What does daily life look like for you currently? Do you have a day job - or some sort of side hustle to supplement money for being a musician?

I work in a record store! It’s the only real job I’ve ever had, and honestly I still really enjoy it. I love being introduced to so much music every day, having customers recommend me things, and also just getting to know customers over years and years, I still get a lot out of it and feel very lucky that I don’t hate my job.

What are your financial goals in playing music? Are they different from when you first started out?

I don’t really have big music career goals anymore, I have creative goals and specific types of albums I’d like to make (like, I wanna make an album without any MIDI, I wanna make an album in mono, I wanna make an album with 50 songs, etc), but as a whole goals don’t seem to work for me. I think I don’t really have the correct mindset to chase success really aggressively, I kind of wish I did, but it’s never really been me! I just want to leave behind a huge body of work in my lifetime.

Are there any misconceptions about music finances that you wish other people outside of the music industry understood? Or financial advice you would give to your younger self?

The misconception is that the more money you put into it the more money you will get out of it. You won’t make money back for a long time. Just do everything as cheaply as possible and that way it’ll still be enjoyable! But also I’m not good at the business side of things and I don’t have a manager so maybe I’m just shit at this whole thing.

How can we as a society make the music industry better?

There’s lots of ways to approach this question but currently my view is this: I think the arts suffer when people in general are mostly preoccupied with trying to pay rent. I can only speak from a New Zealand perspective but there’s less and less disposable income and less free time people have, and groceries are costing more and more, and obviously that means less people are going to local shows, less people have the time to make art, music venues suffer, etc. I’m not sure what the answer is, in the past in NZ we’ve had something called the Pace scheme which was like a sort of like a ‘benefit’ for creative people. But as whole you can’t really separate the arts from everything else. When people’s work conditions and living conditions improve and ordinary workers feel some sense of autonomy in their lives and aren’t living precariously, I think everything in society improves.

Do you feel like you’re seen as childish for pursuing music as a career?

Maybe? I don’t even really think about career very much anymore. I want to do things that help me grow as a person in my day to day life. Maybe the music is more interesting if it’s not your career? I was reading a couple books by Sam Pink last year and he’s been a janitor and worked in food service and worked in an ice cream truck or in a deli and his stories always reflect that. And I would like my songwriting to kind of be like that. If anything I think people see it as childish if I DON’T treat music like a career!! Is the music less meaningful or less important if it’s not your career? I hope not!

What is your stance on streaming and the “future” of how people consume music?

I think it’s pretty bad! Streaming sucks. I’m a hypocrite though but I feel it kind of rotting my brain. I don’t like that you have to reach millions of people to make any real money. Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy talks about the value of limited reach. If you make records or CDs, you can probably do pretty well just consistently reaching a few thousand people. I think the streaming model also makes us treat music like water; we turn on the tap and water comes out and we don’t think about where it comes from, it’s very impersonal and asks nothing of the listener. I think it should take a little bit of effort to listen to an album. It’s why everyone loved that Cindy Lee album. It’d be cool to have more artists like that. Or like Sun Ra, where his recordings are just scattered across all these rare mislabeled discs and weren’t curated in a very convenient way. I love that the best Alex G song (‘Be Kind’) isn’t on any streaming site or any album or has never been officially recorded. I want music to be more like that.‍

How do you deal with writer's block or creative slumps?

For a few months near the end of 2024 I was writing basically a song a day. And I realised the more you do it the better you get at it. It’s a muscle that you have to build. You don’t wait for inspiration to strike. You figure out your practice, your routine, and work at it. Find all the things that make it a slog and eliminate them. Maybe not all the songs are great. But I write all the time now and I don’t really get writer's block anymore. I just write more shit songs. And the occasional good one.

Who are you listening to currently that inspires you?

This isn’t normal for me but weirdly I’ve been listening to a lot of choral music. Hymns and sacred music, I just put it on and go for a long walk and feel kind of spiritual for a bit. And also I’ve been listening to Joe Frank (the kind of surrealist radio storyteller), I listen to those and kind of just half pay attention to them and I love how disorienting it is. Other than that, I’ve been listening to Claire Rousay, More Eaze, The Softies, “Blue” Gene Tyranny, This Is Lorelei, Nic Jones, Greg Mendez, the early Microphones albums, early Bee Gees, this new artist called Welsprynger, that new Lupe Fiasco album, Anna McClellan, Salvia Palth, Pulp, John K Sampson, Burt Bacharach, Pet Shop Boys, Harry Nilsson, also random ECM Records stuff (their jazz and contemporary classical stuff that I’m dipping my toes in), and I also adore this local band called Pixie Platoon but they don’t have any recordings out (I just saw them play and it made me extremely happy and I wish I was in that band and they’ve very sweet people). ALSO just any sort of euphoric pop music, I love Romy, Hannah Diamond, Kylie Minogue, 2000s Madonna, Robyn, Charli XCX, Sky Ferreira. Anyway that’s probably enough!

How do you replenish your creative energy?

Last few months I’ve been trying to read as much as possible! Mostly because I have this fear of becoming illiterate, and I hear about the adult literacy rates going down and it sends me into a panic, so I read as much as I can! That way my head is always filled with interesting phrases and sentences and ways of processing the day and I find myself ‘noticing’ more in my regular work day, reading kind of trains me to be more observant in each moment and intentional in my thinking. It makes me more interested in people. And I think it leads to being more creatively fruitful! I have found creativity isn’t really about skill or intelligence or anything, it’s about generosity and being observant and trying to mine as much as you can out of every day.