Owen Ashworth is an American singer, songwriter & producer, best known for his former electronic pop project, Casiotone for the Painfully Alone, & current, slightly less electronic pop project, Advance Base. Owen also runs Orindal Records. He lives in Oak Park, IL with his wife, their two children, & two cats.
Owen Ashworth is the Chicago-based singer-songwriter who performs as Advance Base, and formerly Casiotone for the Painfully Alone, and the founder of Orindal Records; David Bazan is the Seattle-based singer-songwriter who performs as Pedro the Lion. Owen just put out his latest record as Advance Base, Horrible Occurrences, on last Friday, so to celebrate the two friends got on a call to catch up about it, and more.
— Annie Fell, Editor-in-chief, Talkhouse Music
Owen Ashworth: How are you doing?
David Bazan: I’m doing alright. I’m home now. I just got [back] — since May, I’ve been on the road half the time.
Owen: And how long are you at home for this stretch?
David: I’m trying to make it permanent. I had this idea for a long time to transition into playing shows within six hours of my house only. Maybe make some exceptions every couple of years, do one go around. But really try to make it like a weekend warrior kind of existence.
Owen: Damn, Dave. That’s major. Yeah, I have found much more stress around touring recently. I have crazy anxiety spikes getting ready to go, just making the preparations for actually getting in the car to leave. And usually once I’m in the car and on my way, I did what I needed to do. But recently, I have found that I’m not getting that relief once I’m in the car. I’m getting older and it’s just tougher to be away, and it’s just harder on my body doing the traveling. And going from, you know, hours of silence in the car to just like, “Hey!”
David: “Birthday party!”
Owen: [Laughs.] Yeah, exactly. I had a straight up panic attack the first show. It was really dumb — I booked a tour that was right at the same time as my album announcement, and it was pulling over to answer emails and texts. It was just endless. So I get to the first show and I’m doing my soundcheck, and I was like, “Hey, room full of strangers, I’m having an anxiety attack, so I’m just going to say ‘line check’ before I play, but I need to go be myself for a while. I’m very sorry. I’m very excited to be here, but I need to figure something out.” And I just called a friend in a panic, and I went to 7-Eleven and got ice to put on my wrists and the back of my neck, and just sat in the car and listened to a stupid podcast. But I did not shake that feeling for the rest of the trip. I was just heightened. I’m really working hard at trying to find the calm center more recently.
David: I feel that. That’s very relatable. I just wondered, How do I feel less prepared for this than I did when I had fewer hours under my belt? It’s strange. So you’ve been out recently?
Owen: Yeah, I just did a week of shows in the Midwest in October with my friend Katie Malco from Scotland. She’s great. She was my publicist in the UK for years, and then someone let it slip that she also happened to be a great musician. She never mentioned anything about this, but once I heard her stuff, I was just like, “You’re holding out on me!” It was really nice to do something closer to home, and with a buddy. My record comes out in a couple weeks, and then I’m basically doing a week-and-a-half to two weeks per month kind of leading into the spring.
David: I listened to the record — you sent me a SoundCloud link — and I started crying right away. Like, the falsetto thing in the first song… It’s a really beautiful record.
Owen: Thanks. I feel like it’s such bad mojo to put this stuff out right now. I kept trying to finish this record, and I kept thinking, I don’t know if this is what I want to share. I don’t know if this is what I want to be driving around singing to people. I don’t know if this is what I want to be talking about for the next couple of years of my life. I kept trying to write a different record, kept putting these songs on ice. But I was like, I gotta get this out of my system and just move on. I’ve had this dark feeling living in these songs for a while.
David: I feel like it’s appropriate. It helped me that day — I was in the middle of a health situation that I didn’t understand, and obviously all that had gone on with [Hurricane] Helene and the aftermath. The calamities are piling up for everybody, and I feel like they’re going to continue to. I don’t know, it just relatable. It feels like a friend. And it’s bad stuff happening [to the characters on the record], but not everybody is getting owned by the bad stuff.
Owen: Yeah.
David: If I’m remembering right, Deborah [from “The Year I Lived In Richmond”]—
Owen: She’s a hero, she gets out of there.
David: So it doesn’t feel like a negative, heavy trip. It feels like it’s lifting a weight or something.
Owen: That’s nice to hear. Yeah, I wanted survival to feel like the triumph through a lot of those stories. Just like, this shit happens and you get through it and you will be reckoning with it forever, but everybody’s got their shit and you just live with it and you move on, you learn from it.
David: I think there’s a lot of grace in the record in that way.
Owen: I’ve been listening to [Pedro the Lion’s] Santa Cruz this week, getting ready to talk with you, and I was really touched with how much hope there is at the end of that record. It made me tear up. I have so many questions about what it feels like to be moving through your own history in such a methodical and deliberate way, and the parallels between remembering where you were at that period of time versus where you are retelling the story. I’ve never attempted to do something just so openly autobiographical… I have a jumble of thoughts and not really any specific questions. [Laughs.] But a line of yours that I have carried with me for a long time is from that song “Permanent Record,” where you say, “I store my thoughts in other people’s heads and I question what they know.” I think about that a lot with my own writing and my relationship to whoever is receiving what I’m writing. But to share that kind of doubt and then to move into this deeply open autobiography, I wonder — who do you perceive as receiving these songs? Writing so much about your own history, what’s it doing for you?
David: This is the first thing that I’ve made, these three records [Phoenix, Havasu, and Santa Cruz], where the audience is truly my subconscious self. I feel like there’s a pattern of betraying myself and my needs, and giving people the benefit of the doubt — it’s this whole thing that’s been happening since I was a toddler. And I think in 2016, I just started to hit the wall, and I thought, Why do I have these feelings in all these towns? I was in Phoenix on tour and it was just this haunted place. I was thinking, Why does it work like this? And how do I how do I stop this? And I got the idea to make it around these towns. But I think pretty soon I realized that that kid, and then later that grown up, was going through all these experiences invisibly because I just was masking so much. I really thought, I’ll be able to reveal to these close friends that I’ll have later, or once I get married. That was always the bargain. It was like, I know you’re not supposed to bottle this stuff up forever, but I have to right now. So I think that I just felt like I had these feelings that I kept secret and no one could see or understand because that’s how it operated. So each time I’m doing this, it’s like, OK, this is my one chance to capture the way that that felt. And in doing so, basically go back and be with that kid. Like in the song “Santa Cruz,” I really wrestled with, like, I’m writing a song about not liking my backpack?
Owen: [Laughs.]
David: Like, that’s so beneath the the threshold of song-worthy material. But it was the biggest thing in my nervous system at that time. It dogged me. It was such a major thing. So I just thought, Well, I’m doing this for you, so I’m going to make it what you want to hear or what you might have needed to hear back then. And if people think it’s stupid… I’ve always chosen worrying about what other people think versus what really works for me — or to enough of a degree where there was an issue. So this time around it was like, I just have to write the bits that are what that kid wants to hear, or what that kid would feel honored by.
Owen: I’ve reflected on these songs a lot in talking with with my kids. Both of my kids are in middle school right now, and it definitely has been a really important reminder of empathy for how it feels to be that age. It’s been very valuable.
David: I love that. How do you begin [writing]?
Owen: Well, with the last couple records, I’ve really been trying to trick myself into letting my subconscious lead. And I think a lot of it is just with the super repetitive musical stuff — loops, and getting myself into a lulled state where I feel a little hypnotized, is really crucial to the way I write.
David: And do lyrics flow from that state?
Owen: That’s what I’ve been trying to do. Basically just running the same melodic passage or coming up with a melody that feels good to play, or having a drum loop or just a simple series of chords that I feel it’s tugging something out of me, and playing that for long enough where words start coming and trying to see where it goes. And sometimes that’s just 15, 20 minutes of putting myself into a slightly hypnotized state until I come up with some words or images, and then really trying to dig into, what am I getting at? What is the connection between this image and this feeling?
David: In that moment, are you just recording the audio of what you’re doing, or are you writing on a pad and pen or typing?
Owen: Usually it’s a combination of — I mean, everything is in my phone now, which really bums me out — but I’m either typing lyrics or images that are sticking with me, or I’m making phone demos of the music and kind of just mumbling over them. And sometimes those are, like, 10 minutes long. Then I just slowly refine those ideas. It’s not the way I used to write, but I’m just trying to get past all the head stuff and go right to the heart of, what is the feeling that I’m feeling from this music right now? These songs have felt more painful to write because I really feel like I’m just pulling something out of myself.
David: That comes through.
Owen: I’ve been slowly building these characters for this record and putting together a bigger story, and then just trying to figure out how they fit together or what from my own life am I processing. Even just talking about the record in interviews in the last couple of weeks, I’ve made some startling realizations about what some of these songs are about. It’s an ongoing process. I mean, I have songs from 10 years ago that sometimes I’ll be singing in front of people and it’ll dawn on me what I’m singing about. So there is an element of confusion kind of baked into the way I’m writing songs right now. But it’s the thing that’s keeping it compelling for me, and why continuing to sing these songs. It just feels like I’m in process with them still. Each one kind of just feels like a puzzle I’m still working on. And playing them live was a big part — it was really interactive, just seeing how audiences were receiving them. I did a lot of editing on tour.
David: I like that. And I really resonate with the subconscious process — it’s a process of discovery from the outset, and it kind of continues that way as you perform them. When one is playing songs live over and over again, there’s sort of a question of, what is the hook for the performer? What do these songs continue to mean? Or am I playing this song because I know people want to hear it? And is that enough, or is there something for me there?
One of the things that happens in this record is that you become aware of the stakes of everything. It sort of illuminates the stakes of life. And it helps you remember what is important, and just how delicate and tender these understandings that we have with each other are. [The song “Tooth Fairy”] — that one hit live really hard, and obviously on the record.
Owen: That’s the song I’ve noticed the most people walking out of shows after.
David: Like they leave?
Owen: Yeah. Either they just need to step out, or they’re like, “Fuck this, this is not the nice entertainment I was looking for.”
David: It’s really funny because the way that song hit me, you kind of prefaced it talking about the record in general and how you’re having these characters go through these horrible things. And I think I was anticipating something else. But for me, it just was so touching. It drew me in and was very engaging. I mean, when I asked you in 2007 — is that when we toured the first time?
Owen: I think so, yeah.
David: I was like, “I gotta ask you about Edith Wong. When did you know this lady?” You were like, “I made her up.” And I was like, “What?” It was too real. It just conjured a real thing in my head, and I feel like you do that to an even finer degree now. That “Tooth Fairy” song is one of those where the world you create in that short little number is just totally complete. And that’s the one where I was like, Oh, yeah, grown up stakes versus kid stakes. So I could see people reacting strongly to that song.
Owen: I often preface that song with like, “OK, this is what’s going to be happening with these songs.” It’s the same with how I titled the record Horrible Occurrences — like, that’s the parental advisory on the cover. It’s just like, “If you’re not ready for this, then maybe keep moving.” [Laughs.] It’s more often women than men that I have noticed there’s some shuffling, and people excusing themselves, and I hear the inside door close and then [mimics footsteps] up the steps to the outside door.
David: There’s the question of, what is this for that we’re doing in general, and is it to have them stay ‘til the end? Maybe. [Laughs.] But that’s pretty great. I like the idea of people being so moved by a piece of music that they have to take a break.
Owen: Yeah, maybe. That’s the optimistic [interpretation]. It could also be like, “Alright, fuck this. It’s 10:30 already, I’ve seen two other bands. Jesus Christ” [Laughs.]
I was curious to talk to you about fiction versus autobiography, and if you see a distinction when you’re writing about yourself versus, “This is a parable, these are characters.” You definitely have songs that feel like parables. “Big Trucks” is one where, it is my assumption that that is a true story, but you frame it in such a way where it is such a complete little lesson. Fiction — that’s just, for some reason, what I thought songs were from when I started writing, and I’ve always kind of written with some remove.
David: Yeah. I think I tended to write fiction stuff early on, more or less, with tidbits of inspiration from a real thing. But always fictionalizing it. And for me, I think it was fear of being real, because the environment that I started in was pretty judgmental. I started writing songs firmly in Christian culture, and the scrutiny that I perceived around lyrics growing up — even Christian records I would play, my parents would be like, “Well, what does that mean? Can you explain what he’s saying there?” And I just was like, “Uh… I am not going to play these any songs out loud anymore.” That was baked into how I felt when I started writing songs. So I felt like for me, fiction was a way to be kind of coy or maybe more sly writing about things, both as a Christian kid trying to learn to be real about how I felt in regards to other Christians and their scrutiny, but also as a kid who felt like I was charged with the duty of telling people about my faith in my songs. So the first thing I made was the Whole EP, and that is a fictional little five song arc that is sort of like the gospel message.
After I made that, I thought, I don’t want to keep having to do that over and over again. So I worked really hard between that and It’s Hard to Find a Friend to give myself the license to write just what I was feeling, as opposed to feeling like I had to encapsulate my faith or something like that. [I could] just write what was going on with me. So I think it started it started there. But for me, I don’t see a huge distinction. And I think in many cases, fiction is how you write something truer. I feel like fiction is truer than autobiography, because in autobiography you don’t really have a ton of choices. You just have to write what happened and how you feel about it, and it’s very limiting in a certain way. Whereas fiction, it’s your whole attention span, all of your interests, anything that is grabbing you. Your autobiography is one factor in that. But it’s more expressive of you as a person than your autobiography.
Owen: Getting older and having more experience, and having felt all the lows and all the highs, I feel like there’s just so much more to draw from. I feel like we’re both writing deeper songs after a life full of experiences.
We’re just about out of time, and I gotta go do errands, but this has been great. Thanks so much for doing this, Dave.
David: Yeah, thanks for asking.
Owen: Let’s talk again soon.
