I haven’t figured out why, but “Old Friend” is one of my favorite new songs. Maybe it's triggering some sort of romantic image I have of being at an all-night diner with friends. Are you historically charmed by places like that?



Yeah, but I don't really attach as much fetish to it as a lot of Americans do, or as much as David Lynch does. But because I've always lived a transient life, there is something really charming about one specific place where everyone you know goes, and where people know you.



The organ part reminds me of an old Howard Shore score. Do you think your songs lend themselves to film and TV syncs?



You know, you'd think so, but I think they actually ... they doth protest too much. Songs sync better if they could apply to a lot of things. I think my music is actually incredibly specific, and it's a little too individualistic; it's a little too “listen to me.” Movies and TV shows don't want that.

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Has the business side of things affected how you operate and your relationship to the music?



I thought that if I worked really hard at this, then eventually I'd get to the point where I can just spend all my time making music. But I've found that the more I do this, the less time I get to spend on music. Around 10% of my time — less than that — I'm actually making music or playing music. Most of my time it's press and travel and admin stuff: answering emails and just being a business person, putting out fires. It's just being a working adult. No one gets to just do what they like to do all day. We have to make a living first, and then maybe in our spare time we get to do the thing that we love. So I'm not complaining, I know that's just reality. But for some reason I had some fantasy in my mind that, "Well, if I work really hard at this, then eventually I'll get to make music the way I want to, all the time." I'm finding that's not the case.



In a recent story, you're quoted as saying that sometimes it gets to you when people say they cry to your songs.



I got so much flak on social media. It was weird. "What's wrong with crying to your music, I love your music." It was so funny, because I was being scolded, but also being told that people love my music. I'm glad that people cry to my music. What I was trying to say was that my music is so often understood as a diary entry that has not had any sort of composition or thought put into it, and that's really frustrating. I've found that I've become a sort of emotional vessel, and I think that can be unhealthy. The point of my music isn't to make you cry. I'm not trying to make torture porn. I want to express, I don't know, the whole gamut of human experiences.

What do you hope that Be the Cowboy says to people?



I don't know. Often with my own music, I find out what I was actually trying to say much later on. Maybe that's what the whole process is about, too. Just sorting things out so that I understand.

Would you describe the process of making the album as fun?

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No. Because it's hard. I don't do it for fun. I do get some kind of deep satisfaction out of it, but it is anxiety-inducing, and hard, and you have to investigate parts of yourself that maybe you don't want to.

