Somatoast: Authenticity in the Algorithm Age
Jesse Brede and Mark Rubin, aka Somatoast, explore the multifaceted journey of being an artist in today's world. They discuss the balance between creativity and...
In this conversation, Jesse Brede and Tony Moss explore the intersection of music, spirituality, and healing through ayahuasca ceremonies. They discuss the profound influence of Tony’s musical background, the transformative power of ayahuasca, and the role of music in creating a healing environment. The conversation also delves into the creation of the I Am Life music label, the significance of gratitude in personal healing, and the release of Tony’s new album, Joy, which aims to blend various musical influences into a cohesive experience. Tony explores the profound impact of music on social experiences, the definition and essence of medicine music, and the collaborative process of creating music with notable artists. He emphasizes the importance of trust in the producer-artist relationship, the central theme of joy in his work, and the duality of life experiences. The discussion also touches on the sensual connection with nature and the artistic expression of masculinity.
Chapters
00:00 Musical Influences and Unique Background
05:49 Ayahuasca and Spiritual Transformation
11:52 The Role of Music in Ceremony
18:01 Creating the I Am Life Music Label
23:50 The Power of Gratitude and Healing
29:54 The Joy Album: A Musical Journey
36:35 The Power of Music in Social Settings
37:35 Defining Medicine Music
38:29 The Essence of Medicine Music
39:30 Collaborations with Notable Artists
41:19 The Journey of Song Creation
43:28 The Role of a Producer
50:13 Trust and Collaboration in Music Production
56:08 Joy as a Central Theme
01:00:28 Embracing Duality and Paradox
01:07:30 The Sensual Connection with Nature
Transcript :
Tony (00:00.056)
For this album, I wanted to take on this challenge of taking all the major influences of my musical life and kind of bring them all together because I realized how unique and odd it was. That I was born, you know, and raised in a Southern Baptist gospel church. And the only other music we listened to, of course, was like R &B and soul. So I thought, is it possible to take all the music genres that I love and feel like I really relate to the most and bring that into the medicine world? Yeah, and I’m super, super happy with it.
Jesse Brede (00:30.752)
Welcome to another episode of a path unfolding. I’m your host, Jesse Breda, and I’m here today with Tony Moss. Tony Moss is an ayahuasca practitioner and a world-class musician. I know you’re being an advocate and much else.
One of the things that in my research was your mother being part of this group called the Stovall Sisters. Yes. And the musical family that you’re from. Let’s talk about that.
Tony
It’s an interesting kind of a legacy. There was this documentary some years ago. The title was something like 10 feet from fame or something like that.
And my mom was alive when that came out and we commented on how many people have had that experience that she and her sisters were very well known and kind of sought after backup singers for a lot of major talent. And a lot of people hear her voice and their voices all the time and don’t realize that it’s them. And she said, yeah, was that way for us? You know, like we love what we’re doing. People in industry knew who we were, but the world at large did not know who they were.
Yeah, and the song that most people are hearing her on is Norman Greenbaum’s Spirit in the Sky. know, every time they get to that part, Spirit in the Sky, that’s her voice and her sister singing. So eventually through Warner reprise, they released the Stovall Sisters album and it was the first kind of gospel, funk soul crossover, right? And at the time, you know, I think it definitely had some followers, I would say, the term we’d use today.
wasn’t like some major success. Now it’s one of the number one collectible items or albums. Yeah. Really? Yeah. Because now it’s, you know, it’s always in hindsight. It was kind of groundbreaking. And the song that she wrote, Caught Hang On In There, was like this dance hall hit in all over Europe.
Tony (02:31.678)
It’s kind of this like funk revival thing that was happening there at the time. Right. And it was a cousin of mine that found that out and told me about it. And I was like, you’re kidding. Right. Because I had kind of long forgotten about that part of my life when my cousin told me. And then I thought, well, this is great. My mom, they deserve to get some recognition and royalties. And then this interesting thing happened. I contact my mom and I said, you know, is your union, your PRO, you know, are they tracking? And she’s like, huh? I was like, Mom, I was shocked they hadn’t joined.
BMI or ASCAP because they grew up at a time when that was just you know as you know so many artists were taking advantage of them so I embarked upon this year of like doing all this legwork and basically got them all situated contacted who I needed to and they said well we can only go back so far you know so they did but I remember them getting checks in the mail and this app it’s just so funny she said at some point like they were looking at the
She was like, there’s like $17,000 on this table. And they were just that moment of them being so excited made it completely worth it because bringing it back to me, they were, I didn’t realize it at the time, but they were instrumental. mean, growing up with that music as the backdrop to my life, like it’s osmosis, put my life in a course. had no idea. I really had no idea what a role it was going to play and how influential it was going to be.
Jesse Brede
A little bit more would be you’ve done, you’ve been a vocal coach and you led a children’s choir.
Tony
The International Children’s Choir. Wow. There have been, you know, obviously many choir directors. think I could be wrong. I think it was like two or three years that I did that. And they were based in Long Beach at the time I was living there. That was a fantastic experience. I
I took that job because I was kind of, you know, those actors going in and out of work. I was kind of at a low point. I loved working with kids. Right out of high school, I started working with kids, teaching as an independent contractor within the school district. It was something called like learning through music or dance or something like that. I don’t remember. But I was basically teaching problem-solvings, but using choreography and theater as a way of doing it.
Tony (04:53.826)
Yeah, was miraculous. And somehow because of that connection, one of those kids, I think, was part of the International Children’s Choir. And they needed a director. I got contacted. I went and met with them and fell in love. And it was fantastic. Yeah, I went to Switzerland with them, and Mexico, and lots of different places. don’t remember. Some of the domestic things in the United States. But those were like two really memorable trips.
Yeah, and I was a vocal coach and it was for like advanced students. I was not a coach that could take someone from like not being able to sing at all to being a singer, but I was a very good coach for somebody who could sing already and was going to the next level. just for some, my brain just clicked and worked well in that area. So I had a lot of really cool, like talented kids that had gone to like Waldorf and Montessori schools. Yeah, which I just really related to.
Jesse Brede
So there’s that and then let’s talk a little bit about the medicine music and medicine work that you do just to lay the foundation as we go into talking about your, your new album.
Tony
It’s a yeah. Instrumental. So now maybe 28, nine, 30 years ago, um, a couple of friends of mine and I got invited to an ayahuasca ceremony. And at the time we all said, like everybody did at the time, like I, what, like I had never heard of it. And the friend said to me, Oh, it’s going to be like this movie.
Emerald Forest and I had just seen that film and I thought, great, we’re going to be out in the jungle, forest, know, finding our spirit animal. So I went and it was nothing like that. It turned out to be the Santo Daime, which is a Jio Christian church out of Brazil. Had I known that it would have been fine, but because I didn’t, it was such a shock that I just kind of like rejected the whole experience and had a really challenging time. Swore I’d never go back. Two weeks later we were back because I was kind of
I’ll try it again. And the rest was history. Yeah, it completely transformed my life. Yeah, I had no idea ever that I would end up leading, but eventually opportunities to lead ceremonies and study with people in Peru. And well, at this point, yeah, Peru, Brazil, Ecuador, and Columbia.
Jesse Brede (07:11.854)
For reference, I’ve sat with you in ceremony and it’s changed my life. It’s given me a newfound relationship with my spirituality and source, Spirit God. I grew up in Amarillo, Texas, very Bible belt, very pushy of Judeo-Christian beliefs, very judgmental if you didn’t buy into that and really developed a bad relationship with religion.
and kind of as an aside also spirituality. I and sitting with you, sitting with Bird Tribe has been this transformational experience for me. And it’s awakened all of these different things inside of me as as as you know. And it’s just been a blessing. So one, I just want to personally thank you for that and all the gifts and all of the work that you’ve put into and all these travels and studies, because I know they’re not easy. And
to kind of tie into the music, which for me is such a critical part of the ceremony. And having not sat in traditional ceremonies, I only know sitting with you. Right. And so I’ve started as I’ve started to learn about the Icaros and the Lakota Indians and all the traditions that you bring into the space. That’s been so eye opening. And the only kind of relationship that I have as as a DJ, the fact that I can play
house music and drum and bass and afro beat and down tempo all in one night and how I think that’s much more of an enriching DJ set and how we have like the world’s music is available to us. You are programming the nights with
all of to me, like many of the world’s sacred, ancient traditions and music, and then also your own, which to me, I feel like is a much richer experience. I know that some of what you’ve talked about is sort of bringing in, you know, taking the woo out of the ceremony. And and one of the first times I sat with you kind of talked about some of the the science and the physiological things that happening in the body, which really put me at ease. So I’d love
Jesse Brede (09:29.784)
to talk a little bit about that, a little bit about the programming of the music and how much you’ve worked on that and developed that.
Tony
I think so. One of the things that is unique about the neo-shamanic ayahuasca tradition and early on, people would have a problem with that title, but that’s exactly what it is. It’s new shamanism in that it is.
It’s usually referring to people that have studied the indigenous traditional technology of ceremony, but also are bringing in modern contemporary understandings about what’s happening. Everything from epigenetics to neurobiology and all of it gets combined. And even what we understand about mental health and practices around that.
So it becomes a psycho, I call it psychotherapeutic work actually. And certainly it’s spiritual work. But know, big quotation marks around spiritual. You know, it’s been a good part of my life looking at what does that even mean, you know? But the bottom line is, you know,
I always say that I was going to meet you where you’re at. If you are a very spiritual quote unquote, we will person and you you’re there to meet ascended masters and yeah, that’s probably going to show up and it will be meaningful and it will be powerful. You could be completely uninterested in that and be an atheist and be just interested in the psyche and how it works. And yeah, I was going to meet you there and take that foundation to another level.
So I just learned early on that the role of a ceremony, the neo-Shamanik ones, is to really just create a container, we like to call it, so that the medicine can do that, so that it can work for each person. And people often say, you know, they’re like, medicine. Well, it is medicine. It’s medicine in that, again, it is psychotherapeutic in that it works for the body, mind, and spirit.
Tony (11:30.89)
adaptogenic in the sense that again, it’s gonna kind of meet you wherever you’re at at the time. Some people come in and have really deep cathartic healing experiences and will tell me six months later, yeah, I’m completely healed from my trauma or anxiety, I’m off meds, I’m no longer depressed. Other times, it’s just one very simple insight like,
call your father and heal this one thing and they’ll tell me six months later, my entire family relationship has changed. My doing that one thing was a catalyst for the entire thing to kind of unfold. So yeah, it’s such beautiful work and it’s rewarding and whenever we are blessed enough to be invited to lead ceremonies and I always say publicly, legal ceremonies where they can happen, the rest of the time we are bird tried on Spotify and we’re making
medicine music, We’ll talk about what that is. yeah, so the music in that, getting more specific to your question, that when I studied with the Shippibo, the thing that most struck me was we were asking about the Ikaros and he said, well, we sort of direct translation, but from Ketchwa, he said, we acknowledged that Ayahuasca is the true healer, however, the true shaman, however, the Ikaros tell it where to go, what to do. And I was like, whoa, you I did really
struck me because in that moment another thing happened with that but I thought
Yeah, it doesn’t have to be an Icaro, but that is the job of the music. It is to set the tone and well done and understood. It’s a catalyst for the experiences that happen in ceremony. Yeah, we have a really refined, like, where we start. It quite literally, the ship kind of launching. You know, you want to get everybody comfortable and it’s kind of elated and it’s good feelings. And now that we have your attention, let’s drop into that shadow work. Let’s do those things that you that we know are uncomfortable, but it’s really what you’re here for.
Tony (13:28.68)
And you don’t want to stay there so long, right? And then the music can also lift you out of those places. And yeah, so over years of just paying attention and being sensitive, we really started to understand what music was doing where, right? Not just what music, but in particular places in the journey, which is true of any plat medicine or psychedelic work. Like if you really understand what the music’s doing, it can make or break a trip, right? Or a session.
Yeah, so I thought I was giving up music completely in theater to do this work with Ayahuasca and lo and behold, it came completely back around. was like, whoa, music is it. You know, like I was born for this, right? I understand it. I love doing it. And I never would have thought that I’d be able to combine those two aspects of my, well, two passions, right? Into something that works so harmoniously.
Jesse Brede
I think that’s where so much of the magic happens in life for people when you can take two skill sets or passions and then when they connect that that’s where something really unique starts to happen. Right. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. So let’s take that and the vast amount of work that you’ve done and then talk about I am life music. This is your record label. Many of the members of Bird Tribe have
released music with you and put that out. Let’s talk about how that joined and what some of the goals and purpose of that and then we’ll jump into the album.
Tony
You know, like a lot of artists these days, you I can honestly tell you, you know way more about what it means to be a label than I do. We became a label just because we were doing something really unique and it had to be released under something.
We had this, what we wanted to do was create what we call the public face of.
Tony (15:21.74)
the ayahuasca aspect and plant medicine psychedelic aspect of our community. A place where other people could come and have this same community connecting ceremonial-ish experience without substances error because they’re illegal. And because a lot of people were afraid of them, understandably. So we started doing these events and we modeled it after the same structure of a ceremony. There was an invocation in the beginning. Sacrament was replaced with cacao, which was also a sacred beverage and heart opening as you and
Yeah, and it would be the same type of music that one would encounter at ceremony. However, it was amplified and geared more towards performance. And after a couple of those events, we realized it was working. That because people were reporting back that they were having, you know, the same kind of cathartic experiences at these live public events as some people were reporting having in ceremony. So we were rolling along. We got to the point where we were doing four of those a year.
pretty major. They eventually took on the title of Soul Circles and they got really large. And the pandemic happened, like with everyone else. And so those came to a halt. And we decided during that time period, or I did, that, well, what we can definitely continue doing is music. So I Am Life, the title, moved from being a production company to the music label, basically.
And I joke before like, I don’t even know what a label really is. And a lot of people don’t, as you know, because what has happened is it doesn’t mean what it used to. music industry has changed so much.
Tony (17:04.204)
But we wanted to release the Bird Tribe album and it’s like, we should be in a label. Well, let’s just use I Am Life. We’ll make a label. really just as I’m filling out the metadata for our distributors Symphonic, which we actually met through you. Yeah, I put in I Am Life. So now we’re a music label, but really in some ways only in name only. I’ve kind of had to reverse engineer. like, wait, what should we be doing? So basically the label is really the role in the past.
to A &R find talent, develop talent, and to do all the things necessary to market the talent, and unfortunately rip off the talent. So because it was mostly us, I thought, well, what we can definitely do is market and promote to the medicine music world, basically, at least to the degree that we have contact with it. So that’s how the label came about. And…
I just quickly realized that I love the public events, of course, but the feedback we started getting from the recording music was in some ways overwhelming, only in the sense that it was unexpected. Yeah, I was getting…
messages from people all over the world saying something like this. It was to two songs particularly, Grateful, which you’re very familiar with, and another, Come To Me Yet, now of course newer songs on the album. But I would get these messages saying, hi, hello, you don’t know me, but I stumbled across your song, Come To Me Yet, or Grateful on the internet. And it just really gripped me and I’ve listened to it every morning or all day long. And it completely pulled me out of my grief or my depression. And I was like,
What? And the reason why that was so impressive to me was that these songs were produced and offered in the context of what we’re calling medicine music, which we wanted to find. So to find out that people were receiving it that way that weren’t connected to ceremony, it was really kind of mind boggling to me. So I just knew that I wanted to kind of focus more on the production and releasing and marketing of music.
Jesse Brede (19:16.5)
Your song Grateful has greatly touched my life. I played it at my mother’s memorial twice. And after that, through the processing of the grief, I wake up to it on my phone. And then after I meditate, I play that song and I write my gratitude list. And it’s it’s medicine.
Tony
It is medicine. not only that, the
The practice you brought up is medicine. mean, my kind of central message to people most of the time, in a lot of ways, it’s underappreciated and misunderstood. I first of all, if you think about it, like, how would you even define what that is actually gratitude? You know, if I said, know, put gratitude into words, it’s like, well, yeah, it’s really something that…
is a deep feeling. It’s like love. You know when you’re in it, right? And we all recognize it, but it is something also that you can conjure up and that you can contemplate. And I am kind of famous for saying that if you look closely, the answer to most of our so-called problems is actually just gratitude, because that was my own lived truth, you know?
People would question that occasionally and say, know, yeah, that might not be true if you’re in a refugee camp. And I’m like, yes and no, actually. I go, first of all, I’m talking to a very, you know, privileged, or not, first world, you know, audience.
And most of the people that we would meet in ceremony or other contexts, I would have to remind them, I’m like, you’re amongst some of the most privileged people on the planet, at least by the metric that we use for that in the West. And one of the first things you can do with that is to be grateful, because most of you, if any of us actually earned that, it was something that we were born into or circumstances. And the second is put it into service in some way.
Tony (21:20.15)
The Institute of Heart Math, amazing organization, some people have questioned their science, but it’s kind of ancient what it is that they are exploring and very legitimately, I think kind of presenting to the world as possibilities. And this idea that…
what we’re calling, I think a lot of people, the aura is just electromagnetic field that surrounds the human body. And it turns out that our emotional states get encoded into this field. And they’re saying that’s why, possibly that you can tell when someone’s, you’re sitting there and you look because you think someone’s looking at you and they are. And they said, it’s also why we can read people immediately, like when they walk into the room, because those fields meet longer or what sooner, then we actually start to put spells on each other.
So they say, but they’re also interacting with this planetary electromagnetic field. So they’ve done all these research and experiments, and it’s like basically it comes down to their hypothesis and.
you know, possibility they present is that we when we are in states of, you know, joy and gratitude and love that that’s what we’re feeding the field. That’s what we’re collectively offering. know, and there’s been these amazing meditative type experiments where they’ve got a thousand people in a particular city to agree to meditate at the same time in the same day, same hour. Yeah. And the crime rate, boom, drops down for this time period. And it’s been qualitatively proven. Right. So
I just looked at it and I thought, I’m no scientist and we don’t know to what degree this is completely true. However, it is our lived experience. We’ve all had experiences of that feeling true. It intuitively made sense to me and I was having deep experiences with it in my own life with the work that I was doing. Yeah, so I wrote Grateful because of that, you know, basically it was like, this is not just a feel good.
Tony (23:20.654)
You know panacea kind of thing. It’s actually a technology that can actually transform your life right to going back what you said To wake up in the morning whether you write it down or not and just you know, put your feet on the ground and just be like Okay, i’m thankful. Here’s another day. I am thankful that i’m healthy and i’m safe i’m not in the war zone i’m thankful for And these the list can go on and on and on, you know, and my good friend mirando I share this often, you know We were once in a group and she said next time you’re looking for something to be grateful
for just take your next breath. And I was like, okay, my teachers are spoken. Because she’s absolutely right. There is so even in the midst of, I think all of our so-called problems and challenges, most of them self-induced, or results of the culture that we live in and capitalism.
not a judgment, just what it is, you can always find the thing to be grateful for. Yeah, for sure. And it changes your perspective on your whole day or worldview, honestly. Yeah.
Jesse Brede
100%, 100%. Thank you for sharing that. I’m grateful for you. I’m grateful for that song. I’m grateful to be here with you today. Well, let’s talk about how…
Let’s talk about the album. Let’s talk about this chapter of your life and this broadening of your musical offering. And the album is called Joy. Last night, I got to attend the album listening party at Naval in Los Angeles. Double Blind was a co-presenter. Being there with your community and that community was really inspiring to see people show up. One, just to support you and the excitement that
have for your music and I was like, yes, yes. And just that there’s people out there doing this work and working on themselves and taking some of the similar path to what I’m experiencing right now in my life. And that’s really special. And I thought that the album was really well received.
Jesse Brede (25:32.044)
You know, I’d love, I’d love to jump in. Let’s talk about like some of the influences and where you’re coming from musically. And we can talk, talk about some songs specifically too.
Tony
Yeah. It’s a monumental moment for me personally, for this reason. When I, when the kind of impulse came to want to pursue a more
spiritual life. I said that earlier, this word spirituality, I would consider myself just a modern, very modern mystic, right? I have always been fascinated by the nature of our existence, like period. And it’s been a good part of my adult life, just exploring and kind of researching and wanting to understand that from
spiritual, scientific and philosophical perspectives. Just like, what is it? Because I’m one of those people that had, for whatever reason growing up, moments of suddenly realizing how friggin’ amazing it was. Like, how is this even possible? What are the odds? Yeah, and you know, it kind of, it started one night by laying flat on my back and I was kind of, I in Long Beach and I was looking up at the sky and
For the first time ever, it’s those things we take for granted for good reason, because we grew up with it. I was just absolutely dumbfounded that the moon was floating in space.
And then it dawned on me like, wait, I’m on a rock floating in space. And in fact, I’m not looking up. I’m looking down and that freaks me out. How does that work, gravity, right? And what is that? And science can’t even tell us still. So yeah, my brain just suddenly went, these synopsis took off and my neural network woke up. So that’s the way I kind of felt like. And suddenly I was on fire with wanting to just kind of understand the nature of reality.
Tony (27:30.286)
And that is actually what mysticism is, despite what people think it is. And of course, there are lots of derivatives and a lot of occult, but so is Christianity and Catholicism and every other world religion. There’s cultish aspects of it, right? Yeah, so I would just say that I’m a mystic. So I thought when that happened that
I’m going to give up this pursuit in music and theater because that’s all ego and I, you know, I’m no longer interested in that. You know, wrong. Life always has other plans. And the work with plant medicines and psychedelics, which I’ve done only very limited experience with, by the way, psychedelics. I was fortunate enough to be introduced to plant medicines and psychedelics in a psychotherapeutic spiritual context. So I did I kind of bypassed the tripping. I later did some.
But by then, once you have that context for it, even that becomes like, if nothing else, self-inquiry. Yeah, so those experiences actually brought music front and center. And I just realized like, no, I’m a born artist. I grew up living and breathing it. I express myself most fluidly and…
probably accurately in a more poetic format. So I decided like, actually, yeah, music, I want to return to it. So it was all ceremony music, which was beautiful. Grateful, Come to Me As I Mentioned, a few other songs. And the Birds in Paradise album came with Bird Tribe. And I was very aware during those recording and production processes that my idea of medicine music
the songs and the music needed to be contained in my head at the time to make sure that they would be recognizable and received within the genre of medicine music and people didn’t know what that is. Right? So for this album, just, you know, we all mature rapidly or not. I’m always a very late bloomer and everything. I just thought, you know, actually, I think this time around, I’m just an artist first, meaning I can’t help but to write lyrics and receive
Tony (29:40.576)
artistic inspiration from the ceremony space at this point. However, how that gets produced, how it gets creatively expressed is the sky’s limits.
So for this album, what I wanted to do, because I don’t know that I would ever do another one, I wanted to take on this challenge of taking all the major influences of my musical life and kind of bring them all together, because I realized how unique and odd it was. So I was born, you know, and raised in a Southern Baptist gospel church, and the only other music we listened to, of course, was like R &B and soul.
Then I discovered pop music really through the Commodores. my God, I love the Commodores and Lionel Richie. Then I discovered my coming of age was the Parliament Funkadelic with George Clinton. The first concert I ever went to was with my mom. That was to see the Commodores. Second concert ever I got to go to on my own as a teenager was George Clinton, the Parliament Funkadelic tour with the mothership. And I was just mesmerized.
that show. They were like my heroes. So I had this… the funny thing is psychedelics, even what they were, was not on my radar at all. There I was at the very heart of this like, which I later found out was this black psychedelic culture and movement, you know, and I was all in it, you know, just signed me up. So it’s a bit of a foreshadowing.
And then I did musical theater for like 12 years professionally. So that was a major influence. And of course the music that comes out of the psychedelic world. And through all of that, I was very interested in hearing really beautiful progressive jazz. Everything from Duke Ellington to Miles Davis, Pantheon or Spectrum of Jazz. So I thought, is it possible to take all the music genres that I love and feel like I really relate to the most and bring that into the medicine world?
Tony (31:41.552)
And I contacted my producer, Johnny, sent him the original demo for one of the songs and we took off. And he did, we certainly worked together, but he did this masterful job of…
taking this, which you got to hear last night, very distinct varieties of music, but making them all cohesive. The thing that he goes, well, the thing that’s going to tie them together certainly is my voice and my lyrical writing style. Like, yeah. And he did several things to make all the songs kind of land in the same world, even though they’re like different continents and countries in that world. Yeah. And I’m super, super happy with it.
Jesse Brede
Yeah. That is, that’s.That’s no small feat like that to take those musical worlds and what we heard and.
Again the programming and the pacing of the songs and how it delivers like I’m fascinated by the programming of albums, right and sort of again how it ties into ceremony
Tony
and and in some ways just to interject It’s almost a lost art. I’m fascinated. I was always fascinated by it too since in the digital era of music albums are no longer Necessary. Yeah, right people can just regardless of your album They’ve just heard this one or two songs that they like and maybe only want to listen to that yet here we are creating what we call
concept album, Joy was designed to be listened to from beginning to end. And I was like, it was written that way because the lyrics start to loop and refer and it takes you on a journey because I understand music in terms of a journey, story, know, arc and all this, structure of storytelling. That’s the kind of album I wanted to make.
Jesse Brede
Yes. And I think in the end, that’s much more rewarding both for you as an artist, obviously, but for the listener, right? And so I am championing people to take the time to
Jesse Brede (33:27.95)
And I think that’s why vinyl maybe is having a resurgent too, that taking it out.
Tony
I thought about this and I 100 % agree. think people always, I see occasionally some guy, know, thinking he’s offering something interesting into the conversation, talking about whether or not vinyl really sounds better than digital. And I don’t think he realizes for audio files, that’s not the point, right? It is because it is something tangible. If you love a music, you know, like one of my favorite albums, you know, like everybody else up there.
what’s going on, course, Marvin Gaye. But Fleetwood Mac just like rocked my world, rumors, right? So to actually hold that vinyl, that album is like a time capsule. You’re holding a documentation, not only of that body of music, but also a part of your life, right? It’s not ephemeral floating in the cloud, it’s yours. Yeah, and you actually put it on and as you brought up, the thing that’s really cool is you’re hearing it from beginning to end as it was intentionally designed by the artist.
or the label. Yeah, so I love vinyl mainly for that reason. It’s not about the sound for me, because I’m not somebody that can really tell the difference. Yeah. But there is this beautiful warm feeling about the direct connection of you actually playing the music that you put the needle on and you sit back. It’s amazing.
Jesse Brede
Yes. The physicality of it, the intentionality of it, the meditative like we’re going to this is what we’re doing. And you’re not so you’re not just like, okay, algorithm,
Show me what you got, which is also fun and great and beautiful for Discovery. But and also for me, like I love to support an artist by buying their vinyl. That’s what I mean. know, it’s vote with your dollar.
Tony
After saying what I just shared, I actually don’t own a turntable. And the reason simply is that I when I decided that I really wanted to build an album collection. So first of all, my dad passed away. I inherited this amazing vinyl collection of all the music that he grew up with that I didn’t know.
the time with music that I would absolutely love. And the house that that was in caught on fire like 10 years ago. Yeah, so lost it all. Then I sell some now and my goal was to of course, you know, get a turntable for all of that. But then once that was lost, I just now I have no reason to buy a turntable. But I still love this idea. If it’s an artist that I absolutely love, know, like Fabiano, Naddu Semento, who’s on my album, anything he releases in vinyl, I buy it. I love his work so much and who he is. And I want to support him and independent artists.
Jesse Brede (35:57.764)
And then I’m back in my bed, I’m like, okay, you really gotta buy a turntable, dude. So I do plan to. But my money I’m making a mental note for a Christmas present for Tony Moss. It better not take that long. I’m gonna get one soon. But, Harkening, what you were saying, you know, the other thing about that is when you, there’s more of a commitment and a relationship. When you have to like, you which of the albums am I gonna play? That one, you had to take it down and pull it out. Now you’re reconnecting with the cover. You had to put it on and you’re only gonna play one side.
you’re paying attention and eventually you gotta come and flip. It’s just a whole different relationship with the music, I think.
when it’s an LP and something that is not as passive in the background as it would be, as you mentioned, as an algorithm just running.
Jesse Brede
Yeah. Well, my wife and I will have like dinner parties. People come over and I’ll, you know, an hour before the party will start, I’ll go into my collection and pull three or four. Exactly. And then as I’m starting to put them on and I’m watching people and I’m watching how that selection is affecting the mood and I’m starting kind of more mellow and then bring it It’s so much fun. And I think
All of that to put an exclamation mark on just the power of music and the context, like you said, that moment where it takes you back. And you referenced in the I Am Life parties and ceremonies that you were having, how people that had been doing medicine ceremonies were coming and having those similar experiences. That also speaks to the power of music and community in coming together.
Tony
Absolutely. said earlier,
would need to define, people ask me occasionally like, what medicine music is, because the genre of music that I am releasing into is new and it’s called medicine music. And I, it’s important to qualify, I’ve said this many times, any music that you listen to that helps you grieve, right? Or brings in some level of insight or understanding into something you didn’t have before.
Tony (38:05.378)
or brings you to joy. if it’s in any way, shape or form, healing is medicine music. The music in that moment becomes medicine. So in that sense, what is medicine music? More specifically, medicine music is actually referring to music that was either written from, inspired by ceremony, or written for ceremony. That’s actually what medicine music is in terms of a genre.
So back to your question, know, the thing with Joy is I knew that it would be a medicine album in that all of the lyrics came from those spaces for sure. And I also didn’t want to be confined by anybody’s notion about what that is.
I think people think that are in the world of medicine music, they think of it as only music that you could play in ceremony and that’s absolutely not true. I’m like, no, I know for a fact it’s not true because of the responses that I’ve gotten.
I would definitely, there’s a few songs I enjoy that would definitely pass the ceremony test. Like they would be appropriate for that sensitive space. And there’s a couple that absolutely would not be. I’m completely fine with that. It’s still medicine music because that’s where it was written from.
Jesse Brede
Let’s talk about some of the guests and features that you have. One for me most notably would be Stanley Clark. Amazing. Amazing. And then we have Xenia. Yeah. Luki who’s part of Bird Tribe.
has her own music that she’s released. She has a song, OPMON, that blows your socks off. And then you mentioned his name and I don’t know that I can pronounce Fabiano. Yes, Fabiano. So yeah, how did that come together? Those are people that you, did you have them in mind as you were writing the songs or just kind of comes together?
Tony
yeah, Ksenia, yeah, Ksenia. It’s funny, I think you know how the Russians are that
Tony (39:59.042)
They’re so over trying to get you to say their name, right? They will say it in the way that they think you can say it. So when I first met her, I was like, how do you say her name? And she goes, Ksenia. I’m like, with a K? She goes, yeah. And I said, Ksenia? She goes, that’s good. She’s like, whatever. Ksenia. Ksenia Lugui. I was at a ceremony quite some years ago, and I was facilitating. And this friend came over and said, there’s that girl there, Ksenia. She’s an amazing musician. She really let her play a song.
And oftentimes that happens just like, here we go. You know, so I have this section, you know, community sharing time, you know, sometimes otherwise known as difficult listening out. Open mic, here we go. And she grabs a guitar and she takes off singing this song, Velo con el viento. And I was like, who is this girl? And so we just hit it off immediately. And then the funny thing is, she later told me that during that ceremony, she’s like,
Friends had told her about Bertrheim and the level of musicality and so forth. And she goes, yeah, I was sitting in the ceremony. She’s like, I don’t know who these people are, but I want him. And within a year, that happened. So we just became we. One of the coolest things, I mentioned this last night, I think, biggest things to be grateful for in my life is.
to be friends with musicians that you love and appreciate so much as artists. And we all geek out on each other all the time. We’re always telling each other, like, it’s so cool that we’re friends because we love each other’s artistry so much. It is a really cool thing, it really is. Yeah, so that’s how we actually met in the ceremony context. Fabiano Donacimento is Brazilian guitarist. He sings, I think, beautifully, but that’s not the music he puts out. It’s always instrumental.
He particularly in Sam Gandel, they do this really beautiful. even know what to call it. Just it’s like experimental jazz, sometimes Brazilian. They’re just musicians, musicians, you know. We also met in the context of ceremony, became friends. I went to Brazil to study with someone really popularly there and he was there playing music. And so we kind of kept bonding. And then interesting thing about the song on the album is called Said.
Tony (42:19.12)
Fabiano has a song called Tupi, one of his earlier works. And it was just one of my favorite pieces of music. It’s just this really simple, short guitar kind of riff that he’s playing with that he’s sort of kind of singing in the background of. And this one night I was lying in bed, was like three in the morning and I wrote said the lyrics to it. So I contacted him the next day, I recorded it on my phone.
said it to him and I said, hey, I’m gonna be launching into this album project. And that was the first song. I go, how would you feel about me doing a version of this song with lyrics and we’ll kind of shift and he wrote back right away. Absolutely, I love it.
So that just became what is known as set on the album. And the beautiful thing was we got to bring him into the studio and relay down the track to fit the new arrangement that Johnny created. So that’s where that happened. And I’m just so honored because I love he and Cassini as so much as artists. So to have them on this album is like over the moon. Stanley Clark, I had not met, but if anybody knows who Stanley Clark is, in my reference earlier to that period of my life of like Parliament Funkadelic and everything in that world, you know, we’re here we are in the studio.
I’m in Clark and I’m pitching myself because he’s telling us stories on breaks of like Bootsy Collins, you know, and all these people he’s worked with and Chick Corea. And so for someone like me, he was one of those people like I didn’t know who he was by name at the time. Stan Clark didn’t mean anything to me, but the music that he was making and who he was and what he represented was in my world and my field.
So it wanted to bring these genres together. I remember we were talking in the studio one day about this one track and Johnny has worked, my producer, Jonathan Hakakian, he had worked with Stanley on several projects. And what happened was apparently he sent, there’s a song on the album, the last track called Forever, had a major string arrangement on it. And he sent it to Stanley just for some consultation on some string part. And he basically really liked what he heard, which eventually led to Johnny saying,
Tony (44:21.744)
As a matter of fact, since you like Tony’s voice over, would you be interested or down to play bass on a couple of tracks? And he said yes. And that’s how that happened. And yeah, to be at his home studio and how, he’s sitting there being Stanley Clark playing and I’m hearing my frigging voice on this thing. That was his moment. I was like, how did this happen? Right? Yeah.
Jesse Brede
Well, you’re very humble. I think the talent speaks for itself.
I am in love with the lyrics that you put together. Some of my first impressions were how they loop back onto each other and they’re sort of self referential. Can you explain that a little bit more? Maybe give me an example.
Tony
In terms of it being a concept album, that’s one of the things that makes it that.
Oftentimes, musicians will do this in general, but particularly in ceremony context. Let’s say I’ve done Grateful, and because Grateful is like a central theme of the ceremony, I’m later doing, like you’ve heard, like we’re doing a Hong piece and I’m singing.
You know, please don’t walk up on this road without telling everyone you know how much you love them so forever grateful. Yeah. So the kind of message would keep looping back or something that Diana Carr, another amazing musician, something that Diana had sung earlier would land in my consciousness in that moment. And I realized, that really ties in with the meaning of this song. So I went at it. So.
I wanted to do that with the album. These completely distinct tracks throughout the album, I don’t know how often it happens, at least four or five times. Yeah, the lyrics start to kind of loop back in each other. And if you’re listening, like I said, from beginning to end, it’s really a beautiful experience because you’re listening. The place where it shows up in the album most, the first single released is Infinite Colors.
Tony (46:21.1)
And at the very end of that, wrap those loving arms around me. Those are actually the lyrics from the song that happens later in the album.
the one that I wrote kind of for my ancestors, the Stoball sisters. Yeah, but in a completely different context. So one is like banjo, the idea and feeling for me was like sitting on the edge of the Mississippi River with homies and then this song just comes out. That’s because that’s the way it feels and felt like to me when I wrote it. And that was kind of honoring the ancestors. But in Infinite Colors, we give it an electronic dance facelift basically. Yeah, so there’s several places where that happens.
hear little parts of lyrics. The title song for the album is Joy, know, first track, I believe on the album. And then later we wanted to tone of this psychedelic ayahuasca world. There’s a song called Trees that
The song before it is called been there and the lyrics were from a psychedelic. I shouldn’t say psychedelic. It’s from a plant medicine experience I had in Peru where these kind of like gangster looking, you know, OG characters show up black and they’re like, there you are. We’ve been wanting to work with you. And I was like, whoa, you guys like the devil. They like zoot suit looking. And I was like, I am fully tripping. Right. But later in the ceremony, the medicine was like, no, no, no, no, you misunderstood. And then this download came of like what they’re saying is
for Joy to work, your concept of this album, the soul needs to be the through line. You need to make sure that the soulful aspect of your musical and artistic ancestry is front and center. That was absolutely true and I hadn’t thought about it, to be honest. I just really hadn’t placed it in that context. I’m like, oh, that is the main through line for this whole thing, is bringing all of those things through this particular kind of lens and perspective. So…
Tony (48:17.11)
because that song been there.
came out of that experience and we were on a diet, a diet we call it, a concentrated two weeks of working with ayahuasca in Peru with a teacher. And the plant that I was working with is called nuyora, it’s a tree, and it’s called Tree of Light. And you diet a specific plant, meaning you’re only having ayahuasca ceremonies and then you’re also drinking a concoction herbal from this particular plant. And the idea is that you’re building a relationship
with the plant teacher aspect of this plant. Yeah, that’s a very simplified version of what’s happening. So it was called Tree of Light. So after they’d been there song, I thought, okay, we have to honor this psychedelic plant medicine journey experience. And if it’s only going to be one track on the album, it’s this one. And that’s what Trees is. Yeah, Johnny did a really beautiful job of like, yeah, so it goes from this kind of funk.
almost like again, kind of Parliament Funkadelic-ish song and then tree, and then right away, know, like, uh-oh, yeah, and your journey. But in that, we start looping back. You bring me joy, you bring me, and it’s kind of to remind everybody that, yeah, you’re still on the same journey that you started the album with. That was kind of the idea. It’s just now it’s over here and now it’s over here and now it’s gone into the world of jazz.
Jesse Brede
One that lyrics kind of keep you rooted in the in the journey, right? And then it allowed you to kind of expand the musical palette and have. Yeah. Yeah. So I got to meet Johnny for the first time last night. And clearly he’s extremely talented. How long have you guys been working together?
Tony
geez. We. I don’t know how long ago it was the kind of experiment to me wanting to record.
Tony (50:13.074)
music professionally was a song called Sunflowers in Wood. I didn’t record it because I thought it was like gonna be this hit song. It was just one of the first songs that I ever wrote. And I kind of wanted to honor it and just kind of jump into the world of recording, you know, at least on the next level for me.
And I met Johnny at Burning Man through some other friends. And friends could be, you gotta meet Jonathan, you’re gonna love him. And we met and we connected. We worked on this Love Am project, simple like, literally kind of a home recording album. And eventually that built into Sunflowers in Wood. And I think that might’ve been seven years ago. Something like that, yeah.
Jesse Brede
You talked a little bit about last night about trust and having a collaborator help you bring something to your vision to life and delivering vocals and demos and then having, know, giving them like an idea and inspiration, but then coming back and there being, you know, some him adding his own flavor. How has that been?
Tony
It’s an amazing process. I heard me share last night. I think a lot of
Artists younger was certainly that I’ve met. I don’t think they fully understand the role of producer. I think they think the producer is more of an engineer. Like they’re just going to come into the studio and he’s going to make sure they sound good. And you might get a producer like that, but the idea of the producer, no, that’s the engineer’s job, right? The producer’s job is to actually help you bring this vision to life to, flush it out.
to expand on it, to kind of push your boundaries. What about this? Try this, try this, you know? That’s where the trust comes in. Because as an artist, you don’t always actually know. We think we do. And I have definitely learned that I don’t always know. What you think is the best treatment for or direction for a particular song. Because we all have a very fairly limited scope, you know, that we’re kind of creating in. And a producer, you know, a good one can just kind of listen and be like…
Tony (52:24.91)
I know you wrote that as a fast thing, but I think we should slow it down. You’re like, no, you’re crazy. That happened several times with Johnny. I took one of the songs that I love most on the album is called Coming Down for a lot of different reasons. And I sent it to him, you know, fast-paced. We were born from the trouble of the road. He’s like, let’s slow it down. You know, so he puts on this tempo and I’m sitting there in the studio and, know, if I’ve ever been untrue, if I’ve ever heard of made you cry.
And I suddenly realized at that tempo, the song became about the lyrics. It was really about this heartfelt, probably in lot of ways, most honest thing in terms of personal intimate experience that I’d ever written.
And he just had the good insight and instincts that this song really needs to be about that. So to bring the two together, it’s the thing about a producer. The song starts with kind of just the voice, this beautiful, very simple, minimalist kind of underscoring. And as it moves along, it picks up. And by the end, you’re actually up dancing. It’s a dance track. So he was able to combine what my original vision was while also turning it into something that I just didn’t, that makes it much more powerful, basically, and much more
honest. Yeah, so there’s the trust factor, know. Yeah, sometimes he’d say slow it down, sometimes like speed it up. He’s like, I really think you want big, you know, like the other example was Living Planet. I didn’t even want it on the album because I just didn’t think it would work, right? It didn’t sound like anything else.
I sing an acapella as more of a prayer. And he’s like, well, let’s try this. And I said, OK, well, let’s do it with a drone. He told this story last night. So I’m like, OK, drone, that’s great. That works. He’s like, well, I’m kind of wondering if we added a guitar. This kind of kept going, right? I’m hearing some strings, you know? And by the end, as you know, we put these little cars out last night. We asked people, what was your favorite song you heard of the top three?
Tony (54:22.944)
And on every single card, Living Planet was on it. So again, it was this beautiful synergistic trust that Johnny and I have in each other, because it works the other way too. He’ll do something. I’m like, no, absolutely not. That’s not going to work.
And what I love about, again, the producers, if you’re trusting the relationship works, the pushback becomes part of the process, never personal. We were working on Joy, the title song, and I had this like, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, and I was convinced that it needed to be this keyboard kind of thing. And he’s like, no, no, no, horn section. I’m like, dude, no way. So then we’re in the studio, there’s this classic moment, and he plays it, and it comes on, trying to be all fair and listening, and then the song ends and I go,
I fucking hate those horns. And he says, why? I go, because blah, blah, blah, blah. And he’s so great. He goes, I disagree. And then he explained why. And I listened to it again. you know, by the fourth, it’s not just the acclamation process. I realized what I was rejecting was how different it was from my original idea of it, which artists do all the time. Again, this is why your producing is so important. Once I completely let go of what I thought it should sound like, I heard how bad ass it was to have the horns there.
Jesse Brede
Yeah, it definitely brings a lot of that song to life. yeah, think of, mean, one of, guess, who I would consider the goat of producers would be Rick Rubin. And the reason I bring that up is he’s a listener. He has a vast knowledge of just music. And so he’s like, kind what you’re saying, like, what if we brought this element in? What if we introduced this reference? Or take that out. Yeah, or take this out. that’s really cool. So everyone, obviously, when this comes out,
Jesse Brede (56:08.368)
Hopefully the album will be out or, you know, shortly behind it. Take the time to listen to these songs and references because that’s the story of just having Living Planet just being a drone is really cool. The other thing that jumps out at me, just as you were talking is, and this, I don’t think this is a surprise to anyone, but you’re so positive, right? The name of the album is Joy. And I think there’s a lot, I find a lot of artists will have, there’s some cynicism in the world. And you’re putting out what you
you want the world to be. You’re hoping to bring that to life. You nailed it. Yes.
Tony
My feeling as an artist, I say often that I am first and foremost an artist, meaning I’m like by evolution. My natural way of viewing and interacting with the world is as an artist, as I understand what one is, you’re always kind of
deconstructing and deep looking and just walking around, know, even town and you you might be sitting on a bus bench and I, for me, I look up and I look at, wow, the aesthetics of that telephone pole. Like that’s friggin’ beautiful. And the composition around it, it’s just natural for me. And I think a lot of people do it, they just may not have the language for it in that context. So, artist first, you know, first of all.
Everything in my life comes through that lens to some degree. I feel like it is in the process of creativity that I’m mostly aligned with whatever the universe is up to, basically. Yeah, again, it’s just of second nature. Yeah. When I think about Living Planet, it’s… mean, we’re in this dire moment, really. mean, if we look at it and…
we have to do something. And so I could see a take on that where it’s like, you have to do something, get out there. And there would be a challenge there. But you’re just speaking to the beauty of this planet and the life. And at the same time, you know, the lyrics are, if all the world knew freedom now, it’s posing a question, right? If all the world knew justice now, if all the world, yeah, peace.
Tony (58:37.574)
It’s not giving an answer and it’s not pointing a finger. It’s simply saying like, well the lyrics are, all the joy within our hearts would be so free to soar. Which is true. You know, one of the things that fascinated me as I spoke earlier about being someone who was at just from an early age really.
interested in and fascinated by the whole nature of our existence. If you are at all in that world, the thing that always baffles you is why the entire history of humanity, as far as we know, is riddled with war and conflict and horrific inhumanity to ourselves. And you’re always trying to wrap your head around that and understand it. So as an artist, me, getting back to what you’re pointing at,
There’s plenty of artists that are singing about appropriately and sharing about the cynicism and giving the warnings and the challenges. I just happen to be one that’s wanting to also bring in the joy and elation and the beauty of life because that’s why we’re questioning all those things, right? It’s because everybody is entitled to that once it realizes how valuable it is.
So in the midst of all the crazy, as we’re recording this, I mentioned last night, I heard 33 wars raging on the planet, which is mind boggling in and of itself, because only like the pop star wars get into our news feed. Right. Meanwhile, you know, the suffering in a mass scale everywhere. feel like I pay attention to that. I bow down to that in terms of like not flinching. And at the same time, that what I want to contribute to the world is more joy and love and gratitude. That’s just who I am. So why not? That’s my particular piece.
I’m not the journalist, but I don’t remember now where it was, but it was from a reputable source. And that basically it was that. said there’s like 33 wars raging on the planet right now. We’re only hearing about the most quote unquote popular ones in terms of media exposure. But by the way, 22 of them were involved in it one way or another. This is something that I often say,
Tony (01:00:53.922)
Western capitalism as it’s not in concept, people need to make the distinction, but as it is actually lived in practice. In some ways, it’s the most advanced prison ever created because you don’t know you’re in it. Yeah, is, the way it has permeated and in some ways become our culture, in the most simplified version and layman’s version of this possible,
You know, as you know, the whole thing is driven by scarcity and by people feeling that they’re competing and that your personal happiness and personal gain and personal accumulation of stuff is the driving force of your life. And you are competing with other people to get it. And you deserve it. Like, and through, you know, reinforced your social media and yeah. And
In some ways, all of that’s kind of an act listen, doesn’t really matter, but at the same time as an entire cultural kind of ethos, of course it matters, right? And because of that, we are to kind of designed to tune out. I don’t think biologically, cause you can’t walk around with all of it. We’re kind of designed to tune out the things that aren’t in our immediate field in terms of survival. But that gets reinforced on a massive scale through, yeah, pop culture, capitalism, know, consumerism.
Yeah, so there’s I think when you actually kind of those moments when you can bring your attention to the uncomfortable messiness of life and Become aware that there’s 33 wars and that our country is involved in 22 of them That’s a very sobering moment. Mm-hmm And I know a lot of people would think that I would that’s just like a downer I’m like actually it’s liberation in this sense when you really get and you’re paying attention to
the realness of the world, said the messiness aspect of it, right? Then your life really becomes valuable. Life becomes really valuable to you. You don’t take advantage, I’m sorry, take for granted things like friendship and shelter, you know, and…
Tony (01:03:01.196)
Yeah, just being able to sit across from a friend and have a in a safe and beautiful environment, right? It actually brings you into the gratitude and brings you into the joy. And I chose joy because joy is distinct from happiness and gratitude. Joy is usually something on the other side of pain and suffering. That’s why the alam is in sun and moon, the duality of the colors, way I play with them. Joy is usually something that most people experience.
from life experience, right? Happiness is happy. Yeah, joy is much deeper. I feel that it is a thing that people feel when burdens and challenges are either met or lifted, right? Yeah, it’s one of those things again that you can’t really qualify, but people know joy when they feel it.
I think Keanu Reeves, who I just love, says something like that. Somebody asked him a question about how his life was with his brother passing or something. And he says something to the effect like, I don’t need to be happy to enjoy life.
And I was so struck by that because that’s really deep, profound understanding of the richness of living. It doesn’t require constant happiness, right? To actually be fully immersed in and appreciate with gratitude the human experience. The confusion of that, like the feeling like, I need to always be happy. It’s like something that I be pursuing. Right. Like just being present and being fully accepting of the whole rich tapestry of our existence.
Deep joy comes from that. And that’s again, like the distinction, you know? So that’s why I chose that. wanted to, I remember thinking like, well, I’ve done, I’ve talked about grateful, I’ve sung about it, we’ve sung about it. What would be like the thing I’d wanna share? And it just came to me like, joy. Yeah, because what people would share very often times in ceremonies, good kind of closure point, as we’re probably moving towards the finishing line here. The thing that people would often share,
Tony (01:05:08.128)
at the end of ceremony or is their intention in the beginning of it was this experience of joy that after this whole cathartic release had happened, know, like they faced their demons or faced things happening in the world, their trauma, their past transgressions, whatever it is. And then.
There’s the initial fear of it happening, then all the uncomfortableness of it. This is never going to end. And then finally, they’re going to like in one way or another, purge it out. Right. And then when they go, but then I just moved into blissful joy, joy, joy, joy. And I’m like, yeah, that’s totally it. Right. On the other side of all of that is actually what you’re wanting. And you’re also grateful for the.
the pain and suffering and not the pain and suffering that other people are experiencing. The pain and suffering of your own life that has brought you to this.
Yeah, kind of like triumphant, crescendo moment of realizing that despite all of that, life is beautiful and you’re still here and you love it.
Jesse Brede
I mean, you’re talking a lot about life experience. I think the the depth of your pain and suffering to some extent is allows you to feel greater joy and happiness.
Tony
It’s one of those. What do you paradoxes that suck, but they’re true.
Well, it’s duality. It’s like, yeah, because there is pain and suffering, there is joy and gratitude. Yeah. Right. And because there’s darkness and shadow, yeah, there’s light and revelatory, you know, awareness and.
Tony (01:06:40.236)
Yeah, I think it’s one of the most challenging things that we confront on a mystic slash spiritual path of self-exploration is at some point, because there’s a part of you that fights it, there is this point when you realize you have to embrace paradox. Not only paradox, you have to embrace duality. At some point, you just have to accept like…
Harkening back to my earlier question about why all this pain and suffering? Because it is because without it you wouldn’t have the other thing. I’m like, but that sucks like still what it is
Jesse Brede
We also got to see infinite colors music video which I thought was beautifully shot and talk about that.
Tony
I’m really not into the music video format for so many different reasons because so much pressure is placed on it, you know, and people are like
end up judging your music by whether or not they like this video and like, know, so yeah. But I knew we wanted to release at least one, you know, as a just an extension of the artistic expression of the album. So in the community and the world, I would say, you know, Western culture, there’s a lot of conversation happening around this idea of toxic masculinity at the time. You know, we we bantered around that, too, at one point. And, you know, which is a real thing, of course. But at the same time, I was like,
But I know so many very masculine men in my life who are not toxic at all. You being one. Thank you. And I thought, well, we also want that in the conversation. What it looks like to be healthy, masculine, and
in relationship, right relationship with nature and the feminine. So that was the inspiration for that video. The video is basically a very, I chose Andrews, he’s featured in the video. He’s one of these guys, he’s like beautifully masculine, you know, and a hunk of a guy, you know. And I called him and I said, I want to shoot a video that is about you going into nature and having a spiritual, sensual experience with nature itself, right? And he’s like, I’m all about it, I’m on board. So that’s where the video happened. And you know, kind of theatrical.
Tony (01:08:51.184)
Yeah, him having an authentic, which he was. That’s why we shot it the way we did, at the Yuba River. Yeah, and he sets up a little altar there. And the idea is that nature in the form of light, because the lyrics are about light, kind of basically shows up for him and interests him. And he’s just in this beautiful, sensual…
dance with it and in the end of it of like baptizes himself in the water and it’s kind of reborn but through just nature itself with no intermediary so that’s the idea of the video.
Jesse Brede
Thank you for the context because I couldn’t quite put into words it was it was sensual.
And he starts to disrobe and as a straight white man, there wasn’t anything homosexual about it. was just this man experiencing this moment and just the beauty of being connected to nature.
Tony
Yeah, when we were shooting and Pavel and I talked about that, I said, you
I said, it needs to be central because that’s the point, but it’s not homoerotic and it’s not sexual. There’s a difference. And that’s why we chose Andrew. He really understands that and kind of is that as a person. And so, you know, several places in the video, see where he’s like touching the trees and it’s really like feeling the water. We knew that was going to be important for people to understand that what he was feeling was sensual, but it was with nature.
Jesse Brede
Yeah. And I think I talked about my maybe confusion with
religion and spirituality and I think that comes back to maybe there’s confusion with sexuality and sensuality. These things that are sort of next door to each other but they’re different. And they don’t necessarily meet, depending.
Jesse Brede (01:10:37.494)
Wow, well done. Yeah, I’m I’m so excited to hear it and see it come out in its entirety. What a pleasure to sit down with you today. And, you know, I respect and admire you so much. And I look forward to more adventures and learning in the future.
Tony
Yeah, me too. Thank you so much for this. It’s beautiful just to be able to sit, particularly after last night. Yeah. People hearing the album for the first time and just be able to kind of dive into a little bit of its context. Thank you.
Jesse Brede
Anything else that you want to talk about or hit on? And we can even just take a moment to…
Tony
No, I mean the thing I think that I like to share often these days is what I brought up already.
There are some people when they see that the music that I’m releasing is under the genre of medicine music, they see it as this challenge that I’m saying other music is not. And I’ve already said, you know, that’s not true. Any music can be medicine for you at a particular moment in your life. But medicine music for us is music that was inspired by and born out of.
psychotherapeutic, psychedelic or plant medicine work or was created for it, right? That’s the world that I live in. So naturally that’s where I’m creating from. And to a large degree for.
Jesse Brede
Yeah. Well, for anyone listening, I invite you to really listen to the album front to back and dive in deep. Read the lyrics. Enjoy that. And Tony, thank you.
Tony
Thank you.
Jesse Brede
Appreciate you.
Tony
Same.
Connect with Tony Moss :
https://www.tonymoss.me/
https://iamlife.bandcamp.com/
https://www.instagram.com/mosstony
https://linktr.ee/tonymoss
https://www.iamlifeproject.org/
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