Strand of Oaks (Timothy Showalter)

just about thinking. Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent, and creative effort to make a life worth living. This podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving in the right direction, how they feed their good wolf. Welcome to the show. Our guest on this episode is Timothy show Walter, or more commonly known as his songwriting moniker

Strand of Oaks. Following a personal crisis that came to a head after his third album, Tim has found great personal and musical success with his new highly acclaimed album Heal. Here's the interview. Hi Tim, Welcome to the show. Yeah, glad, glad to have you. I have been a. I've really been enjoying the new record. It's one of those rare records.

Halfway through the first song, I was like, I really really liked this so immediately out of the gate, And congratulations on you seem to be having a lot of at least initial success. You're getting a lot of coverage. You know, you've been on NPR and a lot of different things in Time magazine, and so congratulations, there's a lot of a lot of good stuff happened for you. You You deserve it. Yeah, I'm I'm I'm surprised myself, O if.

I mean, I love the record, but it's uh, yeah, it's it's you know, it's it's shocking to me because I always have very low expectations for people's reactions, and this is exceeding them for sure. Did you have any sense that that was coming, or did you get a feeling that the promotion on this one was going to be different or was it kind of just you've been truly caught off guard by it? Well, I knew that.

I mean a, I like this. I like this record a lot more than anything I've ever done, So I think I believed in the record immensely and I also was, for the first time paired with an amazing team with Dead Oceans and you know, the whole secret Canadian family. It was just, you know, real fortuitous that I met up with those guys and they believed in the record and they allowed me. They allowed me to make the

record I wanted, and also we're excited about that. So it was, you know, and leading up to it, I knew I had something that I really loved and it felt in my own in my own mind when I was making I was like, I think people are gonna like this, but you never can tell. You know. It's I've I thought that with other things, but it's you know, I'll be the first to admit my first three records were much more nuanced and you know, kind of thought pieces,

if you know. They weren't just like I'm going to drink a beer and turn this up loud and enjoy this like you know they were. There were journeys or whatever, and this this one feels like the first one that you can just sink your teeth into immediately. Yeah. Well, the songs are very and this isn't a negative word,

they're very accessible. I think there's a lot of depth to them, but they're they're accessible right away, and it's got a great um It's just it feels familiar and yet um knew at the same time, which is what a lot of the best music, at least for me, is, there's some immediate like wait, this is this, This resonates in some way immediately. Yeah, I mean that's the that's the record that I love. And I mean I basically wanted to make the kind of records that you know,

I want. I wanted to make a record that I would buy and listen to, and you know, I think that the one thing I my goal for this record was to make immediate songs that you can choose your level of commitment to. You know, you can just you know, head bang or you know, drive, or you can sit down, you know, with a bottle of her not a bottle, let's say, glass of scotch and uh, you know, kind of dicktieper and the lyrics please don't trickle bottle of scotch.

In forty three minutes, that was sit down with a case of scotch. And I think my own intake level just subconsciously revealed itself there. So don't don't listen to these kids and do that. So our podcast is based on the parable of two wolves, where there's a grandfather who's talking with his grandson and he says, in life, there's two wolves inside of his One is a good wolf, which are presents things like kindness and bravery and love, and the other is a bad wolf, which represents things

like hatred and greed and jealousy and fear. And the grandson stops and he thinks, and he says, well, grandfather, which one wins? And the grandfather says, the one you feed. So I'd like to ask you what parable. Yeah, I'd like to ask you what that parable means to you in your life and in in the music that you make, and just whatever resonates with you from that. Well, I

think I think this record was a result of many years. Right, I didn't feed either of the wolves, and I think they you know, I think the wolves, you know, of good and bad, we're kind of pushed aside into this kind of meandering existence. And because of that, I think the wolves got really angry and ate their ate their leader or owner, and I was then sent to both simultaneously,

and I think that resulted in this record. It was more of kind of the It was the absence of feeling for so long and just kind of going through the motions that then you know, eventually the wolves were like I fucking hate you, dude, and we're going to eat you and later and then as a result, you know,

I had to acknowledge both, I guess and make the record. Yeah, and that I think that was Once I listened to the record a little bit, I was immediately like, I want to I want to bring you on the show because ay, I love the music, but I think those themes are are really evident throughout it. And one of the as you say that, that sort of lack of things, there's a there's a line in your song Plymouth that you say I stopped listening to music. I kept writing

the same songs. Comfort doesn't mean you're better off, com men, you shore it was a jig. Yeah. To me, that's the saddest and most desperate line. And it's not just the music is just a perhaps a symbol of everything like if you stop, if if you stop doing the thing that you love most, which for me, my whole life has been music that's been the kind of saving saving life rafts of so many problems in my life,

and I just stopped listening to music. And I think that was a deeper, stronger metaphor for just everything in my life. And you know, and part of that came with this thought of comfort, you know, an apartment of marriage, cats and like you know, relative financial stability, and and with that just kind of you know, I would have preferred to accept the pain or happiness in life. I was I should have should have found one of those,

but I just didn't. And you know, I think it was sometimes you need to accept both in order to have just some just to kick yourself from the ass sometimes and I definitely didn't do that until it was time. Yeah. We I love that line. Comfort doesn't mean you're better off, because that's that's something that we talk a lot about on this show, is that you know, comfort is not the same thing as happiness, and uh strong negative emotions are not necessarily a bad thing. Oftentimes they're fuel or

catalyst to to better things. But that that comfort, that missing of everything is really a sort of death. And I think a lot of times it's almost like we we want to go back into the womb. It seems with the modern conveniences of life, like we have. We have enough things in our world to keep us distracted from what truly is there. And we have the Internet,

we have, you know, endless. We can get any record we want, we can watch any movie we want, we can, you know, look at whatever naked person we want to see on the Internet and all that bullshit. And it's like, but in the true fact is you're building this false safety net. And I think the best part of my life is when I realized there's no safety net and you can fall as deeply as you want to into depression and bad parts, but in realizing that, you also

you also know that it's good. You know, you have to you have to have both ends in order for it to have any purpose. Yeah, there's certainly not those things are all They're all a relative thing. There's no it's sort of an obvious cliche, but there's no light without dark, etcetera, and exactly. And I think that's what's interesting about the way you brought it in about the wolves. As a lot of people, it sort of starts off as this moralistic sounds all the parable can almost sound moralistic, um.

But but over and over it's been interesting to hear people say about how they have to integrate both those things and just trying to pretend that there's only good things is not exactly the point or the heart of

what it's getting to. Yeah, And I think also, you know, it was in my past record, so I think I only focused on you know, the you know, the bad wolf side of things, you know, the darkness, And you know, it was funny that in the midst of such a tumultualless time in my life, I I somehow there's happier parts of this record than any record, right, or any song I could imagine, Like I never imagine myself capable

of writing like a joyful, celebratory song. But you know, this record, it was such an oxymoron for me in the sense of we have these dark and deep and problematic themes, but then sometimes it just feels good, you know, and there's just you know, playing and simple good feelings

on the record. And I had to grow comfortable with that as this child of you know, Morrissey and these sad singer songwriters and Red House Painters and Nick Drake and all these guys like I never never was the celebration at And then I just kind of embraced the better parts. It's like, man, I here, I here led Zeppelin songs and I just feel awesome, Like why haven't

I done that in one of my songs. Yeah, Like I'm capable of writing a major chord chorus or or something like that to lift spirits instead of always trying to find that darker minor chord to take you even deeper into whatever I was. That's one of my proudest moments of the record actually, because I was I was happy that I didn't just rely on the darkness, Like there's definite joy. Chris and I are both musicians and songwriters, and I think that writing music that is joyful or

you know, happy or triumphant is it's harder. It's harder to do that without it being really cheesy or corny or at least four at least for people who are maybe raised on Morrissey and and Nick Drake. Maybe maybe that's only for us that have that problem, But that's

what I love. It's a rare thing where that that's the music that I love the most, that is still somehow um there's an optimism or a transcendence to it in a positive way, but it's not it's not cheesy, and I think that always comes out of it's it's leading out of the darkness right there. It's not the darkness is there, or the sadness or the the struggle is there as well as the other part. And I

think that's what makes it all come together. So and that's part of what really drew me to the record is that's that's not a common thing, no, and it's just and it's definitely not common in modern music because it seems like everything not everything, I don't want to generalize, but it just seems often a lot of music I listened to or you know, it's on you know, people try and turn me onto it's it's either overly earnest and almost like a delusional sense of you know, sincerity,

or it's it's doing it with like tongue in chic or like I think I think the guy singing is like snarking at me or something like I'm pulling one over because I I love irony or something. And you know, when I I I was just driving, I was driving back from the store today and I heard a rush song on the radio, and I was like, I think it was Limelight, and I was like, man, these guys just feel this like they totally believe in what they're singing.

There's no statire, there's no irony. They just want to play this rock and roll music and they want to find find some kind of you know, I think I always trying to avoid because now I wrote a record called Hell, like I have to, Like I don't want to say it too often because it's it's physically shape, but like you know that healing sense of rock and roll, Like you listen to Back and Black and you're just like, fuck, yeah,

rock and roll. This just makes me feel good. And you know, I we're not trying to you know, weirdly or ironically wear ray bands or you know, I don't even know what kids are anymore. I'm still out of it. But you know, it's just it's unabashedly embracing rock music, and you know, I just I think I think I've just kind of signed up for whatever religion that is, and I don't know if I could ever go back. Like that's just the music I want to make from

here on out. Yeah, well, it's it's great stuff. We had, Uh we had a musician, if you know, Frank Turner on the show, and he's a very straightforward and uh up front a the transformative power of rock music and he just doesn't shy away from it and something that

turns some people off, but but I love it. Yeah, And I think the people that get turned off by it, it's almost we're peering into their self conscious I want to be in the same room with like Bob Seger and Winyard skinnerd when they were writing their songs, just be like, dude, let's just dry a riff, Let's ride a riff and make this happen, Like you know, there wasn't this, There wasn't this tortured thing about it. And I maybe that's that's where I am now. Maybe in

the year if we talk, I'll be completely different. But I'm really on that kick right now. I just I'm not twenty anymore. You know, I'm in my thirties. I'm not I don't look like a young guy anymore. Like I'm just embracing getting a little bit older and actually loving the fact that, like I don't give a funk anymore. Like I don't care about I dress how I want to dress. I get the tattoos I want to get, and I drink keep beer and it's just who I am.

And I I feel like that's been a part of the whole process of this record, just embracing that and not trying to be anything else but exactly what I want to be. You know, you could argue that's the one of the big biggest goals or purposes of life, is to become who you actually are. And age certainly does help, you know, It's at least for me it has.

As I've gotten older, I've been much more able to sort of say, here's who I am, and there's there's much less, uh, there's much less posing or thinking or worrying about where I fit, how I fit. Yeah, And I think it's just it just feels. It feels very freeing right now, and I hope that. I hope that continues, and I think it will because it's what's so nice is to put out a record like when I when

Heel was released, I really had this. I had a bit of nervousness because I this was the exact record that I want to make, and like, this is exactly who I am and the music that I love, albeit really scattered on you know, there's a lot of different

ghns and genres on the record. But I I realized, like, this is me and I'm putting this out to the world, and to see people enjoy that and actually embrace that only validates it more for me to think like I can do whatever I want and people, you know, like not everything. You know, I won't write like a forty

five minute on like stoner metal song mate. But you know, it's like they of critics and people buying the record have been like, hell, yeah, do what you want, man, And that's just that's that's that's like winning in my opinion,

that's truly winning. Yeah. Yeah, And there is something about it seems to be becoming more cognizant that of being who you are and expressing all of that, all the parts of it, tends to cause a at least gives the opportunity for people to engage in a deeper way and to do something more meaningful versus the idea of being a little bit are calculated about what parts I show and what parts I don't show. Um there that there's a there's an inauthenticity there that I think people

resonate with. Yeah, and I I I can tell I mean, I listened to this, and I'm trying to think about records this year, but like, I don't know if you've heard the new Sharon von Etten, but I'm just obsessed with that record because I'm listening to a person that is just being like, I know Sharon a little bit, but this record is it's uncomfortable in the best ways to hear how much she's putting on a line for this, and you know, it feels like the best kind of

Bruce Springsteen song that you know, I know that he's meaning it, or at least I hope I know, and you know, it's it's just that's inspiring to me. And there's probably a great art pop bandon out of Brooklyn that I'm not giving a chance right now, and I'm sorry to whoever you know they are, but I just I'm not in that place right now. I probably wasn't on his twenty one, but you know, it's those are the records that I'm seeking out to listen to. Yep, yeah,

me too. My favorite record of the year, and years is Years is starting to rise up the charts very quickly. But is UM against me? Um Their their record Transgender Dysphoria Blues, which is about, Oh, I need to listen to that. Definitely, it will. It's so good. It just blows me away how good it is, and how you talk about coming from a being, being yourself in a in an uncomfortable place and really just laying it all

out there. She does that in a major way, but yet it just rocks so hard and it's so funny. Well probably probably because you know, when that record was written, it's maybe the same thing that I had just that celebration of like I'm just being fucking honest. Yeah, I'm being exactly what I want to say right now. And it's you know, I obviously didn't go through what she it through, but it's it feels it feels similar in the sense of just purging yourself and you know it's

something you don't want to do. You don't want to you don't want to rip that band aid off because all your hairs are gonna get ripped off with it, but wants to do It's like I did it, and it feels great, Like it feels so good. So the record is called Hell and and the title track, Heel, is a really wonderful song, and you say something in there that I think is a really great insight and and and I think it ties to the to the

show theme a little bit. And you you're talking about your relationship and you say you cheated on me, but I cheated on myself. And then you also say, I know it wasn't me, and I know it wasn't you. What I found so poignant about that is recognizing in the middle of a really painful situation that it's not all someone else's fault and it's not all your fault.

There's a there's a role that both people play, and I think in in a lot of things, it's easy to get stranded on one side of that divide or the other, and both sides, whether blaming somebody else or blaming yourself, have have pitfalls. And I was I just thought that was really um a profound way of expressing that. I think it was. It was one of those lines

when I wrote that song. It was sometimes when I write a song, it's it's a few steps of ahead of where I am mentally, like my mind is actually more further along therapeutically than maybe it's my subconscious but

I'm actually giving myself advice. And you know that song I needed to I needed to make clear that this record was no one is the victim and no one is the villain, and it's just what happens when people live with one another or their deal with one another, and it's you know, my wife is not the villain, and I'm not the villain. You know, we both its

fucked up. We've done where people are just bad to one another and they're also good to one another, and it's just I in the past, you know, I think I have played the victim and I've played the villain, and I've never come to the state of mind where I can be both or neither of them are real. It's just what a relationship is, you know, whether it's with my family or my marriage or my friends. You know, it's I I sunk up all the time, you know, and with with all those relationships, but they do too,

and it's just, you know, people are flawed. We're inherently flawed creatures, and it's just you and I needed to make that clear because I didn't you know, I didn't want this to be a pointing fingers album, you know, if anything, And I didn't want point fingers at myself either, because there's many times in the record where I talk about problems, but then I say, I think, on the song Aris here, I'm talking about the same kind of issues.

But then I say, like, I wasn't there, you know, I wasn't there, and you know, and that that was the hardest realization to be like, yeah, things like this happen, and to almost understand where the problem originated from. You know, you think about the action, but you don't understand where the action started and what drove what drives this to

make mistakes or hurt people. And it's just it's so complicated, and the record is just scratching the surface of it because I have to live and deal with that every day. But it's I needed to I needed to somehow relate to that, to these songs. Well, I think that's neither the victim nor the villain um approach. There's nowhere to

really go from there. Neither of those are useful approaches to actually making anything better exactly exactly, And you know, because if you're the victim, you're just you don't make so little progress as the same as if you're if you're the perpetrator, and you know, I just have to find that common ground. And it's It's funny. Over the course of this record, you know, I've I've tried to mend relationships with friends that I might have had problems with.

I've tried to get closer to my family, and you know, and that wasn't as a result of writing the songs. That just was. It was kind of happening as I was about to write this record or writing the record. You know, it just was. It coincided with the with the you know, with the songs, and it's actually made me feel a lot better because in that same time, where I wasn't opening myself up to good or bad emotions,

I also was closing myself down to relationships. And it's I've never been to therapy, and I I know very little about psychology, but I think that's just textbook depression and isolation that I was going through, just shutting myself off from everything else. Yeah, and that, you know, textbook depression to a large extent, is just not feeling anything. Yeah. So in that in that song, You've got a line and I'm just kind of curious because I don't and you can say it's says what the song says, and

I'm not. I don't, you know, but what's the painted like a warrior part of that song? Oh that is all man, thank you for bringing that up. That's that is not even my line. That's my best friend Christian Matson from Tallest Man on Earth. That's my favorite line from one of his songs from There's No Leaving Now. It's a song Officers record, and yeah, he says like when you're painted like a warrior? And we you know, a lot of this record resulted. I made this record

to a large part because of our friendship together. And you know, we we did like four or five different tours together and spent you know, months in the bus and van together. And that's what we call each other warriors. And it's kind of based based off of we both read Carlos Castaneda around the same time, and you're reading teachings of Don Juan, and you know, we refer to each other as warriors, and you know, it's it's it's

a very private thing that we both share. But that was me just telling Christian thank you, like in my own double talk or whatever, you know, I was just I wanted, I wanted, I wanted to show that admiration that I have for him, And yeah, that that that line to me, it's not my own, but I love I just love that line so much. I love it so much that I just ripped it straight from his song. Well you're giving credit and it's uh, it fits, it

fits very well. Um. One of the other songs on the record that I think I've heard you refer to a sort of the centerpiece of the record, or maybe a critic said that, but is the song j M about Jason Molina, the the deceased songwriter singer of Songs Ohio and I was, I was a big fan of that, And can you tell us a little bit about that, that song and your feelings on that. That song it is it is, you know, that's the best way to

explain it. It's the centerpiece of the record because it's in its own way, it's the it's the mission statement of hel and I I did intend for it to be that way because I wrote that song just to kind of write a song for Jason, and I almost wanted it to be a ulogy for him that I don't I didn't know Jason, you know, I think I met him once in Bloomington's But you know, it was it felt like I knew him, and it felt like he was much and and that's what happens with the

artists that you love so much. You feel so close to them, even though they're not friends of yours, they feel like they're your family. It was poignant that he's no longer with it in my life too, to realize that this wasn't Joe Strummer or Johnny Cash or George Harrison or you know, this wasn't one of my parents titles that that's passed, you know, it's it's my peer. It's someone that's you know, only a few years older than me, that you know has gone and you will

not make any more record. I just wanted to be like, just tell him thanks, like, you know, it's kind of a weird. It might be seeing as the corny line like sweet tunes to play, but that's what he did. That's what every single time that guy opened his voice, you know, and shared a song, it's what it did to my life. Yeah, it's it's almost too much to take in at the end, though, the thing that really gets me is um where you talk about I won't

let these dark times win. You know, I've got your sweet tunes to play, and I think that's just so powerful because in some ways, you know, for Jason, the dark times did win, and and I found that message so powerful about I don't know, there's there's just something in that. It's it's a touching, touching thing that was hard. The crow is lost to sweets, sweet tunes. I'm getting old living still living the same stays. Okay, sweet tunes

to please either get out of staying. I wanted these duck times when we got your sweet teas to tweet sweet. All of it is weird. It's weird. It's it's the word hull homage or homage or homage I guess, but it's you know, all of that song is me doing tributes, whether it's my style of guitar playing, or melodies or or lyrics that I the lyrics that I chose to sing. You know, that was my most labored over song. You know, a lot of these songs are written on just the

spur at a moment, quickly they were done. They were very uncalculated. But this was the one song that I I labored over the lyrics and I really thought about because Jason's music is what inspires me the most in art, and that's what we've talked about. It's you know, and that sums up like I won't let the dark times when is what songs the high it represents to me. He you know, it wasn't feel sorry for me music.

It wasn't pitying music or pitiful music. He would sing about dark times, but he would fight those dark times and he wouldn't he wouldn't succumb to them. And I just that's what just it's again overwhelming to me because I know he did not I don't know him, but I know he didn't want to go. Well, we're we're at the end of our time here. But Tim I've really enjoyed the conversation. I really I do love the new record. I'm I'm really happy for the success that

you're having. It's been it's as much fun to talk with you as it is to listen to the record. So um, thanks so much, Thanks again, Thank you guys. This has been great. I'll see you guys in Columbus. Bye bye bye, Let's see you. You can find out more about Timothy show Walter and this podcast at one you feed dot net slash show Walter