A conversation with Hubble Salgado

Transcript from episode 18 of the Good Folk podcast.

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SG: Hello folks. My name is Spencer George, and you're listening to the Good Folk podcast. 

The poet Mary Oliver once wrote that attention is the beginning of devotion. I think about those words almost every single day. 

It was the drive to learn how to pay attention that brought me back here. I wanted to remember how it felt to find beauty in an empty field, in the glint of light on leaves. I wanted to, as so much of the mythology of rural places entails, learn how to slow my life down. I wanted ease and connection and simplicity— to remember how, first and foremost, to just be a normal person. 

Of course, it's never that easy. And these days, life feels busier than ever before. But it also feels full and full of the moments of mutual recognition. They seep into my work, and they seep into today's conversation, which is about artistry and attention and the spirituality of the everyday, the beauty in learning how to just exist with no expectations.

It is a difficult practice, but it is one we should all be cultivating. And today's guest, Hubble Salgado, does so well. Hubble is a musician who makes solo music under the name Fresh Air 4. Based in Nashville, Tennessee, he creates his folky electronic music in the comforts of his living quarters, on his humble analog setup. He finds inspiration in his family, friends, city, and the nature surrounding Nashville.

Connection is everywhere. You only have to learn how to pay attention and to listen and let the world translate itself to you. I hope you enjoy this conversation.

SG: Cool. Hubble, I'm so excited to have you here. Thank you for reaching out. And I'm sorry we're not in Asheville. I would love to have connected with you [in real life].

HS: No, it's no problem. Thank you for having me on your show. I've been becoming a big fan of what you guys have at Good Folk.

SG: Well, that's good to hear. It started as a newsletter two years ago almost, that I had just been talking about, and then we decided to turn it into the podcast. And it's been fun from there. It's basically nowadays kind of a music podcast. Really, we're having a great time. But definitely I think your sound fits with a lot of the artists that we've had. And at some point we'll have to get you to Durham or the Triangle or we’ll all connect in Asheville on a weekend when everyone's free because there's a lot of people that I could see some overlap happening there. 

HS: Yeah. I love the whole music scene in Asheville. I definitely find myself romanticizing just moving to Asheville, but that's a tall order.

SG: Well, Nashville to Asheville is not too far. 

HS: Yeah, that's true. 

SG: Yeah. Just like living out in the woods and recording art and music all day. 

HS: Oh, I’d love that.

SG: It’s the dream, right? 

HS: Oh, my God.

SG: In three words, how would you describe yourself and your work?

HS: One of them would probably be—it sounds a little bit silly, maybe—but green. Because I think it's encompassing. For me personally, it encompasses, like, I'm a huge fan of nature, not only the color, but nature and being green, like, doing better for the world, which I try to do, and I try to reflect it in my music— nature and being better for the world. 

The other two words, oh, man. Maybe odd. Man, really, just busting out with these questions.

SG: Gotta throw you off guard right at the beginning, you know, and then we ease you back into it. 

HS: Yeah. Oh, man. The third word, I guess… independent. 

SG: I love all three of those. I'm so glad you say green, because I'm right there with you. Green is my favorite color, and I feel like when I think about my work, which is mostly rooted in environmental studies and Appalachian studies, I think of the word green. And I can't explain that to people, but I completely hear that when I listen to your music, which is.. it is odd and it is green in the best of ways. 

And I want to ask you now, of course, just to tell us a little bit more about your music and kind of your super basic backstory as a musician, and then obviously we'll get further into it. 

HS: Yeah, okay. Yeah. I started playing music when I was young. I was like eleven or twelve when I discovered the Beatles and then went down the hole of music. And I think I was 17 when I found out, like, Mac DeMarco existed and just new music in general, not just classic dad rock. And I was like, oh, cool. 

Then from the age of 14, I played with three of my friends and we made a band called Brantwood. And we were a band from… oh, man, like 2014 to like, just a couple of months ago. It was time. It was time to end it and put it all behind, like, almost ten years. 

In 2021, I started recording my own stuff. Not necessarily to be like a whole solo project, but just kind of experimenting. I’ve got the classic story. I got, like, a tape machine and and started doing stuff with that, and then I just liked recording and releasing music, and that kind of turned into that. 

With the other band, it was like, indie rock, the indiest rock that you could imagine. And the music that I'm making right now is maybe not so indie rock, and I like that. And that's it. That's my story. 

SG: How would you describe the music you make now? Would it be those three words: green, odd, and what was the third one? 

HS: We said independent.

SG: Independent. You're a self taught musician, correct? 

HS: Yeah, I took bass lessons from this nice woman, but I only took them for about a couple of weeks, and they were like a day per week. And then I think I guess I just took that and ran. I learned just from my friends and YouTube tutorials, and then just from on there, I kind of maybe put things together. 

SG: And where are you in all of this? Because you're in Nashville now, but have you always been in Nashville? 

HS: No, I'm originally from twenty minutes outside of Chicago. Basically, me and all my friends moved from the place we're from to Nashville. We're actually from this town called Highland, Indiana. So I'm a Hoosier. I'm not from Illinois, actually, and not many people know. I tend to keep Indiana—

SG: You've always got to hide a little bit of your backstory.

HS: Yeah, and I might keep hiding that. But, yeah, I made the mistake of telling all my coworkers that I'm from Chicago, and everyone is asking me these facts about Chicago, and I don't know. I know a little bit… I went there a lot, but I don't know the deep cuts for the inner city. 

But what brought me to Nashville— the bassist in Brantwood, my friend Sam, his mom found this audio engineering school through I don't know what, and me and the drummer, my friend Husam, we were like, we'll go. And so our other member of Brantwood, Liam, he decided to come down here and go to college. That was 2018, so we've been down here ever since. 

SG: What has your experience been like working in Nashville as a musician? Because obviously, Nashville has such a celebrated and legendary music history. I'm sure that was always part of the draw as a musician, but how has it felt to be on the ground there? 

HS: Pretty crazy, actually. Like, you know, when you're a musician and you come to Nashville, you think, you know, oh, it's got to be all country, and it is, and but the second genre of music I found out that was very heavy in Nashville and surrounding areas was metal, which I thought was interesting. 

The more and more I’m in the South, metal is just like, all encompassing. It's a huge community that you can just get totally lost in. Just moving here as a musician, if you know, like, a few people, in a couple of nights you could meet a thousand other musicians that'll take you to a thousand other different little scenes and little sub scenes even, which even I'm still finding out five years in. 

It's very cool. There's so many great musicians and a venue every corner or even just a place to play. Yeah, it's been good. I really like it. The landscape especially, too. When I moved down here, I thought all these were mountains, but they're actually hills.

SG: I was just having this conversation with someone recently, and we were like, we need foothills studies, right? Of these regions that are surrounded by Appalachia but maybe are distinct in their own way. 

Would you say— I'm coming back to the word green here, because to me, green feels so connected to landscape, and I feel like I walked outside today and it was the first day that everything had kind of turned green. There's a David Foster Wallace short story about it where it's titled Everything Is Green, and it's about that kind of moment and that inspiration. Would you say that landscape is something that influences the music that you make now or the area that you're surrounded by? 

HS: Definitely. Yeah. There's beautiful landscapes back home. You have the beach, Lake Michigan, you have the dunes, and that's about it. But coming down here— like, as soon as I moved down here, I started going hiking a lot. I've always loved being surrounded by nature. Especially in Tennessee. I live in west Nashville, and it's not so congested, but it is super nice. 

But yeah, to answer your question, yeah, definitely. I love nature. I write a lot about it and I use the words tree, grass, and grow and every word that you can associate with nature and plant matter as you can possibly imagine. 

SG: When we first connected, you described kind of the music that you're making now as this sort of, like, funky folk kind of off in its category, but inspired by maybe some of these more classic folk sounds, which is a genre that is super connected to the natural world, at least stereotypically. You've got the guy on the porch playing the banjo, making folk music, and that's what folk music looks like. 

How do you think about your own work in terms of genre within this? And could you tell us a little bit more about what folk music means to you?

HS: I don't know. I've always been a huge fan of folk music or maybe what I considered folk music from a very early age. I think folk music is… I think when you break it down, it's very honest. It's very honest and sweet sounding. Or it could be sweet sounding, but the whole beauty is in the eye of the beholder. In this case, sweet sounding are in the ears of the listener. 

But yeah, from a young age, I loved Bob Dylan and I've always loved Big Yellow Taxi by Joni Mitchell. There's so many I could go on and on with folk artists. Folk has always been the genre that I've come back to when trying to think about what genre I fit in. Even trying to find artists or people to play with, I listen to their music, and some of it sounds pretty similar to maybe what I'm doing. I love weird, freaky, off the wall, very experimental music, and I think I can maybe do that too. But then some of my songs are just straight up, just like this little kind of Daniel Johnson, just me and a guitar and trying to sing sweet, sweet melodies. 

SG: When I think about folk music, one thing that feels so powerful to me is that it's a little deceptive in the way that it sounds very sweet and soothing and calm. But oftentimes if you look up the lyrics and listen to them, especially in the tradition of folk ballad singing, it's like people singing about murder and ghosts and revenge and some of these darker topics, which I think is a great way to read into the South as a region. Kind of sweet and nice and ordered on the surface, and there is this kind of darker history. One thing I like to think about modern folk is— I mean, I would make the claim that I think modern folk music is doing probably the best job at processing some of these difficult histories. Classic country does this too, which are both genres that are huge in Nashville. 

Would you say that just being in Nashville has had an influence on your kind of shift into folk music, or was that something that you felt before you got there? 

HS: You know what? Definitely. I'd like to think I'm a huge believer that things happen for a reason, or that the universe takes you wherever your path is, or gives you choices. But definitely, for the type of the music that I'm making right now, it’s very inspired by coming to Nashville. The music of Nashville is deeply rooted and also just these beautiful artists that I've seen and heard play their kind of weird type folk, whether it be very just off the wall sounds or just a sweet person with a guitar and singing. 

SG: Would you say that— I too am a big believer in fate and that I certainly did not think this would be my life, and yet it's hard to imagine my life differently— do you think that the path you're on now is a path that you were kind of forced, well, not forced into, but pushed on in some ways? 

HS: I don't know if it is. I like where it's pushing me. Definitely. I caught myself a couple of weeks ago, I was, like, driving or whatever, and I thought to myself, wow, I'm very happy where I am right now. I was like, that's such a weird out of body kind of feeling for someone to actually feel that way. 

SG: I wrote about it in the newsletter this week, that exact feeling of— and it's always while driving— where you turn the bend— and especially for me, it's so heavily rooted to landscape— of you turn the bend and the light is hitting the trees just right, especially this time of year. And you're like, wow, this is like, all I ever wanted. 

It's so gratifying to have that moment as an artist and to realize the possibility in that. And I'm like, that's the whole point. That's what we make art for. I don't need the fame. I don't need the success. I don't need the recognition. It's that moment of being like, I am happy and I am fulfilled and I'm on the path. I don't know where the path goes, but I'm on the path and I'm happy with where the path has taken me. 

HS: Yes, I feel the same way. Yeah. I don't know. I'm just happy releasing music and just being able to be a regular person, I guess. Like, the first couple times I've released music, I didn't tell anybody because I thought it was kind of fun that way. I made the Fresh Air 4 Instagram and made, like, three posts with zero followers, and I didn't follow anybody else. 

SG: I like the dichotomy you bring up here because you're saying, I like that I get to be both an artist and a regular guy, which I want to talk about more for sure. But also that as an artist, you have this almost alternate personality which you make music under and it’s a little bit of a mystery, which is really a fun way to do it, for sure. 

HS: Yeah, it is. I don't know. I try not to take the whole music thing so seriously, or even the band name, Fresh Air 4. It was on a cassette tape that I got from a Goodwill or something. And I was recording my music, my first album, and I was like, that's actually a really cool name for a project. I try not to take it so seriously, but I also don't want to be that classic person, like, oh, I don't care about anything, and I'm just trying to go with the flow. But I also am trying to go with the flow and I don't know, just let the wind go where it wants to go, I guess. 

SG: Well, you have the stereotype of the jaded artist that's like, I don't care about anything. And that's mostly what we see in terms of representations of artists. And then you have this other side. There's two ways to not care about anything. There's the way that it's like, I don't care about anything because everything is bad and it's like, I don't care about anything because it's all going to work itself out, and I'm just going to trust the path. 

HS: Exactly. 

SG: My life motto with this is— I'm obsessed with pine trees. Anyone who knows me knows this, and it's mostly because I had a friend once who gave me a note that said, you remind me of a pine tree because, like them, you are strong and stable yet able to move in the wind. And that's become like such a life metaphor for me. I want to be rooted and grounded in who I am and my artistic practice, but I also want to be able to maintain a state of flux and to be open to wherever the world is going to lead me. 

I think so many of the problems we see with artists sometimes is that we get so grounded in the work and the practice and who we are and what success is that we forget to just be open to life. 

I'm also glad you bring the idea of like, I got this name off something in the thrift store. I literally was having this conversation with one of my students this morning and we were talking about the novel that I'm working on. I have a poster on my wall that I got at a flea market and I stole the tagline for the book straight from it. And I was talking to my student about this and they were saying like, yeah, I have this weird thing that I collect and I got it at a thrift store and it's a bracelet that has this saying on it, and now that's become my life motto. 

I think part of this is that in my mind, really good art can come out of learning how to pay attention to the world around you in a really meaningful way. Of being open to— you know, I'm going to find this weird thing in a thrift store and that's going to become meaningful for me. In folklore work, we place meaning and stories onto objects in good and bad ways. But most of the time, the significance that an object holds is because we're willing to write the story for it, or at least to let the story come to us and hold meaning, which I think is so indicative of what you're talking about and so wonderful. And I really love the name Fresh Air 4, and I think it fits so nicely with the words that you've offered to describe your work. 

HS: Thank you. Thank you. Yeah, that's… Oh, man. One— that is such a sweet thing for your friend to say to you that you're like a pine tree. That's so cool. 

SG: It's like, the nicest thing anyone's ever said to me. And this is not even someone I have a lot of contact with anymore, but it has stuck with me for, like, my entire life. So this goes to show you never know. 

HS: Yeah. 

SG: Say nice things to people because you never know what significance they're going to have. 

HS: Of course. Yeah. I try really hard to do that, and then I just forget, I guess. But sometimes I persevere and I don't forget. But yeah. And that's with the whole, like, just these little things you pick up in life and you're like, I really like that, or that really resonates with me. I've been trying to do that more so in the last couple of months, just to kind of bring more personal peace to myself. Finding little things and maybe adding them to a mantra or something or just really trying to soak the little things in, which is often very hard for most people to do. 

SG: Do you have any of these kind of, like, small everyday practices or rituals that are important to you? 

HS: I try really hard to. I work the morning shift at my job, and so I get home at 3:30— or I get off at 3:30, I get home at, like, four or whatever— and I always try to do yoga. There was a long time where I was hitting it every day, and I was like, wow, I feel light. I feel free as a bird. And I've been skipping a few days, which that's okay. I've been forgiving myself. I didn't do it today when I got home, but I will do it after this. But, yeah, yoga yoga is one of them. 

SG: Would you say that you're a spiritual person by any means? 

HS: Yeah, I would say I'm definitely spiritual in any sense. I just like to try and have that connectivity to the universe and just the things that are around me that are natural, like Mother Nature. Mother Nature is a big one. You know, she's the best. 

SG: I ask because the way you talk reminds me a lot of my own approach to this, which is to say that I'm spiritual but not religious. And lately I've been thinking about that in terms of the spirituality of the everyday and just that sometimes a small connection or that moment where you come around the bend in the car and the light is hitting the trees just right, and you're like, this is the happiest I've ever been. That is like a holy experience in so many ways. 

HS: It really is. 

SG: It really is, right?

HS: I have had so many experiences like that from just hiking. Like I said earlier, I used to go hiking a lot. I went hiking so much that I think I might have gone on almost every trail in and around Nashville. So maybe I stopped for a little bit because of that. And also, I feel like I have too many hobbies, and maybe other hobbies got in the way of hiking. But, yeah, I've had so many experiences where you get to the little overlook. That's what I'm here for. I go hiking for the overlooks so I can see as far as you can and just, like, taking it all in. There’s really some beautiful sites out there that you could really experience. 

SG: It's a good metaphor for life and art, which are often kind of the hard, uphill climb. But when you get to those moments where you're at the overlook and the trees are hitting, the light looks good, the view is beautiful. To me— to go back to what we were talking about with the idea of being on the path— those are the moments where I know I'm on the path. 

And I think the older I get, the more I'm learning how to release that feeling of, but this is what the path looks like, and this is where the path needs to go. It's like no, I'm at the overlook. I'm taking it in. I'm enjoying it. Yes, I'm going to turn and go back up the trail. And I don't know, the next overlook might be even better, but it doesn't matter because I'm going to have this one right now. 

HS: That is totally right. And that's definitely it, because sometimes you don't want to go full throttle. You want to say, let me take a break and look at this little one first. And it doesn't matter. The next big one will always be there. 

SG: With art, too, I think it's really important. We have to learn to appreciate the journey with it. I want to go back to what you said earlier, where you were like, I'm both an artist, but I'm also just a regular guy. And I love that because so many artists are like, my biggest fear is being a regular guy. I rag on David Foster Wallace all the time, but there's a running joke that his whole thing was that his genius was in, like, being a regular guy. And I don't think that's true, because anyone who's read or tried to read Infinite Jest is like, no, you're not a regular guy. But there's an element of like— 

HS: No, he's definitely not a regular guy. 

SG: [Laughs] No, he's not a regular guy at all. There's a great piece that came out in…What's the magazine? It's a Canadian magazine a few years ago, and it was talking about reckoning with artistry and genius and, like, a young male writer who idolized David Foster Wallace. Then David Foster Wallace kills himself. How do you reckon with the fact that the people who you admire most are sometimes some of the people who want to exit their life the most? 

That’s a whole thing that plays into this tragic artist idea. But I think part of that comes out of the fact that we don't see enough artists who are also just, like, content to be regular people. Growing up, for me as an artist, it was like, I only want to be a writer if I'm going to be, like, a number one New York Times bestseller. And now I'm like, no, if I can do what I like and be surrounded by community, that's it. It's the overlook. It doesn't need to be this incredible summit at the top. Right? It's appreciating these moments of overlook. And who knows, maybe there is a great summit there for all of us. But I also think that looks different to everybody. 

HS: Wow. So many points that oh, man….

SG: I’m full of metaphors today. 

HS: You can tell. Holy moly. I'm trying to piece them all together. With the whole trying to find that's one thing that I really love when I maybe find a new artist or— I get obsessive over a lot of things, but I think mainly artists— I'll hear one song and then I'm listening to albums, demos, YouTube rips or whatever, like watching interviews, reading interviews, and all this sort of stuff. That just crazy fanatic stuff. Because, at the core of it, I'm just a music fan. 

There's something so special about seeing someone, seeing an artist who you kind of just know that you hear an album they put out or a song or a piece of art that they maybe promote or they make and they post it on their Instagram, whatever, and you're like you could tell that that's really from them. And not for any sort of label or contract or whatever. Simple little real things like that. Or just maybe pictures of them out in public or whatever, at the 7-11 or something. But that's what really resonates with me, with my favorite artists, for sure. 

SG: The moments that you're talking about of what inspires you with artists are moments of like seeing them at the gas station, right. They’re not these grand moments of glory, of, like, oh, we've sold out the stadium. We're on a tour. It's like, no, here I am, just being a regular person. I think this is why we see people are obsessed with Ethel Cain right now. It's because Ethel Cain is making an aesthetic of the everyday and the rural in a way that's both problematic in all the ways that it's cool. Anyone who listens to this podcast knows I love Ethel Cain. Hello, Ben, if you're listening, Ben and I both love Ethel Cain. 

But again, it's that moment of— I mean, it's why we like paparazzi, we want to prove that famous people can also just be regular people. And within that, I think it inspires us to say, I'm a regular person. I can have that too. Which is the double edged sword of art. 

HS: Exactly. Yeah,  it's tough for me. I look at the apps that show me who listened to my music or how many people listened. Of course I do. I'm just a regular guy.

SG: In all of us is just a regular guy. 

HS: I'm just a regular guy. [Laughs].

SG: That's the tagline for this episode, just a regular guy.

HS: I was talking about this to one of my friends the other night, and I'm not going to lie, it's so cool to see people listening to my music. Just like, it's probably cool seeing people listen to the podcast or— 

SG: Oh, it's wild. It's mind blowing to me that people listen. Like, it's crazy because you make art oftentimes for yourself and for your own way of processing the world. And then when someone tells you they enjoy it, it's like the best feeling ever. But it is also crazy because it's like, this is my internal universe. I'm going to put it out there, but no one's going to resonate with it or connect to it. And then people are emailing being like, love the podcast. I'm like what? Yeah, it's mind blowing. And it's also the coolest thing ever. 

HS: It really is. It's the coolest thing ever. But also on the other side of that, at the end of the day, I'm going to release something maybe cool that many people are going to like. But the next day I'm going to also release something else that I think is equally as cool but people are going to maybe hate. And it could be people that are strangers or your friends and family. I'll share some ideas or stuff with some of my friends or whoever, and sometimes you can tell if someone's it's not their style. But if I like it and it's recorded, it's going on streaming, the bandcamp, anything. It's getting burned onto a CD because I like it. 

SG: That kind of trust in your work is, I think, really difficult for a lot of people. A lot of people thinking about, oh, they're not going to like this. I'm not going to release it. You seem to have a really great perspective on this. How do you stay kind of true to your own voice and vision against what the outside wishes of the world?

HS: It's tough. I don't know, I'm very confident in what I like. Most of the time because there's tons of songs and little diddies I come up with that are just, like, horrible and will forever stay in the voice memo or the reel tape or whatever. 

But I think it's a lot tougher as a solo musician, which is me, as opposed to being in a band with three of your best friends for so many years. If four people make something that they all are about like, yeah, this is really cool. We all really like this. It's a lot easier because you're kind of sharing that confidence with each other and you're like, here it is, let's release out into the world as opposed to being in your bedroom. And it's like, it's just me and these headphones and my speakers and my thoughts. 

So it's different, but I think you can overcome it. I believe in most of my stuff to just kind of say whatever. I'm not just going to spend all this time and keep it to myself. What's that about? Rolling Stone Magazine isn't going to roll up and be like, let’s release these songs because he never released them or whatever. So I might as well just press publish on the sites.