A conversation with Matt Southern

Transcript from episode 17 of the Good Folk podcast.

Hello Folks,

Before I get into the transcript, I want to plug two awesome things in collaboration with Matt Southern, our guest on Episode 17 of the Good Folk podcast.

First, is this kickass playlist that Matt curated for us on the Good Folk account. I think it might be our best one yet, full of all of the obsessions and rabbit holes he’s found himself down in music.

Second is our upcoming acoustic concert and live podcast taping in collaboration with Matt’s project Live from the Nest and featuring the sounds of Alexander Robichaud, Scivic Rivers, and Dissimilar South. $10 tickets for a super special evening!

Right, on to the rest… The central question for this episode: How can you use your own talent to cultivate and grow the community around you? My name is Spencer George, and you're listening to the Good Folk podcast. This is an essential question around here and something many of our conversations seek to examine. How can I be an individual in service of a larger mission? How can I cultivate my own practice in tandem with the world around me? Is it possible to be both the artist and the organizer? 

All of these questions are at the forefront of my mind. Lately, when I focused only on my individual creative practice, I found myself isolated and alone. But these days, with so much of my work focused on collaboration, I often have little time to work on anything for myself at all. It's a fine line to walk, but I think today's guest does so aptly. 

Musician Matt Southern was born in Jackson, Michigan, and relocated to Raleigh, North Carolina in 2010. He soon began releasing solo records under the name Magpie Feast. In 2013, Magpie Feast became a full band and a staple of the local live music scene. They released several albums until they disbanded in 2017. Since then, Matt began releasing records as a solo artist and with his band Matt Southern and Lost Gold. Through these various projects, he has always remained productive, releasing 23 records and various singles and one-off projects. Matt has also produced and engineered records for a diverse group of artists, from the folk punk of Alexander Robichaud to the hip hop of Chomps and the country music of Kit McKay. 

Music production has become a vital connection to other artists in the community. It has become an important source of inspiration for his own work, as well as a fulfilling way to use the skills he has acquired to help others realize their own artistic vision. Matt is also part of a team that produces an acoustic music video series called Live From the Nest, North Carolina. 

In their own words, Live From the Nest “is a video series hosted on YouTube documenting intimate music performances from a variety of artists in my living room in Raleigh. We strive to be a platform for the incredible and diverse wealth of talent in our area and beyond.  We hope to connect artists with each other and the community they are part of. We want to showcase well established local favorites alongside artists who may just be starting out in these ways. We hope to play a small role in building a more diverse and vibrant music scene in the triangle.”

I think that is very well said. This conversation examines the questions above and looks at the importance of cultivating community in any kind of creative work. You never know who you will cross paths with. You never know what influence they will have on your life. I hope you enjoy this conversation.

SPENCER GEORGE: Thank you for being here, Matt. It's really, really good to talk to you and I'm happy we were able to make this happen. I think I would love to start, since you have so many different projects and things you do and things you've done, I'd love to have you just maybe summarize it in your own words or tell us a little bit about your journey into what you were doing today. 

MATT SOUTHERN: Yeah, so I'm mainly a musician. I have various projects I'm a part of. I release solo stuff just under my name, Matt Southern. I also have a band. That's kind of my main thing, and that's called Matt Southern and Lost Gold. I also play mandolin and a couple of instruments and help record a band called Kit McKay. So those are the three active projects right now.

SG: I just have to say, like, what a great name that you have. How fitting to have the last name of Southern and be working here.

MS: Oh, thank you. 

SG: I was like, is this real when you first reached out? So I just have to say it. It's such a fantastic band name. Could you tell us a little bit about your journey into music and kind of the first of these projects and where that led you? They all build on each other in a lot of ways is sounds like.

MS: Yeah. I have played music from the time, I guess, since I was about 13. Kind of a classic teenager, gets a guitar, kind of falls in love with it, and just plays a lot. And then in college, I started meeting up with some other people that I could start some groups with. I had some early bands and had a lot of fun, but what I feel like is really my start as a songwriter is the group Magpie Feast. 

I had a project called Magpie Feast that was originally just a DIY recording project, a vehicle for me to get my songs out. And after a few years of doing that, I was able to make a band from that. And we played tons of shows around here for about four years, so that was an absolute blast. That was kind of the start of me being in the music scene in the Raleigh area. 

SG: And you're not originally from Raleigh, correct? 

MS: Right. Yeah. I grew up in Michigan and moved here in 2010 from Grand Rapids, Michigan. 

SG: One of my best friends has some history in Grand Rapids. I meet a lot of Michigan people lately, and lots of people seem to move from Michigan to North Carolina. It's a really funny connection. 

MS: It's a great town. 

SG: What brought you here?

MS: Yeah. After I graduated college, my girlfriend and I—my wife now—wanted to just get out of there. Mostly weather. It's beautiful there in the summer. Like, absolutely gorgeous. June, July, August. But there are a lot of cloudy months. 

SG: I've told my friends I will come visit, but it will not be in the winter. Yeah, North Carolina makes you soft. 

MS: Yeah. Even in the winter here, just the amount of sunshine you get is so good for your mental health. I feel like those last few winters in Michigan and going through the whole college experience and all that comes with that, that were particularly trying. 

SG: And what was it about Raleigh that drew you to here? 

MS: This was a nice spot that was kind of in the middle. We could drive pretty quickly to the ocean or the mountains, which we really liked. Grand Rapids was a mid-sized city, so we wanted to be in another mid-sized city. Not too big, not too small. It seems about perfect for a temperament. And yeah. Raleigh also has the benefit of a lot of magazines and news articles. Always putting it in, like, the top five, top ten sorts of places to live. 

SG: And as a musician, was that something that you factored in? Because as anyone who listens to this podcast knows, the Triangle has just… I think it's like the most incredible music scene of anywhere I've ever lived. But was that a factor in that for you? 

MS: Definitely. About the time I moved here was kind of the height of my most intense, I guess, folk music phase. So I was listening to a lot of musicians from here. Ironically, I probably listened to more Elizabeth Cotten and Doc Watson, those sorts of people, in the few years before I came here. And I still did, and I still do. But it's just kind of funny how I've always felt kind of out of place in whatever region, or at least dislocated. Not necessarily dependent on where I am to draw influences. 

SG: I love the way you describe it as feeling kind of out of place or dislocated. I think that's such a great way to describe my own relationship to home. And so much of what we talk about in this podcast, which is this feeling of not really quite knowing, like feeling a little dislocated, but being able to find part of that location through art and through the things you make and maybe it doesn't have to be so attached to place. I don't know if that's something you feel like you could relate to. 

MS: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I kind of fell in love with folk music in particular in my late teen years. And it was always a very— like I didn't know anyone else who was listening to that. These were the days when you could rent CDs from libraries and local libraries had amazing record collections, CD collections. So it was a lot of ripping CDs and just following rabbit holes. Kind of earlier on in the early days of YouTube and stuff, you could find some archival performances of different people. It was great when you think of it. Definitely, I did not always feel like part of a scene that was going on or a lot of isolation, I feel like, in what I was interested in. 

SG: Would you say part of that was location based, in that folk music to me, often does get concentrated around, especially North Carolina, both stereotypically but also realistically. We do have a lot of folk scenes happening around here. Was that something that you felt, just location wise, quite distant from that? 

MS: Yeah, definitely. I mean, there's pockets all over the country of places where people are playing traditional bluegrass and stuff, but I grew up in particular in a very small town where you were lucky to know one other person who played music. So it definitely felt like I was kind of on my own. 

And in Grand Rapids when I lived there, I definitely didn't know of a folk music scene or anything like that. It was something that was completely contained in my headphones and whatever I was listening to and writing on my own. 

SG: And who are some of the people that you think of in those days of you getting very early into folk? Who are some of the artists that come to mind of people you were listening to and looking up to? 

MS: Yeah, I started out… I've kind of stumbled into some really great compilations. The Harry Smith Anthology of Folk music, almost like the bible of the early sixties folk revival boom. Dave von Rock was very influential to me. He also has a really amazing autobiography that was basically like the Greenwich Village folk scene from the late fifties to the early sixties. It was just like, I just eat that stuff up. Bob Dylan, obviously, stuff like that.

But also a lot of, I would say field recordings and all the Lomax stuff I was able to rip, like the Southern Journey series. I don't know if you're familiar with that, but Alan Lomax recorded a ton of stuff on this trip through the South. 

SG: [laughs] I'm very familiar with Lomax. 

MS: Well, that was like going from black and white to color for me, just hearing people performing music in their own homes and with a variety of talents. Everybody wasn't an amazing singer, but everything just had so much texture and it was just beautiful. So, yeah, those were kind of foundational in the folk music aspect of my playing. 

SG: It's all very ethnographic work. We study Lomax quite a bit in the world of folklore, about the field recordings, but what the field recordings meant for culture. So folklore is— often we think of it as cultural studies, and so it's like things we say, make, do, and believe and what they can tell us about how we live, which I think is where you kind of now have this connection between folk music and folklore as a field of study. 

We're teaching it in— I TA for an intro folklore class— we're actually doing music and ballad songs right now, so I had to give my students a whole rundown of the folk revival and half of them didn't know who Bob Dylan was, and we're doing, like, very early folk. So I’m going to need your curriculum here to just share right on with them.

MS: Right. That's great. I remember taking a bunch of 100 level music courses that weren't even close to my major, but I was just interested in taking, like, a world music course that was kind of the same thing. You're 18, like, from a very small town. All of a sudden you're listening to music from all these countries that you never even thought about seeking out music from there.

SG: Are you familiar at all with the world of ethnomusicology?

MS: I mean, I have not studied it or anything. I'm very, very into a lot of these reissue labels that are out that are basically digging through record bins. A lot of the labels I listen to put out stuff from, like, West Africa in the seventies or Japan or wherever, but there's a lot of great people doing work out there that I feel like I'm the beneficiary of. 

SG: I think you're an ethnomusicologist at heart, just hearing you talk. It’s the combination of ethnography and music, which is looking at how the study of these folk recordings of music can really speak to broader cultural topics. It's really, really interesting to hear you say. Who are some of the people, when you think about influences on your own work, that come to mind? 

MS: Yeah, that's a great question, and it's really hard for me to answer because I feel like more than anything, I'm just an immense fan of music and have very broad taste. I had some people making fun of me last year because the Spotify wrapped thing, my most played song, was only, like, five times because last year was just like a year of just endless wandering.

SG: [Laughs]. That's so impressive.

MS: To get back to your question… influences? Some big ones in my life, some kind of turning points. I feel like Neko Case. I don't know if you've ever listened to her.

SG: Yeah, a little bit.

MS: Mid 2000s, I guess they labeled her alt-country or something. But her songwriting in particular, she had a lot of, like— or it still does have a lot of— folklore aspects and just fairy tale stuff, like woven in kind of this gothic magical realism sort of way. 

So that was a big one. All that folk music I described, like early sixties folk revival, old field recordings. But I mean, tons more. I put out a couple of instrumental records lately that are based on sampling and beat making and kind of some minimalism. Some influence from some of the New York minimalists. Steve Reich and Philip Glass. Jay Dilla. But last year was a big year of listening to a lot of early 90s hip hop. 

SG: The best.

MS: That’s kind of it for me. That's definitely my favorite. So stuff from all over, but a lot of roots leaning stuff.

SG: It's interesting because you describe it and it's just so many different genres. And then how that all kind of comes together is a really cool collaborative process in a way of, I'm going to take this thing from this movement and this thing from this movement. 

I think this is where the Internet maybe has been good for art. We do now have access to so much more than we used to in terms of music and terms of culture, in terms of influence. And see, I think of you first and foremost as kind of like a folk or rock musician. So it's interesting to hear all these different background influences. How would that play into the work that you're making today or the work you're putting out there? 

MS: Yeah, it's always evolving, but also not. I mean, for anyone who is continually making something, you can always find threads that follow throughout all of your art, but also it's never quite the same. It’s always all there. 

And yeah, I didn't say anything about rock music, but obviously I feel like that goes unsaid for the sort of stuff I play, too. 

SG: If you had to trace the progression of your journey as an artist, like a very brief pathway through it, how would you describe it? 

MS: I think I started out as a teenager that was way more into rock music. Really liked kind of heavier stuff. And by the time I was a late teenager, I think I was trying to do things like the MC Five or Iggy Pop and the Stooges or the White Stripes or that sort of thing. And those are all Michigan bands too. 

SG: I was going to say Jack White. In the lecture I was giving the other day, we were talking about Jack White and the Dead Weather and the Raconteurs and looking specifically at the song they have, Carolina Drama. I don't know if you're familiar with it. It's like a very kind of blues ballad song and we were comparing it to, like, classical folklore ballads and what does this mean to have someone who's not from the Carolinas writing this kind of song and yeah, fascinating stuff. I saw Jack White last year live and I think it was one of the best shows I've ever seen. So I'm a big fan myself. 

MS: Yeah, amazing. Yes, I've seen him before. He's crazy good. And also, yeah, I put him up there as another foundational one, another foundational touchstone for me. 

SG: And he's doing so many cool things now in Nashville, too, so almost similar progression of Michigan to the South. 

MS: Yeah, I'd never thought about that. Yeah, he's done a little better than me, but I think I'm right behind him. [Laughs}

SG: You just give it a few years. It does remind me of you in a lot of ways, though, because he's still making music, obviously, but to me it feels like he's very focused right now on Third Man and on growing that and this community building piece. 

In some of the conversations you and I have had just offline, it sounds like that's something that you too are very interested in. How do I use my own skill as an artist to activate the other artist communities that I exist within and to really uplift that? Which is obviously something I personally care about a lot, too. I would love to hear a little bit about that kind of community piece to your work and how you navigate that. 

MS: Yeah. And I was telling you right before we went on, I feel a real kinship to what you guys are doing with Good Folk in your efforts to build community. I think that's been something I've been focused on a lot the last few years. Whereas I think when I was younger, I didn't necessarily… I was more looking for a community to join, but was never very successful at finding where my people are at. 

But the last handful of years I’ve been focused on building community. First with bandmates. And a few years ago, we started a video series called Live from the Nest, which is an acoustic music series filmed in my living room. So we get to have these—

SG: It’s awesome, by the way. 

MS: Thank you. 

SG: I love it. I have to put it on the record. 

MS: It's a great excuse to get private concerts from people that you really respect and like their music. And it's a great tool for connecting people. I think— well, the reason I'm here is because Tremaine, who came on— I can't remember if I saw that he was on your podcast or you guys found me—

SG: Tramaine was with his band, 723.

MS: Right.

SG:  And actually, Tremaine is now a good friend of mine who— unrelated to Good Folk— but we've been shooting a short film on Tramaine and his role as a musician. So I've gotten to see a lot of him lately. And yeah, he's awesome.

MS: Yeah. Amazing person. But that's exactly the type of connection that sometimes seems very hard to make. But we're… I mean, we're trying to be a small piece to build a better music community, something that we wish was there. So it's like, why not do it? 

SG: I love that line of thinking. Yeah, that's exactly where we came from with this idea of, I want this community and I can see it, but I don't know how to start it. I've always been jealous of musicians in a way, because there's this kind of inherent communal piece to the work that you do, where coming from a writing background, it's much different. 

I think when you talked about the progression of being a young artist and a teenager— there's something of when you're young and you want to be in the arts that you feel like you have to lean into this individualism. And it's that teenage angst artist of, I don't need a community, I'm going to do it my own way. I think that's a total cultural myth that plays out in the idea of the lonely artist type. And most of us get older and we realize actually our art is made better through having community.

I'm very jealous of bands that get to have that. But sometimes you just have to say, well, I have to build what I wanted and what I didn't have. 

MS: Yeah, absolutely. And I think that's kind of freeing in itself because you're no longer dependent on things that are in an existing infrastructure. You're dreaming up projects and you find a few people who are interested in helping that and that grows and you get a couple more people. So it's really beautiful to watch it unfold and to help people out who might be earlier on in their career. 

We just had a guest on who performs as Indie Cult Classic and this was super gratifying to me. This is like the exact thing we're trying to build this for. Because he didn't have any recorded music out, he didn't have any videos or anything, but he sent us stuff. He's a very obviously talented person but was having trouble getting shows and whatnot because he didn't have anything to show. So we sent him the audio files as well as posting his videos on YouTube. And I'm just following him on Instagram and I see he's getting shows now and it's just amazing. It's like all the work we've put in towards learning recording and the team I work with, learning video and stuff, it's amazing to be able to help people with those skills. 

SG: So that was what I was going to ask you, which is what's the process like for someone who wants to get on? You mentioned that you've learned the recording and you all have these amazing, wonderfully shot videos. Is that all you, and how do you find some of the artists that you all bring in? Is it people who, again, submit music or you're just kind of constantly doing what I'm doing, which is sliding into people's Instagrams? 

MS: Yes, all of the above. Yeah. And definitely this is a group project that originally started with myself and Steven and Michael Teejin. And then we added Chris Bennett, and we got some great people. Pat and Kevin. 

Everybody's kind of picking their different roles. So now we have Chris and Steven doing cameras. Mike has moved to Virginia, but he's still doing all of the editing of the videos. Kevin, if you’ve seen our social media, Kevin's running all the social media. Pat works with lighting and helps me with some of the audio. So it's an amazing group project and another great excuse to hang out with all these great friends. 

But people, as far as people we have on, it's been a mix. I was a little worried early on that, like… you know anyone in the creative fields, you send a lot of emails, you get a lot of non responses, but there really seemed to be a hunger and a need for something like this in the community. 

So we started out with a few that people we reached out to and ended up lining up, and then before long, we were just getting DMs and emails. So please, if you're interested in getting on, please feel free to drop us a DM on our Instagram. We're very online, so you can find some kind of email address somewhere, I'm sure. 

SG: And we'll link to it in the show notes, so people have it, but I think the hunger is absolutely correct. One thing that I've remarked on with some friends in the Triangle is there's such a rich music scene, but in some ways it does feel a little closed because it's so rich and there's so many kinds of storied venues. If you're a young person just starting out and you have no recorded music, or you're just making things out of your living room, getting started in that is really, really hard. 

So when you have musicians like yourself who are a little bit more established in the community, who are kind of passing the space on and opening it up for new people, it really is like an act of mutual reciprocity, which is what I think community should be in its best form. It can't just be like a take relationship. It has to be, I've gained something from this community, so I'm going to give back something and keep passing it along. 

I think that's what we need more as artists, and I think so many people want that. And then it's kind of this element of like, well, how do we really get there? And with that, I'm interested in hearing, how did this group project start? What did the idea come from, and was it you kind of bringing all these different people together to create it or could you tell us the origin of that? 

MS: Yeah, I just tend to have a lot of kind of wild ideas, and once in a while I'll be able to convince some people to go along with it. So we had an original—

SG: The best kind, right?

MS: [Laughs]. Right. So it's a little confusing. I almost want to leave this part of the story out. But we started with just me and Steven and Mike a few years back, and we did a short run of maybe eight videos and then stopped for a while. And I guess last summer, the guys that were in my band, Matt Southern and Lost Gold, I was kind of getting the itch to do it again, so I brought it up. And Chris, our bass player, was actually getting into photography and videography at the time, so we just hopped back on it.

I think we're better than we've ever been, and we keep getting a little bit better. We're just learning as we go. Like, none of us are professional or trained in any of this, but we're doing our best and learning a lot as we go. So it's been an absolute blast. 

SG: I think that's really what it's about. And this podcast is the same way. None of us are audio professionals. We have a photographer, and then I come from a creative writing background and we were like, but you know what? We have an interest in doing this and we have people there, so let's just figure it out. 

It's exactly what you said of just finding someone who wants to learn this thing and almost a process of learning it together. There's such a push in the art world to not put anything out until it's perfect and great and good. And I think we need to be more accepting of, like, yeah, sometimes things are just a work in progress and we get a little better every time. And I'm like, the podcast has grown exponentially from where we started, but it's not perfect. But nothing's perfect and it doesn't need to be. So it's almost releasing yourself from that pressure while also being very rooted in this community building, which is a really cool thing. 

MS: Yeah, absolutely. Put out your stuff. Don't wait. The absolute worst thing you could do, I think, is to wait until something's perfect because you will never release it, because it will never be perfect. I'm a big proponent of just getting your stuff out there. There's no better way to learn than to get something out there. Even if you hate it a month later or whatever, it's going to push you to get better at your craft, for sure. 

SG: And it's like the old adage of you have to make really shitty art before you're going to make anything good, and especially learning a new skill. I know, at least for me as an artist, I assume, oh, I'm decent at this one form, so I'm just going to jump into another art form and it'll come naturally. And that is obviously never the case. I'm currently practicing filmmaking and I'm like, why am I so bad at this? And then I'm like, well, you have to put in the time and you have to put in the work. 

But I think the root of what I'm getting out of what you're saying is that there are people who are willing to be there and support you and to help you out and teach you these skills or learn alongside you. And that's the really fun part of it. 

MS: Yeah. And if you're looking for people and it's hard—I've always had a hard time with that. I'm probably slow to make connections and things like that. But when you find people who are willing to collaborate with you, it's such a joy. It's fuel for the fire to keep you going and you're learning from each other. 

Also as someone who's doing something, you are giving the gift of whatever project. Other people, I mean, they're obviously investing a lot of time and effort, but you've also given them something that they have this cool creative project to work on. So it's a beautiful symbiosis. 

SG: I'm so glad to hear you say that first part, because I have a lot of conversations with people on the podcast where we talk about community and it makes it sound often like myself and our guests, like we've already found it. And now we're looking back on, like, look at this whole process that we went through to build community, and now we have it, and it's so great. And I want to always be honest about that, that it can be such a farce, right? 

I started this newsletter because I felt really lonely. And I was like, I am an artist and I don't feel like I have a community. I moved to New York, but I grew up in the South and I didn't feel like I had any sort of artistic community. So I moved to New York thinking that, oh, that's where my community is, right? Like, every great myth of you've got to go to some big city, go to the heart of whatever your career field is and you're just going to find your community. And then I was surrounded by it, and I was like, I am lonelier than I've ever been. So then you come back. 

MS: Right. [Laughs].

At least for me, that looked like coming back and figuring out, okay, how do I build this here? But I don't ever want it to seem like something— we talk about community, and it's just like, yeah, just put yourself out there and it's going to happen. Community takes work and it takes time. 

I've been back in North Carolina for three years, and I only feel like I'm just now really solidifying and building that community. And I think when we have conversations about community building and about friendship and relationships, it can always sound so easy. 

I don't ever want people to think, like, if you're listening and you're like, I have no community, I want to be involved in something like this, that’s so great. People tell me all the time, it's like, you've got it all figured out. I'm like, no, I do not. 

And I'm really happy to hear you say that this, in part, was because I was lonely and didn't have that. And it's hard. It is hard to make those connections, and it's going to be weird and awkward, and you're going to hang out with a lot of people, and some people you're going to click with and make art together, and some people you might never see again. And that's just part of the process. 

MS: Yeah, that's right. If you're an artist, you're out here struggling every day in one way or another. Sometimes I feel like the easy part is creating the art, and for me, it seems to be more difficult to get the art out there or to find people to collaborate with. 

I guess over the history of my life, I feel like I'm in a really great place with a lot of people who are interested in doing things. I've been working on engineering and producing some people in the last few years, which has just been a big light bulb that's gone off in my head, like, oh, you spent thousands of hours alone recording albums and figuring out the minutiae of audio engineering. It feels so good to be able to help someone with projects, help them realize what their vision is, help them avoid all the pitfalls that you went through. So it's been absolutely great. 

SG: And I think what you say within that too, is there's this element of being alone that is just as important sometimes. That's the other piece of community studies that I feel like drives me crazy because, yes, we want community, obviously I believe in the power of collaborative art. I think every artist is made better through community. That being said, there is also a part where sometimes it is just you alone learning these skills, right.

I spend so much time doing stuff with Good Folk these days, and I hardly ever write anything of my own. And I think for every artist, it's finding the balance between I'm passing this along and I'm putting out what I didn't have, but also I still have to be mindful of my own time and protect that and give myself space to be alone and to learn these skills. It's a tricky balance. I don't know if you have any wisdom or advice on how you found that. 

MS: No, absolutely. And I think you don't find it. It's constantly evolving. Your balance today might be different than what you need in a month or two months, or you might have three— it sounds like you guys have tons of projects going on all the time. You might have three projects going on at once. And you might need to put 50% of your eggs in this one project for the time and just do a little less of the others to finish that project, and it's shifting. And then you might get done with a few years and be like, I need to start writing for myself more. And then you take some time to do that. 

Definitely don't worry if you don't feel like you're finding it or defining it, because you're always constantly redefining what the correct balance is for you. 

SG: And there's phases to it, which is exactly what you say of, there are going to be periods where you want to be focused on building the community, and then there are going to be periods where you have to be focused on building the art, and it doesn't mean that one or the other is forever, right.

MS: Correct. Yeah, absolutely. And I think they can kind of be scaffolding for each other. Like, one thing I've noticed is working more on other people's projects is so exciting to me and gives me so many ideas for my own stuff. Obviously, you're wanting to help them as much as you can, but you can't help but to get ideas and learn from people. 

No matter how long they've been doing it or how long you think you've been doing it, every time we have someone over for Live From the Nest, it’s every person. I'm just like, you're so amazingly talented. There's so much talent in this area. It feels very good to be at least a small platform for helping other people get their music out. But, yeah, I'm constantly learning, and I think that's a great thing to keep in mind.