. And uneducated majority democracies are dangerous because they can pick leaders or leaders can pick them in a way that can really, really change the quality in terms of degradation of democracy and truth of freedom of speech itself. Yeah. In a nutshell. It's interesting because I remember on 9-11, Howard Stern didn't leave because he was live on the air when it was happening, when the attacks were happening. And he didn't stop his show. He stayed in the studio and he sort of was doing like a live broadcast through it.

53:42And I remember him saying during it to Robin something like, oh, we know who did this or we know who's responsible for this. So it seems like he would be somewhat in agreement with what you wrote in your essay. But was it not that? He was sort of like making it seem as if you're anti-American. You know, being not born in the United States, that's kind of the feeling that I got. There was that feeling of xenophobia. And, you know, I write in the book that I've never felt an outsider more than that day. But I'm 57 years old, you know. And at the time I was 30 something. and so it was unfair to pin me on, you know, un-American just because I'm an activist and I spoke truth to power and because I knew about the Middle East.

54:32I was from there, you know, I was born in Beirut, raised in Los Angeles, Armenian biculture, which is neither, very old indigenous Christian people from, you know, the Caucasus. But I knew how things operated and, you know, when something happens, you got to always see who benefits in world events and I knew that. I would read. I subscribed to intelligence reports, monthly intelligence reports that I paid for that I would get that are public. I mean, they write these briefs on every country in the world and what's happening and that kind of stuff and read New York Times, read Economist. And music was my hobby.

55:11When music became my work, geopolitics became my hobby. So it was just a natural thing for me to do that. I still do it. It's one thing, though, to write an essay and another to be live on the air with someone who is, you know, the top shock jock in the country and who's intentionally trying to push your buttons. I don't blame Howard at all. Like, you know, because based on what he was feeling and the outcry of the nation and everything, he was, you know, he didn't know. He didn't know that I had good intentions and, you know, all of that. He was trying to suss me out, which he did. And at the end, he was satisfied.

55:48How did you prepare for that though? How did you prepare for that onslaught? It was like five in the morning in Colorado. I hadn't slept. I was nervous as fuck, you know, getting hate mail. And then the terrorist attacks, you know, on television showing possible terrorist attacks and, you know, at large events. And every day we were going to be in front of 25, 30 ,000 people. So I didn't feel well at all. I was really stressed out. But the way I got on the show is like very mellow, very chill, non-confrontational. And my friend Rick Rubin gave me great advice at the time. He said, if you talk about Vietnam, he'll agree with you.

56:29He knows governments do bad things. Don't challenge him on his points, but let him understand that every government is corrupt and things are happening around us that we may or may not understand and that you empathize with people, obviously, which I do. So it wasn't a matter of not speaking truth. It was just not being able to challenge the rhetoric of the times. Right. The dogma. So that's the opening moment of the book, which you say sort of crystallizes a lot of your life and it brings in music, it brings in fame, it brings in the geopolitical conflicts. How then did you also think about bringing in things like talking about the Armenian genocide, talking about your family's history, but also weaving in your own personal journey as obviously a very successful musician?

57:23How did you think about organizing those pieces? Was that a hard puzzle to figure out? I had a lot of help. The format in which that I end up doing the book was very much like this format, where I'm answering questions about my life and just everything's being transcribed by someone. And then we have these wonderful chapters that we can organize and edit and write and delete and delete and delete because you have way more than you can use. It was a very interesting conversational writing technique. Of course, I would also sit down and write on top of that. But it was a way that the book can be more fluid.

58:01So we had all these stories that we were organizing based on my family history and my grandfather's plight from the Ottoman Empire and the Armenian genocide. The Armenian genocide has always been kind of like the energy river through which this band has always operated. For us, it's not a political issue, it's a personal issue because all of our grandparents in System of a Down were survivors of this horrible atrocity that is still denied by the descendants of the perpetrators, which is modern day Turkey. So that's very current and real for us. It's not like the Holocaust where there were the Nuremberg trials that, not that put an end to the trauma because the trauma doesn't end, but at least come to terms with the reality of it on the same plane, you know, with Germany accepting its culpability, obviously, you know, in the Nuremberg trials, there were no Nuremberg trials for the Armenian genocide.

58:57And so the pain keeps on going. The pain keeps on continuing. The genocide continues. And we see genocide continuing today as well in many respects in different places in the world. Two weeks before Hamas attacked Israel, on September 27, the government of Azerbaijan, led by a dictatorial oligarch, Ilham Aliyev, attacked the indigenous population of Nagorno Adapa, which has been for thousands of years, Armenians have been living there peacefully. I mean, there was a war in the 1990s and Armenians took control of the area because they were the majority living there. And after nine months of starvation and two ICJ judgments against them, Azerbaijan attacked these people and they became refugees.

59:46And most of the world doesn't even know about it because it's not Israel and Palestine and it's not other well-known conflicts that it has so many countries involved. And it's like with all these years gone by, with all this technology, all this culture and wisdom and everything gleaned, we're still primitive motherfuckers. That's what it comes down to. And it's really sad. You mean primitive as far as our approach to dealing with conflict? Yes. Primitive as far as our approach to dealing with conflict, as far as prioritizing profit over people, as far as discriminating against whole populations, as far as minimizing their value as human beings to be able to conduct this type of outrageous ethnic cleansing.

1:00:37Yeah, all of the above. Can you talk a little bit about how you've seen Los Angeles change? So you moved from Beirut when you were seven, family escaped the Civil War. And you moved to LA in a really kind of cool time. What was the LA that you moved to? Your family moved to Hollywood. What was that like for you? in 1975 LA was really colorful a lot of soul music a lot of disco coming on in 76 77 a lot of you know hippies and and uh it just for me it was a total culture shock obviously leaving a war-torn country it was like going from black and white to color you know hookers and pimps and And, you know, it's like just a tapestry.

1:01:27And we lived in Hollywood. Like we didn't land in like Idaho, you know, we landed in Hollywood, California, you know, from Lebanon. So it was just like this crazy thing. And we felt like it was safe. I remember until like nine years old or 10 years old, I used to walk my younger brother to school up the street from like Sunset and Alexandria. And we went to this private Armenian school. We'd walk. Our parents let us walk in Hollywood. So it was a great time. I remember it incredibly fondly, even though it must have been torturous for my parents because they came to the US without any money and they had to kind of make do and they put us in a private Armenian school for us to maintain our cultural heritage and our language, which is very brave and they made it work.

1:02:15But yeah, LA's changed drastically. I have to say it's never been home for me. I moved to New Zealand in 20 something years ago when I say move I got a place there and I spent part of the year there and I've got residency there because it felt a different part of a home for me LA's home in terms of all my friends and family are here you know so in that sense it's a home as a city I'm not in love with it I've never been in love with it and I can't tell you why it just, maybe it's because we're all in our fucking cars all day. But New Zealand to me has a more comfortable kind of normal BPM, you know, as far as the frequency of the heart and mind and normal kind of living, clean air, clean water, all of that stuff.

1:03:03But it also is not completely home, you know, culturally, I'm always missing Europe, Armenia, because I feel like that's where I eat that culture, you know, the food and the colors of different countries and, you know, and what they have to bring, the art, the music, you know. So for me, it's a balance of all these places, I guess, you know, the other one place. So I, you know, I was listening to your book, to the audio book, and I thought, oh, let me just Google some live system of a down performances. And the first one that came up was the show in Armenia for the 100th anniversary of the genocide.

1:03:43And I was blown away by the size of the audience. And I know that's normal for you all because you're a huge band, but it was just incredible the amount of people there. Yeah, it was. It was. It was just an incredible evening. and the way I remember it was, it's this 100th anniversary of the Armenian genocide. We were invited to play in Republic Square and there were about 50 ,000 plus people. In the rain. In the rain, yeah. And they say it always rains the day before the commemoration of the genocide in Armenia, even though it's April, it's spring. So I just felt calm amidst this incredible emotional chaos of the evening.

1:04:34And I felt like had we stopped as a band doing anything at that moment, we've reached our kind of climax, top of the mountain, if you will. And anything after was bonus. It felt like we were designed to be there on that day from day one, 30 years back, 25 years back, whatever that time period is. And that's a unique feeling to have. You don't always feel that playing a show or that's a feeling like we belong here. This is what we've been doing all this for. And in the same show, we were able to pay homage to our ancestors, our grandparents who survived, theirs who did not, speak truth to power, both in terms of the hypocrisy of at the time, the Obama administration not properly recognizing the genocide, as well as other countries and their involvement, criticizing the oligarchic Armenian government at the time.

1:05:33This is before the 2018 revolution and their bad policies and rocking out with the crowd and enjoying it. It was just like so many things at once. It was just like incredible in that sense. And I know you have a show coming up in Golden Gate Park, System of a Down is playing. And it's a one-off show. You're playing with Deftones. Mars Volta, Deftones, yes. And a few other bands. And I know you get super excited for these one-off shows. So why is that especially exciting to have just like one show in the future that you're looking forward to? Yeah, I mean, you know, we've done many tours, especially in the beginning of our career.

1:06:14And they're fun, but they're exhausting, physically exhausting. And artistically, they're redundant after a few shows. because you're excited to play, then you're excited to play. You're playing the same set, give or take, right? And they become Groundhog Day. So when it's one, it's an event. You build up to it. You rehearse for it specifically. You set up a set list for it specifically for that show. You go there specifically for that show and you rock out that day, that show, and you leave. And it just seems way more fun. I mean, way more honest. What do you do physically to prepare for that?

1:06:51you're not on tour and you're not every night going up there. What do you do to prepare your body for that? Well, in my case, I got to prepare my voice for it because I don't sing unless I'm performing or recording. And I'm not always recording my voice because I do a lot of soundtrack work and scoring work, which is instrumental. And so I'm always recording, but I'm not always recording my voice. It's rare. So with system, it's not just pruning. It's like gymnastics, vocal gymnastics. So I got to get into it, you know? So I'll start singing at home on my own through my system in my studio just to get my voice back in shape.

1:07:32It's a muscle. You got to get it back in shape. So I'll do a few of those. I get lazy sometimes and not do as much as I really should. And then there's the rehearsals with the bands that allow you to really do it and perform and get your voice in shape and your body movements. But it's really just a voice in my case. Remembering some of your parts, well, I don't remember that keyboard part of that song. Let me play it. That kind of stuff, guitar, whatever. So it's really just kind of brushing up. I mean, it's a long time to get your voice in shape just for one show. Whereas if you're touring, you don't have to worry about it because you could do the show, then your voice is already in shape.

1:08:07You go to the next show and the next show. So is it like several weeks that you're practicing? I'm way lazier than that. It used to be when I was actually on point. Now I'm like, now it's several days ahead of rehearsals. Ahead of rehearsals, yeah. But then the rehearsals are pretty full on. You get your workout on them. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's so cool. All right. Well, is there anything else that you want to talk about that we didn't talk about? We've covered a lot of ground here. Thank you, Leah. That's been awesome. Cool. Well, thank you again for doing this. Thank you for spending so much time.

1:08:40I appreciate you. It's actually my pleasure and I appreciate you as well. Thank you, Leah.

1:09:11Broken Record is produced and edited by Leah Rose with marketing help from Eric Sandler and Jordan McMillan. Our engineer is Ben Tallade. Broken Record is a production of Pushkin Industries. If you love this show and others from Pushkin, consider subscribing to Pushkin+. Pushkin Plus is a podcast subscription that offers bonus content and ad-free listening for$4.99 a month. Look for Pushkin Plus on Apple Podcast subscriptions. And if you like this show, please remember to share, rate, and review us on your podcast app. Our theme music is by Kenny Beats. I'm Justin Richmond.

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