A Brief Journey Into The Ecology of Rhythm and Sound with Fletcher Tucker
1. What is songwriting to you? What is your relationship with sound and vibration?
For me songwriting is most acutely about listening. It is a practice of opening and attuning. A way of listening deeply to myself and more importantly to the land and beings of the Place (seen and unseen). Writing and receiving songs, making music, sharing in sound, these are all acts of communion to me... pathways of connection to other human beings and other-than-human beings – the landscape, spirits of the land, boulders, streams, forests, ancestors, and more.
Photo: Ian Momsen.
2. What do you like most about recording your music v.s. performing your music?
My recording process is a gradual refinement of ideas and sounds over months or years in response to an even slower developing awareness and relationship to Place (my environment). Performing music live is an immediate process of intuitively responding to a new place and community which changes every night. They are related processes that exist on different timelines. In my own work, I try to treat both recording and performing as ceremonial, since I regard music-making as spiritual work. What I like most about each process is the same kind of experience: unexpected moments of clear, boundless presence and a felt awareness of inter-being.
Photo: Lindsay Ross.
3. Tell me about starting Gnome Life Records circa: 2005. What initially inspired this sonic journey?
Back in 2005 I was about to graduate from art school, and I had just finished my first album of songs ("Antlers and the Sun and all the Things that Grow old and Pass Away") using a borrowed 4-track and $15 Radioshak microphone. At that time I was steeped in a DIY and punk ethos, and there was a vibrant west coast underground music scene that supported these ideals. So to me it felt very natural to try to release the album myself... I had also been awarded a small fellowship from my university which I used to fund the release. I hand printed all the record covers on inside-out jackets from unsellable albums discarded by our local record store (a lot of copies of Herb Albert and the Tijuana Brass for instance). After the album came out, I embarked on an endless, self booked, house show and tiny venue tour of the US and Europe that lasted four years (on and off). I found many more songs along the way, recorded and released more albums. I lived cheaply and scraped together little piles of money to release the music of friends as well – with the notion of supporting my community and building a larger sonic ecosystem for our music to collectively exist within.
“Cold Springs” circa: 2017.
4. You’ve released some pure magic on the label over the years with works from the likes of Robbie Basho, our mutual pal Kyle Field, the great Daniel Higgs and many others. What can you tell me about each release and the impact they have on you as you help free them into the world?
It's a lot of work with very little financial reward running a record label at my level. For that reason when I make decisions about what to release, or who to work with, I always think relationally. I choose to work with artists that I can learn from and connect with meaningfully, because that makes my life richer and more beautiful. I choose to release records I can learn from and connect with meaningfully, assuming that others will do the same. I have been very fortunate to form friendships and associations with some truly incredible artists and works of art, like those you mentioned. Those relationships have been some of the greatest blessings in my life thus far.
5. I’m curious to know about your homestead/living quarters up in Big Sur aka “Kerouac Country”. What inspired your off grid and natural world connection that we find so often breathing in your music and label?
I've lived on the unceded Esselen tribal territory now known as Big Sur since 2010. For the last couple years I've been a caretaker on the historic ranch of my favorite Big Sur writer/poet: Jaime De Angulo. He started this homestead in around 1910. I tend to the land and an orchard – some of the trees were planted a hundred years ago by Jaime. I've come to believe that we don't actually decide where we live, rather that places and landscapes call out to, and attract certain people. It feels like my destiny to live in Big Sur, and to form deep relationships with the land and other-than-human beings here. And it feels natural, right and good, to share my living connection with this land with others through my music, and teaching.
6. What can you tell me about Bird By Snow and Yurt?
Yurt was a one-off project name I used for an improvised jaw harp album in 2011... I lived in a yurt at the time, it felt appropriate to assume the name of my house and I wanted to encourage a little mystery around who made these far-out jaw harp tunes. Bird By Snow was my music project from 2005-2013. I made five LPs and a handful of EPs under that name, the first four were highly collaborative, particularly with my very gifted friend Spencer Owen – who usually played about half the instruments on a record. On the fifth Bird By Snow album ("Offering") I am the only performer and it serves as kind of a transitional record from my early work to my current solo work – which I release under my own name. The music I made as Bird By Snow was deeply personal, songs were quite often records of little psycho-spiritual revelations I'd had, or spiritual yearnings I could not quite attain. For this reason it was a very poetically centered project. My work as Fletcher Tucker is ironically much less about my own personal experiences. Instead I am attempting to create music and poetry that serves as a bridge between human and other-than-humans, people and landscape, modern and primordial awareness.
“Unlit Trail” - graphite on paper.
7. The label has a beautiful aesthetic and all around unique style. What is your approach when packaging and doing the layouts for each release, more specifically the cassette tapes?
I appreciate the kind reflection, thank you. I've handled the design and art direction for Gnome Life from the beginning, and still do. I continue to make physical releases because of the potential for an enveloping transformational experience through a well considered aesthetic. When possible I try to refine and connect every detail, from the paper stock used for the jacket, to the way the center label looks when the record spins. I believe it all contributes to the way an album is taken in and can create more dimensions to the music itself. Perhaps more importantly, I believe that when great care and heart is put into the creation of physical objects they can become totemic in nature – take on qualities of meaning, power and significance beyond that of ordinary "stuff". I imagine the cassette packaging you are referring to is from my Echomancy Series, which featured little cardboard boxes embossed with foil. I find cassettes very appealing objects, but they are also kind of cheap little things that pile up in thrift stores or get tossed on the floor of a car. I started to produce tapes because I wanted to release more music in smaller, less expensive editions... But I wanted them to have that totemic quality, to be enchanting and enchanted objects.
8. I understand you’re a father, congratulations! Can you tell me how this experience has been for you so far and what you’ve learned as well as what you’ve been able to teach thus far?
Thank you! Parenthood is a difficult thing to talk about without defaulting to cliches, but I'll try... Becoming a parent has been the most important rite of passage and developmental shift in my life. It has required a radical deconstructing and reconstructing of my Self. A literal cracking open and expansion of my heart so that it could encompass another external being: my child. I learn from her everyday. She teaches me about oneness, pure presence, perseverance, joy, curiosity and so much more. I try to teach her about compassion, patience, and Place.
9. As the new year approaches, what are some things you would like to achieve? What are some of your visions and goals for 2023?
I have a bunch of notebook pages that are asking to become a record. And another handful of pages that will likely become a book. I don't know how much of that will come to fruition in 2023, but I will be working, and I am excited.
10. Mountains, or valleys?
Yes.
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