Truman Sinclair Talks 'American Recordings' | LPtv

Hey there, this is Lindseay Parker for LPTV here at Licorice Pizza. I am here with Truman Sinclair.

Hello.

This is where all the magic happens. You're actually uh we're saying the scene. This is sort of your pregame because you're going to be performing right here on this black carpet in just a bit.

Yes. I'm very excited.

I'm excited to see it. You have an album called American Recordings. Yep.

Um it came out a little bit earlier this year. Is there like a Johnny Cash reference in there somewhere?

Absolutely. Yeah. I love those I love those records. I love Johnny Cash. Um and yeah, I was definitely thinking about that. I was listening to a lot of that record and yeah, I just think it's beautiful record. So definitely a bit of an homage, you know. So

So this is I guess would you call this an Americana record, a folk record, but I know I mean the shirt, you know, RIP Aussie. I know you were you were telling me when I was complimenting your shirt cuz by the time people watch this interview, Aussie passed this week, so the shirt is a nice memorial. But you grew up kind of as a metal guy. Yeah, I was really I loved Sabbath and Metallica and Mega Death and then I ended up getting into Hardcore and Knocked Loose and Jesus Piece and stuff like that. And then um got into some I was a really like religious guitar player. I was I would for a long time I wanted to be the best guitar player in the world when I was like a little kid. So I would play like all the time. So I got into a lot of like progressive metal and guitar based music like Animals as Leaders and bands like that that is just super technical guitar playing. Um and yeah, I love I love metal. I still I still listen to a lot of it, but I used to be like metal only all the time. So,

I've read that you also had like I don't want to call it a phase, but like an emo era. Like you grew up you grew up in Chicago. You live here now, but you grew up in Chicago where and you were very into the emo thing and like your earlier music that you started doing was

emo. Tell me about that. I'm going to sing My Chemical Romance tonight.

Oh, I love My Chemical Romance. Yeah. Well, yeah. I mean, I very quickly got into stuff like I love My Chemical Romance. I love American football. I love cap and jazz. Um, a lot of that Midwest emo stuff and that was super influential to me. And then I moved to LA when I was 14 and left like my childhood friends that play in like bands with. And yeah, I started recording a bunch, but I quickly found some uh musicians and we started a emo band and it was it just felt like a it was just great. It's fun to do that kind of stuff. It was more I was I was stricken by the songwriting nature of that genre, especially not that metal musicians don't write songs, but it's just sort of a different it's a different medium, I guess. And I was I just like I found it really relatable to me. So, I loved all that emo stuff. And yeah, I started my band Fat Mouse. And

I was about to say, was that Fatmouse, which is a great name.

Thank you so much. Yeah. Um yeah, it was Fat Mouse. I started that band when I was 17 um with just like a friend of mine who wasn't necessarily the biggest musician, but we just got along really well and started recording in my bedroom and playing video games and hanging out and um yeah, now like six, five, six years later, we've just been doing it. We played all around LA and we've we released four records and all of them were DIY recorded in my bedroom which was so fun and I love doing that kind of stuff. So yeah, Fry Mouse, it was great. I start a band. It's a good time. I love that. start a band kids.

Um, we're talking about the emo thing. Has that influenced the lyrics you do now? Because I mean, people actually forget what emo is short for, but it's about being emotional. Oh, yeah.

The lyrics are as important as maybe the most important thing about that genre. And your lyrics that you do now, uh, with fat evil children and which is another great band name and solo like, you know, are they informed by your emo past?

Yeah, I think for sure. I think that the tenant of emo is to be as honest as you can and to be authentic and to sort of just be as vulnerable as you can. I think and that's the most important part and I think that I've definitely taken that into all the lyrics that I try to write. I think that the way to be the most effective in your lyric writing is to be the most honest and to be the most authentic and to be the most vulnerable.

And I really learned that through emo because they're talking about stuff that is like unbelievably honest and sometimes really specific and I always appreciated that. So yeah, I think I definitely carry that. I try to do that all the time for sure.

It's kind of an interesting era and I think it was a good era for for young men to grow up in because even though yeah, it could be hard sounding, you know, the whole idea was you were supposed to be vulnerable and open and um I think that, you know, I think that probably if you're listening to that in your formative years, it probably has a big a positive effect on you.

Yeah, I absolutely think so. I think that emo music and I think any sort of

DIY based music where people give themselves like a way to be super honest in a way that it just like it allows you to be super vulnerable I think when you're making that kind of music. And so when you're listening to it, it does the same thing. And if you're going through something and you're a kid, which every kid is going through something, that type of music is just really helpful and can be a really great friend and can be really inspiring. And then when you start writing it, it's the same thing. It's just like the same therapy you get from listening to it, you can get from writing it. And so I definitely found that and yeah, it's really important to me. I love that stuff. So

it's kind of sad like I'm going off on kind of a deep tangent, but now there's like a lot of people talking about like toxic masculinity or male loneliness epidemic and you know red pill culture, all that, but like you know the generation when you were growing up it was like the opposite. Like why did the pendulum swing the other way? Well, now it's not like as cool for I mean, it was actually literally cool for young boys or young men to make these vulnerable songs and or or listen to them.

Yeah. I don't I don't I don't know. I think that there's so much going on all the time and it's so complicated and I think the only thing that you can do is to do what you think you should do and to be honest to yourself because yeah like cultures shift and they swing different ways and they different things become cool or not cool but the coolest thing you can do is to be yourself and that's like just the truth and I think that when you um when you just speak your mind and you say your authentic feelings and you say how you feel in the most direct way you can in a way that's almost like I think sometimes when If you're really honest in lyrics, it makes it so that like people learn things about you that you're not even trying to tell them. And that's when the the lyrics are good. Like it should be so honest that it's and so raw that it's you don't even understand it. It's just so like a part of you. And it's almost like you it's like hard to be self-aware, you know? It's like the same thing. You don't want to you don't want to have like crafted this lyric. You want it to be so honest that other people learn things about you that you weren't even trying to say. And to speak to I don't know about the culture thing.

And I think you should just just be real and everybody's going through something and some people are going through really insane stuff and you got to talk about it and I think that just keeping inside is not the way forward. It just fers and gets worse. So yeah, I think art is really important for that reason and I think more and more as the world gets more and more crazy, it's just more and more important to do that stuff.

100%. So yeah, let's talk about some of the lyrics on American recordings. What were you writing about? Um it seems like maybe some of the songs were story songs and then others were more autobiographical. Yeah, I I I pull from stories that I hear from other people, pieces of things that I've gone through, strong feelings that I have about one thing or another, political stuff that I think is really important, like climate stuff and things like that. And I don't know, I just wanted to make it like it was my first solo record and I gave myself permission to be really serious about serious stuff in a way that I wasn't really necessarily doing before.

I think when I was writing for Frat Mouse, I was writing about just personal things, things that cuz I wanted to just say stuff that I knew was true. And I when I was writing for Fatmouse, it was just a smaller scale because I was such a kid. I didn't know anything. So, I was just writing about my experience. And I think because I went to college and I was 22 when I was making the record, I was like I felt like it was okay for me to say something serious about something serious. Whereas before I felt like maybe I didn't know enough or I didn't have a good enough I didn't have a perspective that was like worth sharing.

I didn't have enough information about it. But I just wanted to I just felt like it was time I needed to say what I wanted to say and that was what it was.

What did you want to say like in a nutshell? I think that humanity and compassion is the most important thing and I think that a lot of that gets lost as we digitize and as we globalize and I think globalization can be really good but I think that it's important to maintain that human aspect of things as we get more and more sort of plastic and digital and AI and all that stuff. think that love and compassion and humanity and kindness and empathy and having a good attitude is more and more important and we need to have connection and that's why I love music so much because that fosters all those things and I think that um we need to have more understanding we're so divided especially in this country and it's getting really bad really really bad so it's super important and I think that we have to have respect for our environment we have to have respect for our fellow humans we have to have respect for all different points of view. Um, and we need to like talk to each other and figure out what we're doing because we have horrible things happening right now that don't need to be happening. And I think that um, it's not I want to have hope. You know what I mean? I think a lot of people are really hopeless and I want to have hope. I believe that we can move forward in a better way and like fix some of these horrific issues that we have going on right now.

Um, I don't know who wrote this, but I was, you know, reading some of the reviews for American Recordings, you know, great reviews. And one um one reviewer called this album a call for optimism.

Yeah, I think for sure. I think that it's really easy to get into I mean you hear people talk about doom scrolling and like doomerism and all this stuff and like I understand that feeling. I know what that's like for sure and it looks bleak and there's also just genuinely horrifically sad things that happen all the time that you can just there's no way to be optimistic about it. But I think the optimism comes in like we have we're going to move. Time is going to pass. We're going to move forward. We're going to make decisions.

So, let's just try to fix it. I don't want to give up at all. I don't want to become apathetic. I think apathy is bad. And I think that we have to uh we have to talk and we have to connect and we have to figure out what we're doing and we have to have compassion and humanity and all those things I talked about. I think that

How How old are you now?

I'm 23.

Okay. So you were going through a pretty formative time in your life when the pandemic happened when all of us were doom scrolling and all of us um were on our phones and also like just the last 10 years um in general Trump and and other things like you know how do you feel that affected well I mean it's maybe a longer answer but not just you as a person but affected your art like you seem like a very positive person but you've you know that's a you grew up in a very weird time

super weird So I assume some of your like when you would have been at college or whatever you were having to do it at home or

Yeah. I didn't have a I missed my last year of high school, my first year of college and due to the pandemic. I think that for the first time in my life I realized that the world changed a lot.

Um because when you're a kid, you don't know you know that it's different now than it used to be, but you don't see it happening. And I think that by the time I was 20, 21, 22, I saw the culture of

the country change. I saw things happen like the pandemic, these massive global things that really change how people feel daytoday and it felt even more important to say what I had to say about it. And I think that um yeah that and it and at the same time it's just during the pandemic we were also disconnected and we were trying to find connection through different digital things but it just made me want to play music even more and I think it made it even greater to play shows once the pandemic sort of cleared up and we could do that again. Um, I think that stuff just got more and more important honestly. So,

I was going to ask because also obviously a lot of musicians, you know, the pandemic obviously was horrible, but a lot the silver lining was a lot of musicians, especially someone like you does a lot of stuff DIY in your bedroom.

It was a very creative time. You know, they had a lot of time and you know, they were just, you know, whether it's a big examples like Charlie XX or Taylor Swift or, you know, but you know, I would be curious about was that a very creatively fertile time for you?

Um, yeah. I've always been uh in my room making music every day. I would come home from school and make music and when I was in college between classes and every night and everything. Um I love it. I find it to be I would make music if and not put it out. Like I love making it. For me it makes me feel better and I think that creating I think everybody is creative and I think that you can activate it in different ways and I think that that makes people feel better and it makes me feel better. And so during the pandemic I definitely led on or leaned on a lot of the recording stuff. I love doing that and I love playing my guitar in my room and recording it. I think it's fun and it's just my way of accessing that spirit that I think all of us have and yeah, when you're going through something like that, it's definitely that's the thing to lean on or it can it's a thing to lean on and it's what I definitely leaned on. I think I got a lot better, you know, at recording during that time.

I had a lot of time. Um, and yeah, uh,

it's great and I just I' I still do that now. I just record alone. I think that there's something cool about doing it DIY because it ends up being like from my speakers to your headphones to your speakers. Like I think that when you're a musician, there's a lot of ways that people see you. Um cuz like you're on Instagram or you're posting about this or you play live and they get this like snapshot of you. But I think that the music is the thing that I'm the best at making like super personal and like I think it's the best representation of who I am. And so that's why I like making it because it's like you might see something that I post or see something and think I'm this way, but if you listen to the music, like that's really who I am. And I feel like you can really feel like the spirit that I'm trying to um put out there. And I think the more I record, the better I get at like putting that spirit into the song or whatever. So yeah.

Did you record American recordings at home? You know, what was the process of that? Yeah, I was living at a I was in college at the time and I was living in like a house with a bunch of musicians, eight musicians called Flea House cuz I had fleas before I moved in, but also a little bit while I was there. And there was like a shed in the back and there was like a drum kit and a desk and all this stuff and it was awesome and I recorded it all in there and I had my friend play drums, my friend Ben play drums and had a couple friends play different things on it but for the majority of it almost all the instruments and most like 90% of it was recorded alone and it was great. I love that kind of thing. It was I used to wake up at like 6:00 a.m. and like record before the first class and just like then record late into the night. I was really obsessed with it. There was like a 3-month period where I was like could not think about anything else. And so it it was a really I look back on it really fondly. It was a great time. I was really just focused on making this thing. So

is are you entirely self-taught in terms of production and and and also playing?

No, I went to school for music production actually. That was my major and it was cool and like audio engineering and stuff and um I had some guitar lessons growing up which were cool. But I learned a lot on YouTube. I won't even lie. Like I think that is an invaluable resource especially for music production. I just learned everything I needed to know about logic and ProTools and on YouTube and um it was great. So yeah,

internet's good for some things.

Oh, it's great. Yeah, you can learn a lot on there. You can learn how to do many many things. Like my refrigerator broke and I like learned how to fix it on YouTube. It's good. It's going to be good.

This vid this interview will later be on YouTube as well. Sick.

There you go. um regarding this album sort of overlay the stuff we're talking about you know obviously I mentioned it's called American Recordings and I've read some of the other interviews you've done for it and I read a quote of yours where you said this album is about what you love about this country because obviously you know as you were mentioning there's a lot of things not to love at the moment there always has been things not to love

um and there's a lot of things that I'm you know we could go down that but like can you elaborate on that statement about why you wanted to make it out like the things you love about America that are in this record? Yeah, I wanted to focus on the youth culture that I was a part of that I thought was so beautiful and was so amazing and it was happening in America. So, I felt like that was what I wanted to talk about and I wanted to highlight those kind of things, things that I felt were really important and were happening in this country while all these other horrible things were happening. And I just wanted to sort of take it back a little bit cuz I think for a while it was like an American flag was almost this thing that was like a symbol of hate. And I was like this I don't I don't want it to be like that cuz I see so much a like natural beauty in America and cultural beauty. There's a lot of cultural beauty in America and so just wanted to highlight that stuff and like make a specific point about like this is these are the parts that I think are really beautiful and great.

So,

are there specific songs on the record you want to talk about that sort of speak to that?

I like what's I like the song What's on Your Mind because it talks about driving through the desert with your three-piece on a highway, which is a very American experience. Um, and yeah, I don't know. I think a lot of it, it's just sort of a feeling on the record that I get that reminds me of these American culture

things that I love so much. So,

and um as I mentioned, this is I guess an Americana record, a folk record, but you know, you started off liking metal and emo. So, why did you musically gravitate towards that genre?

I think it's not that different at the end of the day. It's just an expression and it's just it's just how the thing came out. I think when I set out to make this record, I just wanted to I knew I wanted it to be I've always been into band music and what I mean by that is like bass, drums, and guitar and like organs and stuff like that. but mainly just bass drums and guitar and singing.

And so I just wanted to I knew I wanted to do that and I knew that I wanted to uh say what we've been talking about. And so I just wrote songs and recorded them and that's kind of how it came out. And yeah, I'm making another record right now that I'm just considering to be like a rock record in the same way that that one was, but it's sounding different. And I think that that's fun. I think I I usually just write the songs and try to create the music to like support the song as much as possible. and it just kind of came out that way.

So, if you like the band experience and you know you had Fat Mouse and Fatty Evil Children who there your children are still around. Um, why a solo record?

I just think it was the best way for me to get across the feeling that I was trying to get across. Like sometimes like when a when an album comes out under the name Fat Mouse, it gives it a certain it's just part of the experience of listening to the record and that can be additive and it is additive because it like it should be additive and I think that for this record to have the proper like experience of listening to it, it needed to be just my name. And it also felt like super honest and I also made it like largely alone. It wasn't necessarily cuz Fold is a band. We all make the songs all together. I mean there's like a primary songwriter, my good friend Nick Scrabach, but we would all like make it together and Frammos was the same thing. We would all make those things together and this was very it was just a solo experience in making it and so it made sense for it to be a solo project.

So when's the the rock record you just mentioned coming out?

I don't know. It might be a second. I'm still like I don't know. I'm trying to figure it out and I have a bunch of I've been writing a lot and stuff. I don't know. It's going to be a minute but but hopefully soon. I don't know.

Anything else you're working on? What's next for you?

Um just playing. I'm playing a lot of shows coming up and I got a lot of music coming out and I know that was really vague but I've been doing a lot of stuff. I don't know.

Yeah.

In the meantime if you're here you can you're going to perform. People can watch you perform right here. So I'm gonna end this interview so you can set up and sweet rock out. But thank you so much for coming to the show.

Thank you so much for having me. Thank you.

Yeah it was lovely to chat with you. Thanks everybody for watching.