Part 2

Many writers have claimed that as soon as they enter into the process, certain aspects of the narrative are out of their hands. Do you like to keep strict control or is there a sense of following things where they lead you?

Like the previous question about planning and chance I feel like if the two ends of the spectrum we’re discussing are control or seeing what direction a piece takes as it evolves, I like to live somewhere in the middle.  

Because there wasn’t a specific vision in mind for any of the songs or even the full project, maintaining control throughout wasn’t necessary. In fact, sending off each song and waiting to see what each member would contribute created some mystery and anticipation as we worked.

So in that sense there was definitely more following where each song went.

There are many descriptions of the creative state. How would you describe it for you personally? Is there an element of spirituality to what you do?

I can only speak for myself, and don’t feel a particularly spiritual approach to creating.

That doesn’t mean the creative process or act can’t be or isn’t necessarily transcendental. But I’m not trying to connect with or manifest some divine presence as I’m creating. As I mentioned before, I engage with many things in daily life that involve creativity, so I don’t feel as though I am entering a special state of mind when I’m trying to create.

Some part of making music is practice and rehearsal. Playing my instrument, either by myself or with others, or manipulating music in the computer is a regular part of my routine. The trick is to not have it become rote, balancing staying adept at my craft against becoming too complacent or growing tired.

Once a piece is finished, how important is it for you to let it lie and evaluate it later on? How much improvement and refinement do you personally allow until you're satisfied with a piece? What does this process look like in practise?

I do like to have some space to put down each nearly finished piece and an album as a whole and come back to it with fresh ears. However, scheduling constraints don’t always allow for that.

Also, I’ve learned over time that it’s important to know when a piece is done. The non-linear work environment of building something digitally allows for endless refinement or even complete reworking and new versions. Not getting lost in the details or overworking something is always on my mind.

That said, I don’t have strict rules for calling something complete, it’s definitely a case by case basis, and something I just do by feel. Of course, I always hear things I could’ve done differently after an album is released, but I try not to focus on that or dwell on it too much.

How do you think the meaning, or effect of an individual piece is enhanced, clarified or possibly contrasted by the EPs, or albums it is part of? Does each piece, for example, need to be consistent with the larger whole?

Because Pullman is a collective we have each of our individual voices represented, so at some level the albums are going to be very diverse. We don’t explicitly work to keep the whole project cohesive, somehow it manages to fall into place without effort.

It’s been my experience that everyone experiences the album differently, whether it’s another band member, someone else involved in the record (like someone at the label) or any given audience member. Each listener draws their own connections or sees their own contrasting aspects.

While some artists conceive of albums with a specific narrative or concept, that’s not really been the case for us.

What's your take on the role and importance of production, including mixing and mastering for you personally? In terms of what they contribute to a song, what is the balance between the composition and the arrangement (performance)?

As a recording engineer, the final mix and in many cases the edit is extremely important. But I think virtually every musician is invested in getting those things right.

I have worked on plenty of recordings where some members of the group may have less input or are even somewhat less invested in the mixing process, but I’ve never met anyone who didn’t care how they were represented on a recording.

I’ve always been part of groups who use the studio as a tool in itself, so the idea of how something is going to be mixed can often be part of the writing process early on.

Music and the accompanying artwork are often closely related. Can you talk about this a little bit for III and the relationship that images and sounds have for you in general?

The album cover for III is a photograph taken by Tim, our drummer. As I mentioned, Tim has struggled with early onset dementia, he was definitively diagnosed in 2021 after years of symptoms and trying to figure out what was going on.

At one point Tim’s wife found quite a few photos on Tim’s phone, many of them were very remarkable. There have been several projects focusing on Tim and his music in the last year and all of them used photos pulled from Tim’s phone for the cover art.

Looking back over the Pullman LPs all three feature photos on the cover, more or less still lives. That wasn’t intentional, it has just worked out that way. It seems to go hand in hand with the instrumental nature of our music, where we like to present it with visual information that can also be interpreted in a wide range of ways.



I would love to know a little about the feedback you've received from listeners or critics about what they thought some of your songs are about or the impact it had on them – have there been “misunderstandings” or did you perhaps even gain new “insights?”

I can’t say I’ve ever received feedback where there was a misunderstanding or misinterpretation. It doesn’t mean there aren’t people who don’t “get” my music or our music.

Everyone has their own tastes and biases, and brings those to the listening experience. If anything, the greatest insights have been through what my friends and peers have shared about my music.

Creativity can reach many different corners of our lives. Do you personally feel as though writing a piece of music is inherently different from something like making a great cup of coffee? What do you express through music that you couldn't or wouldn't in more 'mundane' tasks?  

As far as whether or not music is inherently different from something like a cup of coffee, I feel there’s a couple ways to think about that.

For certain in the case of recorded music, there’s a version that’s “put to tape” and then that becomes a definitive version, although that’s become more mutable over the years. By that I mean that it seems more common now for artists to re-record new or different versions of material than it once was, and the idea of remixes is no longer novel. Nonetheless, for most recognized artists and their known work, there’s typically an iconic version of their songs.

However, all of us in Pullman play music in groups that are known for expanding upon our material in one way or another in live settings. So using the coffee example, while I tend follow a routine to make coffee (typically for my wife), it does vary from day to day - I’d suggest that’s more analogous to the live versions of songs, in that some days it’s radically different, even if that’s not intentional.

If you expand the analogy to making a sandwich instead of a cup of coffee, I rarely make a sandwich the same way twice, even if it’s just cheese on bread - what kind of cheese did I use, what kind of bread? Did I add mustard, or some other condiment? Is it cold, or did I grill or broil it? Some songs are more like the sandwich analogy than the cup of coffee, with many more possibilities.

Another mundane task is to consider what I wear most days. I almost invariably wear a t-shirt and jeans. And yet, in my closet I have jeans that are blue, gray, black, green or brown. Some are very worn, others very crisp. Some are tight and others fit more loosely. And there’s a similar variation in my t-shirts. So my regular outift has a typicity to it, but a wide range of variations.

Musically, not just in Pullman, but across almost all the music I’m involved in, I think I have an identifiable sound. The same could be said of everyone on Pullman. Yet even with each of our own signature sounds, there’s a wide range of expressions.

As I mentioned above, I love to cook. I am also a professional cook, it’s part of how I make my living. My family and friends who’ve eaten my cooking a lot, the other cooks with whom I work and chefs for whom I’ve worked might even say I have a wider range of expression through cooking than I do through music. I suppose that’s more for other people to tell me, than for me to assess on my own.

I guess what I’m getting at is that I don’t look to music as my sole creative outlet.