Write Better Music Through Storytelling with Jeff Leisawitz - Music Production Podcast #368

Jeff Leisawitz is a musician, producer, coach, college songwriting professor, and author. His new book The Magical Impact of Storytelling explores how creatives can connect with their audiences and produce more meaningful work with effective storytelling. 

It was great to have Jeff back on the Music Production Podcast to discuss how we can use storytelling to make better music. We talk about how writing about the specific helps illuminate the universal. Jeff shares famous stories that have helped hit songs connect with listeners. We discuss dealing with the inner critic and the concepts of The Golden Repair, The Hero's Journey, and Head, Heart, and Hands. 

Listen on Apple, Spotify, YouTube

Takeaways:

  • Storytelling in music has the power to create emotional connections with listeners.

  • Specific details in storytelling can make a story more relatable and memorable.

  • Balancing the specific and the universal in storytelling can create a deeper emotional impact.

  • Limitations and experimentation can lead to unique and creative musical experiences.

  • Being vulnerable and authentic in expressing emotions through music is essential.

  • Accompanying songs with stories of their creation can add depth and interest to the music.

  • Having a unique story and perspective is crucial for musicians to stand out in a saturated market.

  • The Hero's Journey can serve as a template for creating compelling narratives in music.

  • Embracing imperfections and using them to create something beautiful can add depth and character to music.

  • The inner critic can be seen as a collaborator rather than an adversary, providing valuable feedback and pushing for improvement.

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Episode Transcript:

Brian Funk (00:00.814)

Jeff, welcome back, great to see you again.

Jeff Leisawitz (00:03.128)

Hey, great to be here. Thanks for having me on your show.

Brian Funk (00:06.318)

Yeah, it's really nice to have you. We spoke, I think we said it was like about two years ago. And that was when you released your book, Not F 'ing Around, which is a fun read and has some great takeaways. And now you have a new one, The Magical Impact of Storytelling. Very exciting. Congratulations.

Jeff Leisawitz (00:26.072)

how to open minds and connect hearts. Thank you. Yeah, I'm all about the storytelling and I thought I'd write a book about it.

Brian Funk (00:30.958)

Yes.

Brian Funk (00:35.247)

You know, when I saw the title of the book and I started looking through it, it reminded me of a story you told me last time we spoke about getting into music. And I think you were at like a summer camp or something. And there was like an older dude that was like, Hey man, check this out. I showed you drums and stuff. I think the who's won't be fooled again. And it occurred to me like, you know, that's the story. And that's kind of like the folklore of your...

Jeff Leisawitz (00:56.088)

Very good.

Brian Funk (01:03.95)

you know, coming to be. And it stuck with me as opposed to like, yeah, you know, I just kind of got into music and older guys showed me, you know, whatever. You could have really taken it down a notch, but the way you told the story made it stick in my head, you know, even after all this time. So there's definitely a power there.

Jeff Leisawitz (01:18.26)

Yeah.

There is, stories have a ton of power and when they are told authentically and with some craft, whether that's in a novel or a little verbal story over cocktails or in a song, it can have real power and that is the power of storytelling. It connects us emotionally as opposed to a lot of other kinds of communication which is almost more informationally. Yeah.

Brian Funk (01:50.863)

Right. And I feel like my instinct would have said, if you tell this really specific story about your life, the more specific you got, it would almost distance me from it. Like I won't connect to it anymore because that didn't happen to me in that way. But I think actually the opposite happens. We start to connect to it more and see how, even though...

That didn't happen to me that way. I can relate to the idea of being turned on to some music by somebody else.

Jeff Leisawitz (02:22.801)

Absolutely, it's true. So one of the things I talk about in the book is the secret sauce for a great story or a great lyric and the secret sauce is is half of what you well actually all of what you just said the very specifics of a story is what makes it personal and the universal themes of a story

is what makes it connect with others. So in the story that I told you before, you know, I was at summer camp and...

You know, it was after dinner one night and it was the late 70s and all this and that. And the counselor asks me to come in to the cabin where he's playing the drums with the who and all this and that. It's very specific. The story itself is very specific, like you said, but the universal piece is that we've all, I suspect all your listeners here have all had some moment where they're like, oh.

I get it. I understand music. It blows my heart out. Like, wow, I gotta do this. So it's the universal theme, at least for this community, songwriters and musicians and stuff, and then my specific story around it. It's like, I tell this one to a more general audience. So this was back in college. I'm...

In college, it's a beautiful autumn day. I decide, of course, to cut class with my girlfriend at the time. It's a Tuesday afternoon. We get out of there. We go get some ice cream. She gets the chocolate with a ton of those colored sprinkles. We go down to this little park. There's a lake down there. We're standing on this bridge. And these little ducks go by. And all of a sudden, she's like, it's over.

Jeff Leisawitz (04:29.195)

What? So if I asked a thousand people, have you ever experienced this exact story? The answer is going to be no, because it's too specific with the sprinkles and the ducks and all this and that. Right. But if I asked the same thousand people who here has ever been dumped?

Everybody gets that. So that is the universal theme. And that's what we can do in our stories and in our songs. If we can connect that, bam, you will connect with your audience. And by the way, it's exactly what Taylor Swift does, right? She's really, really good at that.

Brian Funk (05:08.622)

Mm -hmm.

Brian Funk (05:13.615)

Yeah, she has a knack for little details that say a lot. I remember one song sticks out where she talks about like leaving her scarf behind and just this kind of little detail that sort of connects you back to a person, maybe even like intentionally done, you know, it's almost like the traditional favor, you know, from going back ages. But you don't have to have.

Jeff Leisawitz (05:33.)

Mm -hmm, yeah.

Jeff Leisawitz (05:37.608)

All right. Mm -hmm.

Brian Funk (05:43.855)

left your scarf to get this feeling of like you want to do something that will force this person to reach out to you again.

Jeff Leisawitz (05:52.424)

Yeah, yeah. Exactly, and it doesn't have to be a scarf, right? That was her detail, but it could have been a hat. It could have been, I left my phone at your apartment. I could gotta get it, you know?

Brian Funk (05:56.878)

Yeah.

Brian Funk (06:04.558)

Yeah. Right. I remember, I think my wife, when she was my girlfriend, left something. It might have been like a belt or like boots or something, you know? Like something, some other article. And it was like the thing, well, I had to get in touch with her again. And there's this like kind of excuse I was almost thankful for to have to bring up.

Jeff Leisawitz (06:15.016)

Oh, Delta.

Jeff Leisawitz (06:20.424)

you

Jeff Leisawitz (06:32.712)

You should ask her if that was part of her plot there. You'll never know.

Brian Funk (06:35.79)

Yeah, I think I did. And I think she said, maybe, you know, I kind of smile. Maybe now I'll ask her again now that, uh, you know, she doesn't have to play games anymore.

Jeff Leisawitz (06:45.192)

That's right.

Brian Funk (06:48.206)

But yeah, it's funny. And you know, it's funny too, is I'm realizing I was doing this today at my job as an English teacher. We just finished reading of Mice and Men. If you remember that story, George and Lenny, and it's the big thing is, well, that I'm drawing some light on is just this idea of like an ethical dilemma. Like what's, sometimes there's no right thing to do. And, you know, I guess I won't spoil of Mice and Men for everyone, but the...

George has one of those big ones and he makes a decision that under any normal circumstances seems ludicrous, which I'll just say it, you know, the book's 100 years old, but he shoots his best friend, you know, kills him. But it sounds crazy that that would be the right thing to do, but the author's crafted a world where that is actually probably the best thing for everybody, including his best friend. And...

You know, none of my students have been through that. I've never been through that, but we all relate to that feeling of like, you know, there's just nothing right. What do you do here? And I brought in a Bruce Springsteen song, Highway Patrolman, and he's story, he's a, you know, like a state trooper and his brother gets into trouble. And eventually, you know, he has to chase down his brother, but he lets him get away across the border. And.

Jeff Leisawitz (08:00.517)

Mmm, nice.

Brian Funk (08:15.822)

You know, again, like I've never been in that position, but you get that feeling of like, you gotta like, you decide to do a favor for somebody. You have to weigh two different sets of values you hold and make it a choice. Um, but yeah, it's like nothing to do with those specifics, but it hits harder because it's so specific.

Jeff Leisawitz (08:39.077)

Because we've all had difficult choices. It doesn't matter who you are. Whether you're on the playground as a sixth grader or an adult, there are difficult choices in the world.

Brian Funk (08:42.958)

Yeah.

Brian Funk (08:54.382)

I'm curious about, as far as detail goes, what your thoughts are about how much detail to give. Like you didn't tell me much about the summer camp itself. You left me to fill that in, which was fine. But in the ice cream story, which I remembered from your book, those sprinkles stick out.

Jeff Leisawitz (09:09.893)

I'm going to go to bed.

Brian Funk (09:22.382)

And that's a detail you could have left out. But what makes you decide, I'm going to put this in there and maybe we don't need to go into this part of it.

Jeff Leisawitz (09:33.189)

Great question. So you're right. Many people add too many details that don't really matter and sort of detract from a story or a story.

people of course don't have enough details. Alright, so the question is what details do you want to add?

And I believe the answer is, first of all, it needs to be relevant. So in terms of the sprinkles, that was an evocative detail. When I told you that, I'm not inside your brain, but I suspect you're like, oh yeah, colorful sprinkles on ice cream. I get that, right? Yeah, it's fun. You can almost taste it. You can see it, right? It's really powerful. The pretty girl's got the ice cream. Oh, that's great, right? It's like kind of burned into your brain. But I did...

Brian Funk (10:15.342)

fun. Yeah.

Jeff Leisawitz (10:27.431)

need to tell you about, you know, the parking lot in the park. Why does that matter? Unless it's relevant to the story. Oh, there were no spaces left so we had to park on the grass. Okay. That makes it more adventurous, a little bit dangerous, something like that. So what you really want to do is, you know, consider what the, what are you trying to say with the story or the lyric?

and then really consider does this add to the story? Does it deepen the character or push the narrative forward?

Brian Funk (11:09.07)

Mm -hmm.

Jeff Leisawitz (11:10.149)

And if it's not a hell yeah, then it's...

Brian Funk (11:15.438)

Okay.

Jeff Leisawitz (11:16.261)

So when old Taylor Swift says something about the scarf, there's a reason for that scarf and that line. I don't really know what song you're talking about, but she did it intentionally. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Brian Funk (11:25.902)

I don't remember too well, but I couldn't tell you the title. Yeah. That's a thoughtful thing. And I guess the ice cream cone with the sprinkles, that's fun. Like you said, sweet. And even this idea of cutting class on a nice day or on this bridge. It sounds like you're setting me up for a good story, a romantic story.

Jeff Leisawitz (11:47.365)

I am. Right. So that's another piece of the storytelling. The unexpected. Right. If we get what we expect, it's kind of boring. Right. If I said, oh, so we got the ice cream and we had this beautiful kiss in the middle of this day and, you know, everything was great. Okay. Nice, but boring. Right. You don't see the breakup coming.

And you know, I specifically told it. So it's like, oh, this is young love and everything's going great. Right? So that's also what we want to do in our songs and in our lyrics. Think about how can we not be so obvious about what we're saying?

We turn the story, the lyric, the line, the word.

Brian Funk (12:44.271)

Right. Maybe even a little deliberate misleading just to get to the, to set up the shock a little bit.

Jeff Leisawitz (12:52.453)

Exactly. So, you know, that's a great point, which is the stories, your songs that you write, a lot of times artists and songwriters believe that it has to be true, like factually true.

Don't let the facts get in the way of a good story, of a good line, of a good chorus. You're not a historian. You're not reporting for the Wall Street Journal or the New York Times or something. You're trying to convey some feeling, some idea through your story. So however you can do that to make it better, I say go for it.

Brian Funk (13:36.878)

Yeah, I agree. I'd even do that with grammar and things like that in lyrics. Sometimes the lyric fits better if you throw in a couple extra words or mix up the structure of the sentence a little bit.

Jeff Leisawitz (13:43.133)

Mm -hmm.

Jeff Leisawitz (13:54.717)

Absolutely, I was just driving the other day and...

Jeff Leisawitz (14:05.597)

heard some song with, you know, made up words. I'm like, this is perfect. Why limit yourself to the vocabulary that everybody else uses? Right? Yeah.

Brian Funk (14:14.318)

Yeah.

Yeah, I mean a lot of singing is just like emotive sounds. You know, yeah's and ah's and oo's and things like that.

Jeff Leisawitz (14:29.565)

Right, if it connects with the audience, if it connects first with you and feels authentic to you and then connects with the audience, well, that's what you're trying to do. You're trying to get the audience, you know, bobbing their head, jumping around, throwing shit at the wall, falling in love, you know, with you, driving fast, you know, I don't know, like what is it that you're trying to evoke in your audience? I mean, that's a good question to ask any songwriter to ask themselves.

Brian Funk (14:56.846)

Right, yeah, the purpose of the song in a way. What am I trying to get to? I find that's a really great guidepost is just emotional impact. You know, that's a lot of times how I make decisions mixing even or choosing notes or whether the song should have a longer verse or not. Like what's the emotional impact? I think that's really.

Kind of the whole point of a lot of music is just to play with the emotions to create emotions and feelings.

Jeff Leisawitz (15:28.669)

Absolutely, and that's what makes songwriters and musicians, producers, you know, this kind of magical creatures, right? We can conjure these emotions and express them in ways that the mere mortals kind of can't. Right? You know, the guy or the girl who wants to go out dancing on Saturday night, they get the vibe, but they can't, they can't create that thump.

They can't, you know, get the room moving by talking about it. Right? That's where the music comes in. We can craft that in a way that affects the world. It's cool.

Brian Funk (16:11.822)

Yeah, yeah, it's kind of a superpower. My first musical moment that sticks out to me was being a little kid, probably five or six, maybe seven, at the most, being angry about something. I'm mad, I'm just a rotten little kid and I storm away. And I put on some music and four minutes later I felt totally different.

Jeff Leisawitz (16:15.325)

Exactly.

Jeff Leisawitz (16:20.029)

Yeah.

Brian Funk (16:41.198)

And I came out of my room and I realized like, I'm supposed to be mad, you know? I'm supposed to be angry about something, but I'm not. And that song did it to me. And it struck me and I was like, there's something going on here. This has a power.

Jeff Leisawitz (16:57.949)

Music is medicine, right? It can change us. So let me ask you a question. So do you put on music to alter your mood, like the story you just told me, or do you typically put it on to match your mood? I'm feeling happy, so I put on a happy song.

Brian Funk (17:05.166)

Ahem.

Brian Funk (17:16.079)

You know, probably more often to match these days. I think it's when it comes on.

somewhere, you know, that I'm not in control of the music when it changes me more. I think a lot of times when I'm looking for something, and this might be why sometimes I scroll forever looking for like, what I want to hear today, I can have anything. It's too many choices. How do I feel? What am I in the mood for? And sometimes you almost don't even know.

Jeff Leisawitz (17:47.867)

Well, that's a really interesting question and almost a bigger question. If we're finding music to fit our mood and our vibe, we have to know what we feel. Because if we don't, we can't pick the right music, can we?

Brian Funk (18:02.318)

Yeah. Yeah. I think I run into that a lot now that I consider it. Yeah. Cause, uh, you know, whatever, if it's an activity you're doing or just like a time of day, you know, you can really make some serious mismatches if I'm trying to fall asleep and some heavy metal comes on, like doesn't fit. But.

Jeff Leisawitz (18:19.771)

Sure.

Jeff Leisawitz (18:24.091)

No, no, no.

Brian Funk (18:29.806)

Sometimes you're not aware exactly of where you want to go or where you are even.

Jeff Leisawitz (18:36.251)

Yeah, so from the composer's side, so you're talking about the listener's side now, but from the composer, the songwriter's side, that's also a really interesting question. Right, I'm going into the studio, or I'm gonna sit there with my notebook and write some lyrics. How do I really feel right now? What's really going on?

Brian Funk (18:40.334)

Yes.

Brian Funk (18:56.974)

I know this feeling well. You're making me laugh.

Jeff Leisawitz (18:59.451)

Yeah, well, yeah, and, yeah, and, you know, in my experience and really in my clients and, you know, associates, people that I've worked with over the years, many times we use the writing process more specifically with lyrics or just words to understand what we're feeling, to explore what we're feeling so that we can express what we're feeling.

feeling and that is what an artist does. You have to know. Yet you experience something, you internalize it, you interpret it, and then you express it.

Brian Funk (19:42.19)

Hmm. Well, that definitely happens too. Looking back at music I've made, I can see almost like phases I was going through or kind of like, oh, I didn't realize that was going on. But you know, maybe down the road, I'm like, I've been really feeling that way a lot. You know, but at the time you kind of, you almost feel like you're just throwing things together, picking out words and melodies and stuff.

Jeff Leisawitz (19:59.707)

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Brian Funk (20:09.614)

but it can be like an interesting self analyzing activity to just see what are you doing?

Jeff Leisawitz (20:14.587)

Absolutely. Yeah, and to do that you really have to be vulnerable with yourself. You have to be willing to almost go to sometimes, you know, scary or uncomfortable places within yourself. I had a poetry teacher, you know, when I was in college and she would talk about the turn of the poem.

What she meant was, we generally start out writing, we think we know what we're writing about. And we start writing, and we write, and then if you're doing it properly, somewhere in that poem or in that song, it's gonna shift into something that you didn't know.

you wrote it. And that's where the truth of the poem or the song comes from. And then from there, of course, you can go back and, you know, iterate on it.

Jeff Leisawitz (21:14.811)

I don't even know.

Brian Funk (21:23.406)

I hear no strange clicking noise. I kind of ta ta ta ta ta ta ta ta ta. Do you hear that?

Brian Funk (21:32.782)

It just started. Let me just make sure. I'm going to mute.

Yeah, not here.

Um, let me also look at something.

Jeff Leisawitz (21:45.275)

It could be my internet.

Jeff Leisawitz (21:52.635)

usually stops pretty quickly. Is it still there?

Brian Funk (21:57.806)

Yeah. It almost sounds like a person tapping on a keyboard, like a computer keyboard. Yeah, no, it's very, it's rhythmic.

Jeff Leisawitz (22:11.163)

Sample it, man, like, you might have a chance.

Brian Funk (22:12.878)

Yeah, yeah, we're recording it now. I wonder if there's anything we could do about that.

Brian Funk (22:24.974)

Gone.

Brian Funk (22:29.646)

Whatever you did there was perfect. Let me just make a note of that. Kind of just came in for a second and then went away.

Jeff Leisawitz (22:33.211)

Just kidding.

Brian Funk (22:42.094)

Okay.

Brian Funk (22:45.838)

All right, we'll go with it. Seems good.

Jeff Leisawitz (22:47.707)

Mm -hmm. All right.

Brian Funk (22:50.607)

It's an interesting way to learn about yourself through what you write. But you got to show up, I guess, for that kind of stuff, right? You can't just like think about it and hope it comes to you. You sort of have to go through the process of putting the words to the paper or playing the notes, playing the music. I think there's sort of like a traveling through the weeds or the tall grass forest kind of period.

Jeff Leisawitz (23:18.043)

Absolutely. Yeah, and you know, that's why you kind of can't rush the creative process. A lot of people sort of think like, I'm gonna just bust this thing out. Well, you can do it if you've got the skills, I suppose. But that doesn't mean you're gonna really tap in. Anybody can just write some chords, okay, fine. But can you find the chords? Can you feel the chords?

Because if you can't feel them, nobody else is gonna.

Brian Funk (23:52.878)

Right. Yeah, that's an interesting point. And this is a balance I'm trying to figure out, I guess, on some levels too. Because I do like moving fast. I think not overly considering too many decisions, going through it, not getting stuck in endless options. And I think that's the real problem, there's just too many choices. We have so many tools these days. But, um,

Sometimes you can blow past the phase of searching through things a little bit in the interest of charging to the finish line.

Jeff Leisawitz (24:35.803)

Sure.

Brian Funk (24:35.822)

It's a challenging balance to strike. Sometimes there's a lot of value in top speed and sometimes it's good to pull back a little too.

Jeff Leisawitz (24:48.507)

Exactly. I mean, one of the biggest problems, I would say, I mean, it's like a blessing and a curse kind of thing, is there are literally infinite choices in a decent recording studio at this point. In a laptop, in your freaking phone. I mean, one of the stories I used to tell my songwriting students when I was teaching at the college,

Brian Funk (25:04.494)

And a laptop. I mean, yeah.

Jeff Leisawitz (25:15.931)

You know, now you've got like the guitar amp emulators.

Right? So you can get one of these things and there's like a million sounds. You just plug the guitar in and just like, you can change it afterwards, this and that. It reminds me, the opposite of that reminds me of a story with Led Zeppelin. So one of their albums, they rented, I suppose, a castle in England somewhere. And they're like, we gotta get a cool guitar sound. And they're like, I don't know, what should we do? They ended up sticking an amp in a chimney.

in the fireplace and pointing it up the chimney and they had a guy at the top with a microphone down the chimney. Right? Well, number one, awesome story, right? Number two, right? But I mean, you can still do something like that, you know, minus the castle, I suppose, you know, but these days,

Brian Funk (25:58.862)

Right.

Brian Funk (26:03.182)

Right, the beauty of giant budgets to make records.

Jeff Leisawitz (26:18.011)

producers, songwriters, they don't really think like that. They think a lot more like, well, it's just easier to kind of dial through these million sounds. And it is, it's definitely easier, but it doesn't mean it's better. You know?

Brian Funk (26:25.71)

Mm -hmm.

Brian Funk (26:33.166)

Yeah. And that's, that's a decision, right? That's a choice to go through the trouble of getting someone to climb up on the top of a castle. Who knows how high that was. And there's, there's something that happens, I think too, when you kind of commit to an idea, you, you sort of become a little bit loyal to it and you, and you appreciate it more. Where, where's yeah, I have AmpliTube. I love it. It's great. You know, and I, but.

Jeff Leisawitz (26:43.515)

right here.

Jeff Leisawitz (26:53.275)

Hmm?

Jeff Leisawitz (26:59.835)

Yeah.

Brian Funk (27:01.294)

I'm always kind of wondering if the next sound is a little better. You know, and then maybe I star one that I like and then I'll just keep seeing. But if it's like just my amp, I've got two decent guitar amps, one or the other and go, or if I take the trouble to set it up in the castle's chimney, then it's like, we got to use that. Yeah, I got one chimney, kind of one shot at doing it right. And.

Jeff Leisawitz (27:05.243)

Exactly.

Jeff Leisawitz (27:24.027)

You got one chimney. Yeah. Yeah, exactly.

Brian Funk (27:30.734)

You know, we gotta use that one, just stick it in there somewhere.

Jeff Leisawitz (27:35.163)

Exactly. If nothing else, let's put it this way, 50 years later we're talking about it. Nobody's going to be talking about which dial you changed on AmpliTube, you know what I mean? So again, stories, right? That's the story of Led Zeppelin's guitar sound. That's cool, right? Where we lose so much of that when it's just software and a million patches and tweaks and stuff like that.

Brian Funk (27:45.102)

Yeah, for real, right.

Brian Funk (27:53.326)

Yeah.

Jeff Leisawitz (28:02.875)

I almost want to, you know, go to some artist and be like, okay, you can't use any of this shit. Right? Like make a record like it's 1975. See what you can do. Don't rely on all this.

Brian Funk (28:13.294)

Mm -hmm.

Brian Funk (28:18.894)

Yeah. It's, it's a fun process. I have a eight track reel to reel machine just over here on the side. And with my band, we have everything set up. It is going through the computer. Stuff's getting processed, but then I just run it right to the tape machine. So we got the drum sounding nice. And then those went to two tracks on the machine and then everything else went right to the machine. And it was so much fun. And.

Jeff Leisawitz (28:25.947)

Nice. Nice.

Brian Funk (28:49.326)

It moved really fast. And yeah, all of those choices like, you know, which compressor, which of the, it was like, no, just we got to get it sound as good as we can. And I really enjoyed that limited streamlined process where there just wasn't as much to think about. So we were forced to get creative in like other ways, you know, microphone placements and, you know, we didn't use the chimney. I didn't think of that, but.

Jeff Leisawitz (29:14.459)

All right.

Well, give me a call when you got that going on, man.

Brian Funk (29:20.078)

Yeah, right. But it leads you into those more adventurous situations. Then, well, you know, we've got a really cool reverb plug -in. We probably could sound like it. It should probably sound better objectively, but, you know.

Jeff Leisawitz (29:33.851)

Back in the day, I was doing a recording and we ended up getting one of those like aluminum trash cans. You know, those like old, right? And we, what did we do? We like stuck the, stuck the kick drum mic in there. You know, it's like stuff like this. It's just so much more fun. Really. It's a different way to be creative. Yeah.

Brian Funk (29:43.15)

Hmm. Yeah.

Brian Funk (29:55.022)

Yeah.

Brian Funk (29:58.51)

Mm -hmm.

Right. Yeah, let's see what happens if.

Jeff Leisawitz (30:05.179)

How can we mess with the sound or create a sound that is really unique? Even if it's like sampling and stuff like that. Go find and record in the world really weird sounds. Then come back and make a beat out of it.

Brian Funk (30:27.15)

I think that's a lot of fun.

Jeff Leisawitz (30:29.083)

It is a, I don't know, yeah.

Brian Funk (30:30.415)

You know, we, again, we have access to everything. Pretty much every drum sound you can imagine, even like the John Bonham kit, you know, that that's out there somewhere. But yeah, the random things you'll collect on a walk through the park today, even compared to tomorrow or a week from now, that's a unique, interesting collection that only you could get.

Jeff Leisawitz (30:39.035)

Mm -hmm. Shit.

Brian Funk (30:57.486)

And then how you process it and deal with it is also another layer of putting it through your own filter machine of your mind and creativity.

Jeff Leisawitz (31:10.715)

Yeah, yeah, that stuff is fun. One of the ones I remember from years ago was I always liked the sound of striking a match where the match kind of explodes there for a second, fizzes, yeah. So I just remember sitting there in the apartment, like lighting all these matches in front of the microphone. Trying not to burn the apartment down, yes.

Brian Funk (31:25.966)

This is almost, yeah.

Brian Funk (31:38.222)

Right. Yeah. But a cool thing, you know? Like cool. See what happens. A lot of stages to that sound now that I think about it. There's the kind of swipe, and it kind of pops and then sizzles a little bit. Yeah. How so? Was it like percussion or something else?

Jeff Leisawitz (31:43.195)

Yeah.

Jeff Leisawitz (31:53.851)

Yeah, it was a cool sound. I used it in a track. I used it with percussion. So I think I used it like in a drum fill where, you know, maybe pieces of the strike were kind of coordinated with.

Brian Funk (32:20.494)

Right. Yeah, that's fun. And again, like interesting story. There are a few things, you know, when I think back the, of all the music I've done, it's always those kind of adventurous little things that stick out. You know, the thousandth time I've plugged my guitar directly into my interface and uploaded a preset or something. They don't really stand out much. Maybe the first time when I was like, wow, like listen to all these sounds I got.

Jeff Leisawitz (32:21.051)

Cool.

Jeff Leisawitz (32:26.523)

Mm -hmm.

Brian Funk (32:49.678)

But other than that, it's useful. It's nice to have, but you can definitely bring a little, you know, sass to your music that way and a little story.

Jeff Leisawitz (33:01.019)

It almost makes me, so you know, as a creativity coach, life coach, I'm always like thinking like, how can we do things differently? How can we change stuff? So like, how about this for a studio project. Create a song and make as many stories around the creation of the song as you can.

So it's not really about the song, it's about the stories of making the song. So like I said, striking the match or putting the guitar amp in the chimney. Like what else could you maniacs out there come up with? How many stories? What could you do on the street? What could you do, like this Seattle band from years ago, the presidents of the USA.

Brian Funk (33:43.566)

Right.

Brian Funk (33:55.63)

Hell yeah. Sure. Lump and Peaches, yeah. It was a fun band.

Jeff Leisawitz (33:56.379)

You remember those guy peaches and all that? Lump, yeah, right. So I knew those guys back. Yeah, fun band. They're like, we don't wanna play regular guitars and basses. So they kinda like made like it was one bass string and you know, something like this.

Brian Funk (34:10.35)

Yeah, they had like a three string guitar with like a bass string and a couple. Yeah, it was pretty interesting. Very minimal band. Even the drum kit, I think was just like a kick and a snare and a high.

Jeff Leisawitz (34:14.395)

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Jeff Leisawitz (34:22.971)

Yeah, but interesting stories. So, you know, studio musicians out there or live players out there, maybe your next song could be how many stories can you create in writing and recording this thing? And please email me and tell me them because I'm psyched already.

Brian Funk (34:27.118)

Yes.

Brian Funk (34:38.478)

Hmm. I like that. Yeah.

Yeah, I think I'm going to borrow that because I started doing these weekly prompts for songwriting, the weekly music mission, and that would be a good one. You know, just...

Jeff Leisawitz (34:52.923)

Yeah? Cool.

Oh yeah, I'll totally give me a call when you get some of these going. I definitely want to hear about this.

Brian Funk (34:59.854)

Yeah.

Oh yeah. I mean, that's, you know, what I like about that too is I just felt it happen in my mind where I stopped getting concerned about almost the, really the outcome, but musical stuff, you know, and I don't know, maybe this is part of my own musical insecurity where I feel like I need to kind of always do something clever. Like, is this smart enough? Am I doing something interesting here with the

chords or whatever it is, even though most of the music I listened to was pretty straightforward. But taking it, the focus to like, oh, maybe I'll like, you know, the bathtub resonates kind of funny when you bang it with something like that's, I'm going to use that. Yeah. Yeah. Now I'm not, it's almost like I'm not responsible. You know, I'm, I'm doing all these experiments and I'm

Jeff Leisawitz (35:46.779)

When I stubbed my toe on it, yes, exactly.

Brian Funk (35:59.534)

letting those things decide how the music comes out a little bit.

Jeff Leisawitz (36:04.475)

Yeah. And it, it, you know, so I used to be a music journalist when I first moved to Seattle in the nineties. I was a music journalist for the radio station. I'll say the radio station that broke grunge music to the world. And we were working on a little thing at the time. We weren't sure if it was going to happen. It was called a web site. Yes, it turned out to be caught on. So as.

Brian Funk (36:12.462)

Great place to be. Timing, right?

Brian Funk (36:30.574)

So you invented the internet.

Jeff Leisawitz (36:32.635)

I did not invent it, but I did show up early. So as a music journalist, it was always about the story of the band. How can I write about a band in an interesting way? Having a radio single, that's not a story. Who cares? Right?

Sometimes the lyrics of the songs, if they were good, had a story, but the really interesting stories were things that the band was doing. So for instance, one that I particularly remember, there was a band called Bicycle, and these are three guys, and I shit you not, they were really into bikes, and they somehow got their whole little...

set of instruments and stuff onto bikes. They biked across the country with their equipment, playing music. Like, it's insane. They got into Time magazine with that. And it was not because they were a great band. It was because they were biking across the country. It's a great story. Right? So it makes me, you know, everybody's like searching for attention, you know, online and everything like that.

Brian Funk (37:32.622)

Wow.

Brian Funk (37:39.15)

Hmm.

Jeff Leisawitz (37:48.219)

You gotta have a great story. What's your story? What's interesting about you? Nope, you know, quite frankly, we've heard all the beats, you know, this and that. It's all, you know, it might be good, but it's all, you know, there's millions of songs out there. What's your story around it?

Brian Funk (38:05.262)

Right.

Yeah, and there's so much great music too. I mean, even just the great stuff you could never listen to that comes out. I read somewhere that like 120 ,000 songs get uploaded to streaming every day.

Jeff Leisawitz (38:23.067)

Oh good God.

Brian Funk (38:24.974)

I was doing the math and that's like some millions of songs per year, you know, to listen to those, if those were like two minutes each, you'd be doing it for 200 years to get through this one year or one day or something crazy, you know? But that's, I guess, where it matters, you know, because which band am I going to listen to? Which song am I going to listen to when they're all, I've got to...

lot of great songs to choose from. But let me hear the guys that bicycle across the country. Yeah, what's their deal?

Jeff Leisawitz (39:01.979)

Yeah, who are these maniacs? Right? Or another great thing that you can do as a musician to kind of create a story around you is to think about what you really believe in.

What do you really care about outside of yourself? Is it the environment? Is it some political cause? Is it something like this? How can you attach your ideas to something bigger and support or express around that? And when you do that, you can see plenty of examples where this works quite well.

in getting attention and telling stories and creating stories.

Brian Funk (39:46.606)

Right.

Yeah, it's a great thing to think about. And that's an interesting aspect too, from the journalist perspective to sort of help them, help you kind of, right?

Jeff Leisawitz (40:01.147)

Exactly, because I'll tell you what, 99 % of the musicians and producers out there are not.

Brian Funk (40:09.838)

Hmm. Yeah.

Jeff Leisawitz (40:11.771)

Right, they're just like, here's my stuff. They're like, okay.

Brian Funk (40:14.51)

Yeah, that's not enough.

Jeff Leisawitz (40:18.587)

It's not enough. Sadly. And you know, when you're talking about the uploads to the streamers and stuff, back in the 90s when we're still making records on tape, I was making an album with a band called Tumble here in Seattle. And you know, I was all into the music biz and stuff. And I remember reading back in the late 90s before computers came in with all this.

Brian Funk (40:18.862)

Sadly.

Jeff Leisawitz (40:45.019)

There were something like 20 ,000 independent albums released in a year in the US compared to, what do you say, 120 ,000 songs a day.

So that's how much the market has changed.

Brian Funk (41:03.086)

Right. Yeah, I guess it was a little harder back then.

Jeff Leisawitz (41:09.243)

was a lot harder and a lot more expensive.

Brian Funk (41:11.854)

Yeah, my high school band, we recorded four songs and put it on CD by the time like right about when we graduated just before and that was a big deal for kids like us, you know in 1998 to have a CD. A year or two later, it made no difference, you know, it wasn't and it wasn't enough to make a difference for anyone but our friends really. Like anyone outside

Jeff Leisawitz (41:25.851)

Oh yeah.

Jeff Leisawitz (41:38.139)

Right, right.

Brian Funk (41:40.366)

that was actually into music, into the music industry at all, it was like, had seen billions of CDs. It was no longer a feather in your cap, but as a kid at that age it was, but that went away really fast. A year later, it didn't matter, everyone had them.

But it's something that I think about a little bit with AI and generative music, that that's never gonna have the story. Well, maybe if someone will figure out a way, but I've said this before, if I'm repeating myself to everyone, sorry, but AI music is not gonna make me wear ripped jeans in finals like I did when I was 14 and Nirvana came out. That was like a thing, like, oh, this is cool. This is...

Jeff Leisawitz (42:19.547)

Hahaha!

Jeff Leisawitz (42:23.611)

Right? Right?

Brian Funk (42:27.502)

of rejection of something that's been forced down our throats that we didn't really like anyway. So you latched onto it. But the idea of like, kind of just like fabricated stuff, which I mean, a lot of music has felt that way already anyway, even with artists behind it, but more so now like, who cares? It's kind of the feeling.

Jeff Leisawitz (42:55.355)

Well, I mean, it's interesting because musicians are always going to keep making music. Okay, fine. But the business of music, it's a business and they want to do everything as cheaply and as profitably as they can. So if you can buy a computer...

use some software or whatever and create a pop star where you don't have to pay them, they don't have to, you know, they're not gonna have to go to rehab in the middle of the tour, you know, all this kind of stuff. You can guarantee it's gonna happen, right, from the business side. It's only a matter of time. They've already done stuff like that in Japan and maybe Korea and things. Yeah.

Brian Funk (43:20.622)

Right? Yeah.

Brian Funk (43:26.51)

Right.

Brian Funk (43:30.126)

Yeah, I think there was an attempt at a rapper too that really kind of backfired and didn't go too well. But these are the first efforts.

Jeff Leisawitz (43:43.163)

But the human heartbeat is definitely at the core of what music is. The AI is going to be able to emulate that sonically. It can play a synthesizer or now even guitar parts. I don't know if you saw that in Rolling Stone. There's some company that, this is ready to go. It's almost ready for prime time where somebody on an app is just going to be able to...

Brian Funk (44:08.366)

Really? Yeah.

Jeff Leisawitz (44:12.635)

to a text prompt, the one that they said in Rolling Stone was something like, play an acoustic Mississippi blues guitar with an old male singer singing about whatever. And it happened.

Brian Funk (44:21.903)

out.

Brian Funk (44:27.022)

Yeah.

Yeah, I saw that. That was pretty crazy. And I would have never known that wasn't real. And even sounded like an old recording, you know, had like that flavor. Yeah, that's, like you said, it is pretty much ready for prime time.

Jeff Leisawitz (44:47.675)

Yeah, so musicians out there, get your stories together and get your live show happening because recorded music is, it's already a tough deal. It's gonna be a lot tougher.

Brian Funk (44:58.83)

Yeah, for real, we gotta do that. Get it together. So how do we tell a good story?

Jeff Leisawitz (45:09.371)

How do we tell a good story?

Brian Funk (45:10.35)

You mentioned, I guess, the hero's journey. It's a decent place to start. Do you want to get into that for anyone that's not familiar?

Jeff Leisawitz (45:13.179)

Mm -hmm.

Sure, yeah, yeah. Yeah. So the Hero's Journey is a sort of template of storytelling created by Joseph Campbell. He was a guy who studied all these myths from around the world and kind of came up with this idea of what the Hero's Journey is. And essentially, it is, it starts with your hero and they're living their normal life.

whatever's happening. And then something happens in their life, which in the hero's journey they call the call to adventure, where it's like, hmm, is the hero going to choose to step forward into this adventure? And then the answer is yes, right? The hero has to go on the adventure for the story to happen. And by the way, this is a good thing to remember in your...

actual personal life. Right? Your stories are going to get better if you choose the adventure. If you don't choose the adventure, it's going to, you're never going to change. You're never going to.

Brian Funk (46:20.43)

Right.

Brian Funk (46:28.142)

Good point.

Jeff Leisawitz (46:28.673)

of yourself. So anyway, you choose the adventure and this is where things get difficult. Right? You have some goal that you're after and you're gonna come up against challenges. They're gonna get worse and worse, bigger and bigger. You're gonna encounter allies and enemies along the way. And then eventually...

is the breakthrough. And the breakthrough is the shift between, on two levels. One is the external and the other is the internal. And when both of these switch, the character changes and they return to the world, a different world, a new world. They bring something back that is different and valuable. And this is essentially the hero's journey.

Might sound complicated, but it's really not that complicated. It just simply means we have to move forward, both in our personal lives and let's say in your song lyrics, and choose difficult things and get past them and then we'll...

change in the internal world and external. Let's take Star Wars, the first Star Wars, which is a good example because basically everybody knows it. So the external change, well first of all the call to adventure, Luke gets, you know, the droids show up and you know, here's Ben Kenobi, right, and he's like, oh what the hell is going on here? That's the call to adventure and then he's got to leave his home.

small planet. He's like, I gotta get out of here. Call to adventure. All kinds of crazy stuff happens. Blah, blah, blah. Kind of gets to the climax, the very edge, which is they're shooting down the Death Star. And he's got one shot left. And what does he do? He turns the freaking scope off. Right? So that's an internal change. He's like, I believe in the Force. I believe it. I got one chance and I believe it.

Jeff Leisawitz (48:38.016)

Makes no sense, but he does it. And then he hits the target and bam, saves the day. That's the external change. Right? So these are sort of the elements of story. Can you condense that into a couple of verses and a chorus? Sure.

Jeff Leisawitz (49:00.64)

You can do it. You just have to know what your story is and you gotta move forward with that in some way that shows the change and shows the challenge. Yeah.

Brian Funk (49:01.486)

Yeah.

Brian Funk (49:08.43)

Hmm. Right. Yeah, that's a funny format too, because it just shows up everywhere. This idea of like the hero, they often reject it at first. They're not sure. All that self -doubt. You're right, even when it's like a big bad guy, a Darth Vader evil villain that they have to overcome, there's always something internal that has to happen as well.

Jeff Leisawitz (49:37.632)

Exactly. And the reason why this is such a powerful template in storytelling, or in songwriting, is because it is a distillation of our lives. Right? We're all, just like what you're talking about before, we're all going to have specific details to our lives. No one...

lives the exact same life as anybody else. It's impossible. Right? But we also have similar themes. These are themes of trust and respect and making a living for yourself and love and healing and like all these big things that every human encounters in one way or another. So that's why this template sort of works with everything. And your job as a storyteller is well, what kind of stories do you want to tell? And how do you...

tell them with craft and style. One of the ones that I, or a couple that I used again in my songwriting classes, and this is gonna date me even further, but Jack and Diane, you know, John Cougar Mellencamp, right, he's talking about these high school kids having these dreams and then the chorus says, you know, life goes on even after the thrill of living is gone. He's like, whoa, that's like...

some wisdom, you know, it sort of implies that the youth is not going to last, which it doesn't for anybody. Or another great one, you know, don't stop believing, journey. You know, just a small town girl living in a lonely world. Right? There's a story for you. Don't stop believing that pushes it forward, like you got to keep going.

Brian Funk (51:16.622)

Right.

Brian Funk (51:20.206)

That's an interesting one too, because when that comes on, everybody relates to it. City girls, guys, like they all relate to this idea. You don't have to be a small town girl, you know?

Jeff Leisawitz (51:36.672)

It's fascinating and I've looked at this song and I'll try to remember it here without screwing it up. Small town girl in a lonely world taking the midnight train, she's gotta get out. City boy in South Detroit, he's gotta get out. So in those two freaking lines, you're talking about men and women, rural and urban. That's everybody. In two lines.

Brian Funk (52:01.23)

Alright, you've covered us all. Alright.

Jeff Leisawitz (52:04.896)

Like you want to write a classic song, do that.

Brian Funk (52:09.838)

Yeah, it is. It still amazes me that that song still strikes people so hard, but you can understand, you know, that, like you said, the universal themes are really what we're going at. That's where we connect. You know, our different stories are just kind of like our own paths, but we all wind up in that, whether it's loss or love or victory or defeat.

We all get a taste. Right? Yeah.

Jeff Leisawitz (52:38.752)

Some will win, some will lose. Some are born to sing the blues. Right? It's like, who hasn't thought about that? Am I lucky? Am I a loser? Am I destined for this? Are greater things like going to be mine? Anybody who's got a freaking brain. Mm -hmm. Yeah.

Brian Funk (52:57.71)

Yep, the self -doubt, right?

Brian Funk (53:04.654)

So in your workshops, are you getting people, I believe you do like exercises to generate ideas and get started. Anything interesting you think might be useful to the musicians, songwriters out there?

Jeff Leisawitz (53:12.672)

Sure.

Jeff Leisawitz (53:19.136)

Well, I love the idea that we came up with before, which is create a song based on the stories of creating the song. I think that's cool. What else could you do? A lot of your audience is around production. Yes, music production.

Brian Funk (53:21.518)

Yeah.

Brian Funk (53:25.55)

Yeah, that's a great one.

Jeff Leisawitz (53:42.24)

What emotion are you feeling? What is authentic to you? And how can you create or capture that sound? Right? So instead of, you know, dialing through AmpliTube or one of these things. Okay, I'm feeling, I'm feeling angry. I'm gonna take my little field recorder and go smash shit in the alley. Interesting.

Right? Very different way to approach it. Like this whole thing is, you know, it's about creativity, it's about expression. But we often tend to...

you know, kind of express in a similar way. Like maybe here's one. Come up with ideas, write down words. Just write down a whole list of words, verbs, you know, adjectives, nouns, whatever you want. Once you have this, pick one and then go find or create a sound for that.

Jeff Leisawitz (54:48.64)

Right? The word is flower. Okay, go find or make the sound of a flower. What the hell is that gonna be? I don't know. But, you know, that's your job. You're the creative here.

Brian Funk (55:02.094)

Yeah, that's cool. I think lots of different results.

Jeff Leisawitz (55:04.)

thinking about it differently. You know, there's that deck of, yeah, different results. This kind of thing reminds me of that card deck that Brian Eno made years ago to stimulate creativity. It's basically just like, forget all the things you think you know about what you're doing and force yourself into something really weird. Like one of the things he...

Brian Funk (55:13.582)

Mm -hmm.

Jeff Leisawitz (55:30.464)

he would say with bands is, okay, you're the guitar player, you're playing drums. What? You know, you play bass, you're singing. Wait, what? Yeah, let's just see what happens. Flipping around, stuff like that. Play it left handed, play the guitar left handed.

Brian Funk (55:39.374)

Yeah, flip it around.

Brian Funk (55:47.918)

It's one of my favorite times of all my band practices is when I get to play the drums for a little while. You know, a lot of our ideas are born out of that actually too, which is kind of funny. But we've had a couple songs get developed out of those jams. There's something, even like, I usually have the mic as well when I'm playing and you sing rhythmically when you're hitting drums, you know, I kind of like.

Jeff Leisawitz (56:06.08)

Yeah.

Jeff Leisawitz (56:16.864)

Sure.

Brian Funk (56:17.774)

Very staccato and it makes things come out of me in a different way. You know, when you're just blabbering and jamming.

Jeff Leisawitz (56:28.32)

Right, so that's, you know, that's another gateway to different kind of creativity and it's also a story. Right? What if you play the keyboard with one hand? What if you taped two of your fingers together and did it? You know? This is like, something weird's gonna happen. You know, they say Jerry Garcia in Grateful Dead, he somehow lost one of his fingers.

Brian Funk (56:35.022)

Right. Right. Yeah.

Brian Funk (56:42.03)

Mm. Yeah, that's true. It's great. I didn't think of that.

Brian Funk (56:55.246)

Did it?

Jeff Leisawitz (56:55.648)

when he was a kid. Yeah, I mean this guy's like one of the greatest guitar players around. And you know, it's like, yeah, he's missing a finger. Hmm, is it possible that he came up with weird different cool stuff because he just didn't have that finger?

Brian Funk (57:00.526)

I have no idea.

Brian Funk (57:12.014)

Yeah, I'm sure. Right? Like, I would play different if I didn't have, I guess. Hmm. That must be like his, uh, picking hand, I guess. I don't know. Yeah. Well, even, you know, like you said, the don't let the truth get in the way of a good story is a great example of, uh, um, what that, that does, you know?

Jeff Leisawitz (57:15.584)

Right, exactly. Yeah, you sure would.

Jeff Leisawitz (57:25.856)

I don't know. I don't know which one.

Brian Funk (57:41.614)

Like now I'm going to look into that. I want to know what's that story. Well, the, uh, who was it as the like finger famous guitarist? I can't think of his name right now. Metal. Get the fingertips. Uh, geez, isn't it black Sabbath guitar player? Um, uh, I don't know why this is slipping my mind, but he's missing his fingertips. He's got these like kind of things.

Jeff Leisawitz (57:46.944)

Yeah.

Jeff Leisawitz (58:07.808)

out.

Brian Funk (58:10.254)

little metal fingertips. Yeah, I'll have to, I'm drawing a blank on it right now. Yeah, don't tell me something weird. That sounds true.

Jeff Leisawitz (58:12.672)

Oh, yeah, I don't know that one.

Jeff Leisawitz (58:18.048)

Ask AI.

Jeff Leisawitz (58:24.96)

I agree.

Brian Funk (58:26.03)

There's something that you put in that I think sums up a lot of what you're saying. This is a line from your book where you say you want to intersect your personal perspective with the universal themes of human experience. And I think that's a lot of what we're getting at here is how to see... Sometimes that's hard to see, I guess, too, like how your own person... Like what you said to me just about like me...

a band switching around and playing the drums, like there's the story. Didn't occur to me as like being story worthy. So that's a, it's a great thing to keep in mind that we're all having that in all of our experience that we're all going through these universal things, but sometimes you have to almost step back and recognize it.

Jeff Leisawitz (59:19.968)

Yeah. Yeah, for sure.

Brian Funk (59:24.814)

I wanted to ask you a little bit about this idea of golden repair. You spoke a bit about the book. And there was a Japanese term for that that I didn't put down, but how do you say that?

Jeff Leisawitz (59:41.76)

Kintsugi. Kintsugi, it's a Japanese term for golden repair and it refers to mending something and it becomes more beautiful in that its character has sort of been broken and put apart, put together again. So, you know, the typical...

Brian Funk (59:42.734)

suge.

Jeff Leisawitz (01:00:09.152)

image of this is like, you know, this beautiful handmade vase that gets, you know, cracked down the side, a couple of pieces come flying off. So they put it together with seams of gold, right? And you look at this thing, you're like, wow, it's even more beautiful because it's not perfect. Right? So that's a, that's a term in Japanese. And when I heard this, I'm like, wow.

That's cool for a bunch of vases, but it's even cooler for us as humans because we are all, we all get battered and cracked and sometimes broken through the course of our lives. And then the question is, what are we going to do with that? Right? If we do not heal ourselves, well, or,

attempt to heal ourselves, well it's gonna get worse, right? Your heart's gonna break, you're gonna quit, you're gonna whatever, it can go really south. But on the other hand, when we heal ourselves, when we go through that hero's journey, we become more beautiful. The seams of gold are within our hearts, within our souls, you know, that kind of thing, right? When you understand how precious love is,

You know, because your heart's been broken, you're going to treat it, you're going to see it in a very different way. Stuff like this. So in the book and, and you know, here, like how are, how are we as individuals broken or have been damaged and how can we, how can we heal that? How can we mend that? And then how can we express that in a story? Because again,

Brian Funk (01:01:26.158)

Mm.

Brian Funk (01:01:48.59)

Mm -hmm.

Jeff Leisawitz (01:01:51.36)

You know, universal themes, right? Everybody's got it. You can't find one human in life who's never been damaged and hurt. It's not gonna happen.

Brian Funk (01:02:01.966)

Right. Those are usually very formative experiences too. They make you who you are. And it's a good point. I think that's probably the benefit of getting your heart broken, right? Because then you realize how fresh, precious and fragile things are. And you maybe play a little more carefully next time or more gently. But it changes you.

and how you approach things. But there's some of that too, even in some of the things we have. Like you get like that ding on your guitar at your concert. You're kind of like, yeah, it's kind of cool. It's got some character now. It's like, yeah, you want to keep that thing in beautiful shape if you can. But you can look at that and be like, yeah, it was the time we played whatever. It's a crazy day.

Jeff Leisawitz (01:02:45.952)

Yeah, yeah.

Jeff Leisawitz (01:02:59.008)

I was in college, this is a great one, one of my early recording stories, in college in a studio, guitar player, this amazing guitar player, I was playing bass, and playing the song, it's a rock song, he's kind of doing the solo, and in the middle of the solo, his guitar shorts out.

And he literally bangs it with his, he smacks it with his hand and it comes on in this like sort of jarring thing and then he just starts playing again. And we're done and I'm like, you know, let's do it again. He's like, no, I listened to this, you know, 35 years later. I'm like, oh my God, that's so beautiful.

Brian Funk (01:03:27.47)

Hmm.

Brian Funk (01:03:31.598)

You like that.

Brian Funk (01:03:37.134)

Yeah, right.

Jeff Leisawitz (01:03:38.624)

Like, again, it's the story. It reminds me of, like, we're in there, it's so exciting, the equipment's not working, you know, bam, but we pull it off.

Brian Funk (01:03:48.686)

Hmm.

Yeah, that's a good point. And that, of all the guitars you've done and recorded, you know, that's one that sticks out. It's got that thing that happened to it. And you could polish that away easy enough, but...

Jeff Leisawitz (01:03:59.808)

Exactly. All right. I had...

Oh, especially now. Oh yeah. I had a job many years ago.

Brian Funk (01:04:10.158)

We got the clicking again, I'm sorry. I think it, okay. That was it. Just wanted to, yeah, just wanted to contribute, I guess. I'm sorry. Go ahead.

Jeff Leisawitz (01:04:18.656)

stopped.

Jeff Leisawitz (01:04:22.336)

So years ago, I had a job, a great job, I've had some great jobs in the music biz. This one was reviewing what they used to call in print catalog albums. So not new stuff, but things that were still selling.

So I went to my boss, this was for this early internet thing, and he's like, come up with 100 of these albums and you can go review them. So I looked through my collection and I came back with 300. And this is stuff like The Beatles and The Stones and Zeppelin and Billy Joel and Tom Petty and it's like all this stuff. It's like so great. And it's still selling.

So, so the job was, I spent like six months listening, listening to these albums and reviewing them. I've heard them all a million times, but when I listen to them, I'm like, wow, there are full on errors in a lot of these songs.

Right? The beat's a little off, like clearly off. The guitar doesn't quite catch it. Right? But these are the classic songs. This is, if you fixed it, it would sound weird. Right? So again, kintsugi. Right? It makes it more human. And by the way, the flip side of this is what all the digital recording is screwing with. Right? You can make it perfect. So almost everybody does.

Brian Funk (01:05:39.982)

Hmm.

Jeff Leisawitz (01:05:55.872)

Right? And then you lose that humanity. And now you've got, of course, your...

Brian Funk (01:05:58.222)

Right.

Jeff Leisawitz (01:06:03.84)

sort of screw with the quantization human eyes or whatever, right? Make it perfect and then make it not perfect. You're like, okay, great.

Brian Funk (01:06:06.926)

Yeah.

Brian Funk (01:06:10.766)

Right. Artificially humanized. Which I do love that you can do that, but yeah, it's a tricky thing. I think, especially if you're working alone to know where that line is, you know, cause you're trying to be emotional and expressive, but you're also trying to get it right. Sometimes it's just nice to have somebody say like, no, no, no, no, no, don't record over that. Keep that.

Jeff Leisawitz (01:06:40.32)

Well, it reminds me of that Beatles song, Twist and Shout, you know, one of their old songs. John's voice is like destroyed on that song. And they're like, it sounds awesome. They're like, we're keeping it. They were singing all day. He was singing all day. That was like the last song they did. And if they would have recorded it, you know, if they would have done a better version the next week, it wouldn't have been better.

Brian Funk (01:06:48.622)

Yeah, it sounds awesome.

Yeah.

Brian Funk (01:07:06.575)

Yeah, yeah, that like wear and tear comes through. It's just raw and emotional. Yeah, that's how emotions are, you know? You're crying and there's snot coming out of your nose and like, you know, your face is all messed up, but that's how it is. You know, it's not pretty.

Jeff Leisawitz (01:07:29.664)

It's not pretty, just make sure you got the right level on that mic.

Brian Funk (01:07:33.87)

Yeah, right. It's a funny thing. I want to thank you for something you put in my head that stuck with me for a while. It was about the inner critic. When we were talking about your last book, which was that not to fight it.

I don't know if that was in the book or not, but it was something you said. But not to fight it, I almost see it as like a collaborator. I think it's a...

Jeff Leisawitz (01:08:04.544)

It is a collaborator. It just doesn't look like one. It's a collaborator in disguise. The reason we all have our inner critic, right? You suck, you're not good enough, blah, blah, blah, all that kind of stuff. We've all heard it, right? Full -time little bitch in there, right?

Brian Funk (01:08:09.294)

Huh.

Brian Funk (01:08:19.854)

Yeah, full time position in the mind. Yeah.

Jeff Leisawitz (01:08:26.304)

But the truth is that part of ourselves is there for a reason and the reason is positive. The reason is to help us get better. When we feed the inner critic with negativity, you know, shut up inner critic, you know, like that kind of stuff. All it really does is give it energy.

and then it's louder and you feel worse about yourself, et cetera, et cetera. So the trick is you surprise this little bugger first by naming it, you know, I like to call mine Mr. Craptacular, the Craptacular babbler, right? And then you love it. Thank you for these thoughts. I don't really want to hear it right now, so I'll let you know when I want to hear it.

And suddenly these sort of internal pieces start to align in a different way. When you get that going, you can use this energy more for your goals, whatever they happen to be.

Brian Funk (01:09:37.71)

It's a cool way to think about it because we can over identify with those thoughts. And what you're really doing is just almost just compartmentalizing it and identifying it as these are just thoughts I'm having. It's, and by giving it this like kind of cantankerous personality, you can, okay, I hear you, but we're not going to pay attention to this right now. We're going to.

go somewhere else with their thoughts here.

Jeff Leisawitz (01:10:09.248)

Exactly, except for one tweak on what you said. We're not compartmentalizing it. We're integrating it. Right? When it's the other, when it's outside of yourself, that's when it gets the power. And that's when it screws you up. When it's like, oh, you are a part of me and you're trying to help me. Come here, friend. Right? That's really different. It loses its power. Its negative power.

Brian Funk (01:10:30.67)

Right.

Brian Funk (01:10:34.958)

Hmm. Hmm. Almost like collaborating with a group of people and there's one that's always going to say, ugh, I don't like it. But it is a valuable perspective to hear sometimes. I guess that really saves us a lot of dangers in the real world, stops us from doing stupid things.

Jeff Leisawitz (01:10:52.32)

Yes.

Brian Funk (01:11:05.198)

Sometimes, I guess, making fools of ourselves too.

Jeff Leisawitz (01:11:05.728)

Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, it's like the inner critic is part of us. It's never going away, right? But how can we relate to it in a different way that is more valuable and useful for us and what we want and how we feel? Yeah.

Brian Funk (01:11:27.343)

It's an important thing and it's stuck with me. You know, since we've spoke, I've thought about that a lot just in like, when it comes up to just, okay, that's, so it's time for you to speak up. Okay. Thanks for your input. Right. Maybe later. Yeah. Right. Yes.

Jeff Leisawitz (01:11:41.755)

Alright, thank you very much. Okay, we'll see you next week. Yeah, yeah, yeah, maybe later. I'll take a note. Thank you. Yeah.

Brian Funk (01:11:52.751)

Well, cool. So the book is called The Magical Impact of Storytelling. Jeff Lysowitz. It's available anywhere, right? Amazon, you can find this.

Jeff Leisawitz (01:12:06.427)

Amazon would be the place to be but yeah, you can probably get it anywhere.

Brian Funk (01:12:09.934)

Right. So we can send people there and I think we can also send them to your website too.

Jeff Leisawitz (01:12:17.211)

You should definitely send them to my website, where I would be more than happy to do a complimentary coaching session with people. Yeah, I mean, I help people all over the world on Zoom, all kinds of creatives, musicians, you know, rock stars, which I can't really name here.

Brian Funk (01:12:24.43)

Wow.

Jeff Leisawitz (01:12:38.491)

screenwriters, advertising people, authors, podcasters, really anybody. So in the creative process, in the business aspects, really, I mean, I've kind of been around, let's put it that way. So I'd be happy to talk to anybody. Just sign up on the website and find the time and yeah.

Brian Funk (01:12:50.606)

Mm -hmm.

Brian Funk (01:12:58.094)

That's incredibly generous of you. Very nice. Cool. That's at JeffLizowitz .com. Those links will be in the show notes. I appreciate you coming back and sharing word of the book. It was a great read. It's nice and you can read it in a day and an afternoon. I like that, by the way, more and more things distilled down.

Jeff Leisawitz (01:13:01.371)

Hey, I'm here to help.

Jeff Leisawitz (01:13:07.387)

That's right.

Jeff Leisawitz (01:13:25.179)

Mm -hmm.

Brian Funk (01:13:26.798)

I mean, I'm sure you're obviously a talented enough writer if you wanted to really stretch this out into some gigantic thing, but you really get down to the point, which I appreciate a lot because I want to act, you know, act on this stuff, not just keep reading about it. So more and more, even like my sample packs, I like them smaller. I like fewer choices, less to go through so I can get things going. So I think you did a really nice job distilling a lot of

Jeff Leisawitz (01:13:45.307)

Exactly.

Brian Funk (01:13:56.91)

really helpful and encouraging ideas that are inspiring at the end of the day. You know, finish that book, you're like, okay, let's do it. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Well, thanks for coming on the show. Thank you, the listener. It's great to have you here and we hope you have a great day.

Jeff Leisawitz (01:14:06.075)

Let's rock. Yes. Okay. Well, thank you. I appreciate that.

Jeff Leisawitz (01:14:12.603)

Thank you.

podcastBrian FunkJeff leisawitz, storytelling, music production podcast