Music and Family!

 Oh boy, was this a wonderful interview. I gave an interview to one of my close friends from climbing, Dylan. He is a 42 year old engineer who is currently designing a AI powered boat. We climb together, and he is one of my very close friends, though I do make fun of him for being as old as my dad.

To start the interview, I took inspiration from Dr. Vaneman and asked, what is the definition of music? He got quiet for a minute and was very indecisive. Firstly, he said it was a form of entertainment, then he thought about the act of making music and the enjoyment that comes from that. Lastly, he said, in very engineer fashion, “Scientifically, I would say it is a combination of sound waves that are pretty”, and then we rambled about how freeform jazz isn’t pretty.

I next asked what his earliest memory of music was. He spoke about how some of his earliest memories were of him sitting with his mom in the living room while MTV was playing, listening to Madonna and Paula Abdul and Michael Jackson. I found it very interesting that his earliest memories included music. We then continued to yap about his mom for a healthy chunk of time. 

Next, I asked his favorite memory of music. He thought about this question pretty thoroughly, too. First he talked about some memories performing with bands, and it going well and having so much fun, and then he talked about his very first big concert- Incubus. He was 16, and him and his brother drove 2 hours “up to the city” to a big arena, and it was really special to him.

As we were talking about Incubus, I asked what his favorite genres were then compared to know, and how they had changed. He said that he really liked grunge and punk rock, with some classic rock and a little bit of heavy metal because he was “angsty and had a lot of energy.” Now, he is more into bluegrass, and music with a little bit of a chiller vibe.

Next, I asked him if he had a song that he would want to forget, and while he was thinking I mentioned that it could be that he wants to listen to it for the first time again. Initially, he said there were plenty of bad songs that got stuck in his head that he would love to erase, but he liked the idea of listening to songs for the first time again. He mentioned the song Nose to the Grindstone by Tyler Childers, wanting to listen to it for the first time again. 

Switching gears, I asked if he had made music himself. He said he took piano lessons when he was little, but didn’t love that. In 5th grade, he joined the school band playing the trumpet. He played all of the way through 12th grade, playing whatever instrument was needed at the time. He told me a bit about how all of that went, being in a small school with a band that was most of the people in the school. When he was 16, his dad got him a guitar, and he said that was more fun. 

Then I asked if he ever wrote music. Initially he said nothing worth listening to, but then went back on that, saying that he would write silly little songs for loved ones for birthdays or Christmas. I thought that was adorable.

Later, I asked about how he felt about singing. He claimed to actually be a better singer than guitarist, and that some of the bands he played with asked him to just sing because they didn’t need a guitar, but he felt vain or cheap just singing. We also talked about how hard it was to play an instrument and sing at the same time, and then we talked about how it was hard to do any 3 things at once. 

I also just realized, breaking the 4th wall here, we yapped for a very long time. The call was a healthy 45 minutes. What a great friend he is.

5 minutes of rambling later, I asked what concerts he had been to. As we had talked about before, he didn’t love big arena concerts, but had been to 8-10 concerts like that. Then, we talked about how much he loved festivals. We talked about heavy metal festivals, the Rocklahoma festival, and a bluegrass festival he went to. He also talked about Cain’s Ballroom in Tulsa. He said it had a history of random hillbillies on stage or random famous people, with their pictures in huge frames in the rafters. 

He told an awesome story of working on his computer at home right after COVID and received an email about Green Day playing at this ballroom. He saw the email 10 minutes after it was sent because of a meeting he was in, and he got on as fast as possible and had to refresh over and over and over for a ticket. He said it was one of the most amazing shows he’s ever seen because it was in such a small venue with an artist with so much energy.

Later, again after so much yapping, I asked if music should be a core subject in public education. He had many opinions on this issue. He said he isn’t the biggest fan of core subjects, but that they should be things like personal finance. He did also say that music should be mandatory, at least in early childhood, because some people would never experience music, or know if they enjoyed it. 

Finally, I asked the same question as the beginning- how would you define music, and has it changed at all over this conversation. He said that while it hadn’t changed since I asked the first time, it did greatly change as soon as he thought about it the first time. We talked about how interesting of a thought it was to have, and to think about.

We went on to talk for another 15 minutes about his job making guitar pedals, and how interesting that was. It was such an interesting conversation, and just so much fun. Thanks Dylan for following along my very interesting interviewing skills, and thank you all for reading!

Here is a very interesting band he told me he saw consistently through college. Goodness gracious