Captain: (singing)
Nick Cody: Hi, this is Nick, and I’m with the Captain of the Lost Waves for Music for The Head and Heart. Welcome, to the platform.
Captain: And what a beautiful space and spot it is as I look out and see birds traversing throughout trees. Well, there’s no point in me saying anything else because of course the viewers feel slightly envious, which wasn’t the point.
Nick Cody: So, we had a little bit of a chat before we started. And I thought it might be interesting to start off with how did Captain of the Lost Waves come about as …
Captain: As an entity?
Nick Cody: As an entity, yes.
Captain: Do you want the dry answer or the magical fantasy one?
Nick Cody: Let’s not have the dry answer, let’s have the other one.
Captain: So the magical fantasy is the idea that it was something, a place, and a space that I’ve always been, before I became any idea of some persona in this particular sort of incarnation. It was going back to the idea of play, and it was going back to the idea of using facets of art, music, and performance as a complete amalgamation. My finest distillation of all the things that I actually truly treasured in life and existence. Along with the challenges, though, I think what was afforded to me, was my time in the industry and with two labels in particular was I was always straight jacketed.
Captain: So, I didn’t somehow feel like it was me being allowed to be my complete self. So, the idea of the captain was the lost waves were all those things that we tend to consign to the shadows, things that we don’t see anymore. And often the richness and the treasures in those things have often been, kind of made bankrupt. So, I thought, it obviously wasn’t captain of the found waves. It was all the lost things that I appeared to treasure.
Captain: Deeply within my persona I see to have always gone, I know one quote I had was, I would be the voice of the disenfranchised one day, I don’t know whether that’s good or bad. But it seems like I seemed to associate in those places far more. It was a sense of fantasy, but at the most real heart of connection with people. And I mean, real people. It wasn’t about curators who had great influence over things. It was more about how people at base level got me and how I got them, and I think from there it grew out. So, it was a nucleus about all things.
Captain: So, the whole Captain of the lost waves journey started as me describing the record I made with the people I made, and the people I played to as hidden gems. Because often on this journey, I found the artistry, and the people that have worked closely alongside me are indeed hidden themselves, which is the opposite of what society teaches us and tells us that we should be and we should aspire to. We should have 508 million YouTube views the day after our latest video is posted. I found this trajectory somehow criminal for want of a better word. It was going to take me in a conveyor belt, this kind of idea of egoic elevation, where maybe my name is in lights, but I would never be happy for it, and realise that in myself some time ago. The Captain was born out of this idea of who I truly had always been at the heart of everything I do.
Nick Cody: We were talking about the difference between the business aspect, and the art aspect, which I think is very interesting. What are your thoughts upon how these two converge or don’t converge in terms of Work?
Captain: Yes, I often think that business is a linear model. So, there are steps to business, and art is this purely unbridled beast. I think often, the child within us enjoys the unbridled beast, enjoys the idea that it does not need to be quantified or weighed or measured. The problem I’d always had was trying to tie these two things together. And I think most artists have had that challenge.
Captain: For me, the business has to be addressed because as an independent artist, we have to do that. But I find it a curious thing to be coerced by this idea of one should be all things. One must tweet more, one must do more, one must be more, one must be a high presence in every facet of any public exposure, any public opportunity. You must tell somebody what you do. And again, I found this was a kind of an ill found lie. Some kind of broken truth that we all grew up with as artists. This idea that we have to be in everyone’s face at every opportunity, and I wanted to pull back from that, almost like a reverse trajectory.
Captain: The idea that it wasn’t the finest business model that I had built. I think I would testify to that. But I wanted to enjoy and create the best art I could for art’s sake that the art is always greater than the artist. And that’s a difficult one, when you try to measure that against the idea of what society again, pushes our way. Why our anxiety levels are through the roof. Why people struggle because it’s measuring, it’s comparison. The idea of I can be who I wish to be, without any idea of being exonerated by some kind of affiliation to this design. And somehow this isn’t… It sounds like… I do believe we are limited by language, and I’m trying very hard to disprove the theory I know.
Captain: But I do feel that once the intellect starts to measure these things, it’s always difficult, I trust feeling. And the intuition and the feeling that I trust about this was follow your heart on this, rather than your head because the head will always measure things. It will always try, and wish, and of course, the male of the species, no matter how much female brain we might possess, still tends to be a thing of measuring. We can’t help but do. It’s part of our model. It’s the way, laboratory rats, isn’t it?
Captain: It’s once I could divorce myself from the idea of what success was, my idea of success was very, very different to what I think it appears to have been told to us. So, once you do that, and that takes immense courage, because I realised there I was on a path, fundamentally on my own. I didn’t fit into any of the box that they had sent me. Even the idea of artistic licence was still actually told that I could do this, do this, do this, but you cannot do that, that, that, that or that. And I kind of went, this is… It didn’t feel right to me. So in a sense, I suppose I thought I’d rather be a much smaller artist. A more bespoke unique creation of what I truly felt my art was about than kind of bastardise the art itself and become far bigger, and then be very, very unsatisfied by the time I reached that goal.
Nick Cody: We were talking a little bit about people’s prejudices about instruments, whether that’s a banjo, ukulele, or accordion. They’re usually the first ones in line for heckling. But what’s your experience of that? I know you play on a wide range of different types of instruments, how they inform different ways of playing and maybe different expression?
Captain: That’s a great question, Nick. I believe that, like an instrument like the ukulele, which my first experience of the instrument was the way it’s tuned. It has a harmonic structure, which is quite soft and gentle. So again, I think rather than the head thinking, the heart just connected instantly. There was a sweetness to it and a warmth, and it’s the frequencies it pulls out. So, whilst being a guitarist for many years, it was suddenly playing this instrument with nylon strings. Like almost like a poor relative to the classical guitar, in some ways, as some people might have described it.
Captain: But to me, I thought it was an amazing and immense sonic tool. It’s very, very easy and very quick to get brought and drawn up to these ideas of musical superiority. And over the years, I’ve used effects, pedal boards, loop pedals, which I still do. But sometimes it’s stripping everything away, and having the simplest form of expression. It’s almost like a childlike expression, because often we overlook the childlike because we want to make it more complex, or how can it be more difficult to [inaudible 00:08:57] or to try, and tangibly sort of digest what we’ve just heard or seen.
Captain: I think it’s a trick for ourselves that I think there are some instruments you just pick up and they resonate with you. They align with you at some level, and everyone’s going to have a different experience with that. But that kind of idea of prejudice, I think is in all forms of our expression. Whether it’s a band uses guitars, or you get then people that say, “No, I only listen to electronic music.” Or then you get the folk brigade who say, “No, I listen to folk music. I don’t even like guitar that are plugged in. Therefore, a piano should be grand and it should be mighty. The acoustic nature of the building, beautiful.” But there are many myriads of ways that we can enjoy something sonically. It can be as experimental as you like, or it can be as simple as you like.
Captain: It should all be valid within this whole idea of what we’re trying to portray, and there is a lot of snobbery. And I think this idea of snobbery comes around the idea of, we like to label things, and we are living in a current age where things are labelled beyond the point of people feel the inability to speak. People feel the inability to say something without a offence, because everyone is offended by everything. And I think this has been done by design. I think there’s a beautiful aspect that we can accept people for who they are, but also giving people space and not responding or reacting instantly to what people say, because we are in a culture now where as soon as somebody says the wrong word they are pounced upon. It’s like a witch hunt.
Captain: I think the same is the way we are describing this with instrumentation, and musical and artistic play. That if the band turns up with a certain array of instruments, certain people in that room are going to discard them before they even hit a note. So, I think it’s a very dangerous thing, because I often used to equate art as the ability to go beyond oneself, and find aspects of oneself that one is not even familiar with. There are many people who I think it’s just intrinsic about the system, again, that were brought up in that music, and art is no different to any other facet of human behaviour. In that it’s intrinsically managed. It’s curated, and it should sound like this or look like this. Once we start to imply those things, I think we lose the real heart of art, which goes beyond the idea of definition.
Nick Cody: I know I was lucky enough to be part of your choir recently for your video shoot, and something I noticed in that there was a real strong sense of melody in all the tracks that we did. Also, wonderfully organised, because I think 50 or 60 people, getting them all to sing very specific things is no small feat ]. So, in terms of the writing process that you have, do you have a particular creative way of writing or things that particularly inspire you? It might be interesting for some observations on that.
Captain: It’s key that again I think there’s a there’s a snobbery around melody, because I think great melody comes from a place that again, is not tangible. I often said that I write music to the point of it feels like a prolific illness. I have no choice in what comes in, I’m just a mere conduit or vessel for the actual process. But sometimes you will hit upon a very special melodic structure, and when I listen back again to early classical music, and aspects of where there is a real simplicity, but a complex symmetry to how great melody works. And when you hit upon it or stumble upon it, something happens within you that you’ve just found something.
Captain: It’s like fishing, and suddenly you catch the fish. No fish have been harmed in my recording by the way, I should say. It’s a metaphor. So, before anyone gets offended by the fact that I’ve said I caught a fish, I don’t fish as such. So, once that melody finds you, something resonates, and it becomes very simple to sing. And then there’s a bouncing between the melody. It feels like, often I say the greatest melodies you find or stumble upon, and melodies that feel that they’ve already existed somehow. It’s almost like you found a place that feels like home, and you’ve no idea how you got there.
Captain: I really resound with melodic structure in music, and I think some of the great writers over the years that I aspire towards is that use of melody. And it can be three chords, it can be 17 chords, it doesn’t have to be complex for the sake that it’s complex. Some great songs are written around two chords. Again, it shouldn’t be a badge of honour, that this song is somehow cleverer, better, more complex, because I’ve used 27 chords. Some of the most beautifully complex piece of music can be written around two or three chords, but it’s what happens. The undulation of the notation within the chord structures.
Captain: So, I think melody is very, very important to me. It’s often been seen that melody can be an enemy, especially in the modern production world, the film and cinematic music that I remember Guillermo del Toro speaking on Pan’s Labyrinth about trying to find a Ofelia’s lullaby. And he worked with many different artists into the trying to find this piece of music. Some of whom had said, “No, no, no, I’m not going for anything melodic. I don’t want anything melodic. Melody is the enemy.” But eventually he stumbled upon it when he realised that when Ofelia’s lullaby was perfectly, it was executed. He remembered taking it home, and it was his daughter who would whistle it. So, he realised that he got it right.
Captain: I think that sometimes we tend to throw the baby out with the bathwater that we equate pop music. Pop has become a very dirty word now. When we think about popular music, and we go back to bands like the Beatles, and the Beach Boys, and Bob Marley, Abba, Queen, 10cc, amazing artists, all of them. That was popular music of that level to go, “Wow, there’s something complex going on here within the melodic structure that is so beautiful, and it’s so profound.” And songs that will remain forever. Now, people tend to discard that because they think, “Oh, the three minute pop song, I could do that.” Well, I always say to people don’t write songs as good as those people wrote them.
Captain: There’s a reason why even people like Elvis and Sinatra were big, because they had amazing writers. These were amazing songwriters. People like Burt Bacharach. They knew how melody works. So, it’s no mean feat, and I think Bill Withers said it. Another great writer, and so humble, Bill Withers’ way that he could write and sing was like somebody talking to you. (singing) It’s almost like Bill is having the phone conversation with you. What I loved about Bill Withers was his humility that came across his music was actually… it was palpable. And he was once asked where do great songs come from? And Bill Withers said, “Oh, I wish I knew that because I’d go there much more often.”
Captain: I think that’s the beauty of songwriting, that it can always happen, but once you find that melody, it’s like an instant marriage of something magic that happens. Then the melody spins around. And you can spend days trying to create more complex things. He always says, once we get ourselves out of the way or forgetting ourselves on purpose, then just allow the process to use you. It’s not you that’s editing. It’s something I believe far greater than us that’s editing. What do you want to call the energy or source or people might describe it as God or whatever. I know that word has been overused for too many people. So, I’m not going to try, and get quasi religious here. But that thing, that thing that we can’t quantify. I think performance than art and great music, it comes down to that thing that no one can quantify how they did it.
Captain: I think we should remain in the mystery of knowing that we know not how we know. So, don’t try, and quantify or break it down. That’s the mystery, I believe in life is reflected in music. And I think melody is part of that melody is like the birth of a child. It’s like, it takes your breath away. And it feels like it’s existed forever, and now you hold it in your hands and you go, “Oh, wow.” And that’s been my experience.
Nick Cody: If people want to hear about Captain of the Lost Waves, and what you’re doing, where you’re playing, what’s the best way to find that?
Captain: Capitalofthelostwaves.com. Of course, websites these days don’t feel anywhere near as active or energised as they used to, because everyone asks, what’s your Facebook account? We’re all trying to leave Facebook. But of course, we’re all there under duress, but facebook.com/captainofthelostwaves. There’s a dedicated page there. But gigs are listed on the website. Gigs are listed on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, all sorts of things. Though I’m on there very sparingly. That’s been a conscious decision. So, if you think that I don’t answer you quickly enough. It’s like saying one thing, but doing another.
Captain: My mantra is trying to find life in the moment, and seeing the beauty in the magnificence all around us. I don’t want to be lost on my phone all day frankly. So, be patient, and all the best things that come to us in life usually align with some kind of patience. I think we need to be far more patient again, and actually accept the aspects of what many a generation past us kind of accepted as elements of boredom. Boredom? No one’s bored anymore. Everyone has a million and one things to do. Let’s be blissfully bored. I mean sit here and go I can’t hear anything except birdsong and the breeze and there’s nothing else to do. Isn’t that wonderful? Be as powerful as the ocean and lay just as low. That’s what I say Nick. So, I hopefully will see any of you if you are at all interested, captainofthelostwaves.com.
Nick Cody: Well, thank you captain of the lost waves so much for dropping by for Music for The Head and Heart. We really appreciate it.
Captain: Thank you so much. It’s been a pleasure. Thank you.
Also check out Green Eyed Records for great music