FLOOD: The Passion Issue #2

THE PA S S I O N ISSUE POWERED BY

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5 TO 9 > 9 TO 5

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Prototype shown with options. 1Performance tires are expected to experience greater tire wear than conventional tires. Tire life may be less than 24,000 miles, depending upon driving conditions. ©2019 Toyota Motor Sales, U.S.A., Inc.

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4 SMALL TALK: CATE LE BON, GRANDMASTER FLASH, NIIA 8 16

IN THE CLASSROOM WITH SASAMI A DAY WITH LOCAL NATIVES’ FAVORITE SIDE PROJECTS

26 FOOD, NOT FEELINGS WITH ILOVEMAKONNEN 34 JOHNATHAN RICE IN SEVENTEEN SYLLABLES

PUBLISHER ALAN SARTIRANA PUBLISHER/EDITORIAL DIRECTOR RANDY BOOKASTA EXECUTIVE EDITOR SCOTT T. STERLING MANAGING EDITOR ANYA JAREMKO-GREENWOLD ASSOCIATE EDITOR MIKE LESUER ART DIRECTOR MELISSA SIMONIAN CONTRIBUTORS ALICE BAXLEY, DAN BANNINO, HUW EVANS, LILY MOAYERI, SASHA SAMSONOVA, LAURA STUDARUS, THE1POINT8, ERIK VOAKE ANTHEMIC AGENCY MICHAEL BAUER, JOAN CORAGGIO, ANA DOS ANJOS, AMBER HOWELL, NOLAN FOSTER, MICA JENKINS, TAYLOR NUÑEZ, KYLE ROGERS

Artists who are successful enough to make their living via creative pursuits—is there anyone luckier? Probably not.

However, these same artists typically have side hustles, hobbies, or part-time obsessions they dedicate their free time to (and sometimes, these ventures even bring in a little extra cash).

For us here at FLOOD, “Passion” is a place that transcends the traditional signifiers of success, where accomplishment is measured in personal growth and our ability to become the best and most authentic version of ourselves.

We’ve put together a second installment of the FLOOD Passion Issue, an exclusive digital series filled with details about the lesser-known passions of some of our favorite creators.

Our second issue features three of the indie rockers from Local Natives, who respectively enjoy biking, soccer, and art-making when they’re not playing music together; Sasami Ashworth, a classically trained musician who was a music teacher in her past life and still volunteers as an educator; rapper Makonnen Sheran—a.k.a.iLoveMakonnen—who’s a whiz in the kitchen; and Johnathan Rice, a crooner with a penchant for writing existential haikus.

ERIK VOAKE

TA L K A B O U T T H E PAS S I O N

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Featuring four collectible covers with Jeff Bridges, Alex Honnold, Swoon, and Animal Collective, plus Local Natives, Weyes Blood, Gary Clark Jr., Big Thief, and more.

Order now at FLOODMAGAZINE.COM

SMALL TALK

Cate Le Bon Works Wood

BY MAX FREEDMAN

HUW EVANS

During a year spent alone in a remote part of England called the Lake District, Welsh songwriter Cate Le Bon completely changed the architecture of her life. The tracks comprising her fifth album Reward came together gradually, because she didn’t initially know she was writing them—but they turned out to be her most direct, immaculately sculpted songs yet.

In England, Le Bon fell into a vigorous routine of being in woodworking school at 8 a.m., finishing at 6 p.m., and doing homework. Music thus repositioned itself not as her focus, but as her “hobby, something that I turned to as a break, a cathartic process,” as Le Bon explains it. Every time she sat down with her piano, music flowed from her fingers—but with no intentionality and no thoughts about deliberating making album number five.

Since woodworking and songwriting dictated almost the entirety of the musician’s life in the Lake District, the former art—certainly the newer of the two crafts to her—subconsciously informed the latter. “It was absolutely not intentional,” she admits, “but the process for recording Reward mirrored the process of making a piece of furniture. I was bound by my material. At times, it worked and everything was flowing, and at times, it was tempestuous.”

As she describes the parallels between the two arts, Le Bon all but anthropomorphizes her creations, speaking of them as though they have individual personalities, feelings, and goals. “The songs would reject things that didn’t make sense,” she says. “There was no compromise. They were stubborn. I couldn’t just shift a chord or move [any random part]. The songs were solid structures,” just as wooden furniture is.

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Grandmaster Flash: 5,000 Mugs and Growing How much coffee is too much coffee? Like most things, it depends on whom you ask.

When it comes to coffee mugs, though, legendary DJ Grandmaster Flash will say that too many is never enough.

Renowned as one of the pioneering architects of hip-hop music and culture, Flash’s place in the annals of history is secure. The subject of countless profiles, documentaries, and books, Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five became the first rappers to be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2007.

As for his personal obsession, Flash has amassed a collection of more than five thousand mugs. It’s not just any coffee cup he’s looking for, however—the DJ goes after mugs that represent every city, state, and country he’s visited around the world.

The more unique, the better. Back in 2009, Flash told SPIN that he takes his collection very seriously: “The room temperature is correct and the place is insured,” he said of their storage space. One can only imagine the state of his record collection.

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DAN BANNINO

BY SCOTT T. STERLING

Niia’s Passion for The Sopranos?

Fuhgeddaboudit.

SASHA SAMSONOVA

BY SCOTT T. STERLING R&B singer Niia Bertino is a quiet exercise in inclusivity.

Rooted in formal music education with a readily apparent love for classic R&B, her sophisticated take on contemporary soul ranges from traditional to something more trip-hop influenced. Teaming up with Robin Hannibal of LA’s Netflixand-chillwave collective Rhye, Niia’s debut album, I, simmers with elements of Fleetwood Mac, Al Green, and a cameo from Jazmine Sullivan on the standout single “Sideline.”

Bertino, raised in an Italian household in Massachusetts, is also unabashedly passionate about the legendary HBO mob series, The Sopranos.

“The Sopranos has been my biggest obsession for a while now, which inspired two of my fans to reach out to start Poda Bing together—the name is an ode to Bada Bing strip club,” Niia reveals. “Each episode of the podcast, we analyze an episode of the show—the hidden references, history, easter eggs, etc. It gives us and the listeners a chance to relive the show years after it ended.”

The singer walks it like she talks it, eager to share her love for the show as passionately as she shares her music. “[Writer/producer] David Chase is a creative genius,” the singer raves. “I grew up with The Sopranos. It’s a constant reference and inspiration for my music and visuals.

The show just feels like home...minus some of the killing,” she adds jokingly. “I have an iPad dedicated to playing the show almost 24/7, and two tattoos: ‘TONY SOPRANO’ on my left forearm, and a ‘3’ on my hand that’s a constant symbol in the show.”

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In the Classroom When she’s not touring behind her debut solo album, the singer-songwriter is eager to share her passion for music with younger generations.

BY LILY MOAYERI PHOTOS BY ALICE BAXLEY

with SASAMI

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Sasami Ashworth is in the breakfast area of a Holiday Inn Express somewhere between Vancouver and Boise. These types of locations are very familiar to Ashworth, who has been touring consistently in support of her debut solo album, SASAMI. Prior to this, she was supporting Mitski, Snail Mail, and Japanese Breakfast.

It’s only in the last year or so that Ashworth has been able to stay on the road indefinitely. Not very long ago, she had to work her touring schedule around her teaching schedule, fitting one passion around another.

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“There is a crossover point,” says Ashworth.

“Either you have a job and music is your uncompromised passion, or music is your job and you have to make compromises. I just passed the point where you get to that crossroads and are lucky enough to have an option. And I decided to choose music.”

Music has always been the direction that attracted Ashworth, first as a pianist, then as a French horn player on the conservatory path to a career as a classical musician. She earned a degree in music education before becoming a part of Los Angeles’ indie scene with her brother Joo-Joo, guitarist and vocalist for the band Froth.

At the same time, she was substitute teaching at elementary schools. Two weeks of teaching allowed Ashworth to break even on tour for a couple of months.

“Entropy is never clearer than in a classroom full of kids,” Ashworth says. “Chaos reigns. At the end of a forty-five-minute class, you’re on fire. It’s like a rock show. In any field where connecting with humans is involved, there are parallels—especially in an era where people’s attention spans are so small.”

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probably will lose money,” Ashworth says matter-of-factly. “I’m not selling out every show. I have to find openers that will tour with me for $150 to $250 a night, which makes no financial sense. But I’ve done it. I did tours with Cherry Glazerr where we didn’t make any money, but you have to tour. You have to learn how to do it. You have to get better at your instrument. You have to become a master of your craft. You have to play for people. You have to build a reputation.

“Musicians put in five to ten years of never having money before they can afford to, for example, buy the eczema cream that’s not the generic brand that doesn’t work. But musicians get free clothes, so it feels like we’re doing fine.

It’s funny being in the thick of it, because you can see how people on the outside have no idea what’s happening and how the infrastructure of the music industry really works.”

Ashworth knows firsthand about getting projections from, say, a pending European tour where the balance sheet shows only negative $5,000. The hope is that this loss will be offset by selling merchandise or a festival appearance or a sync or—gasp—tour support from the record company.

MUSIC RHAPSODY

Moving forward in her teaching career, Ashworth started working for the music education company Music Rhapsody. She was teaching a few days a week at schools in addition to her classes at the Music Rhapsody headquarters. She also created videos of actual classroom lessons and trained teachers all around the globe. Working virtually, she conducted workshops and conferenced with teachers via Skype.

“There was definitely a period where I was still working while on tour,” she says.

“I would be working on my laptop, creating curriculum, editing, doing online professional development, having video meetings. I was in a music teaching cult, which was amazing. It is the best program and I really loved it, which is why it was so hard for me to leave.” While Ashworth doesn’t have to lead a double life at the moment, she is one of many musicians who are foregoing owning—or in many cases, even renting—property. Instead, these artists tend to stay with parents, friends, or family, or opt to live in an affordable but random city far from the music hubs. They may have to tour relentlessly, and not necessarily for a profit.

“I’m on a headline tour right now, which

MUSIC RHAPSODY

“Entropy is never clearer than in a classroom full of kids.

Chaos reigns.

At the end of a 45-minute class, you're on fire. It's like a rock show.”

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There’s an in-between space Ashworth occupies now, where she doesn’t have to have a second job yet she’s only sliding by as a musician—even with tour support from Domino Records. She is constantly concerned with questions such as, “Is my album going to be digestible by people?” or, “Is this going to be a song they can play on the radio?”

Judging by fans’ and critics’ reactions to SASAMI, she has hit both those marks, albeit unintentionally. Singing close and conversationally about her failed relationships over the last few years, SASAMI is far from a heartbreak record, but it tugs at some of those same strings. “Jealousy” has a starkness in its addressing of that ever-present but unpleasant titular human emotion. Her lo-fi approach adds to the intimacy of her lyrics on songs like “Morning Comes,” where melodic rumbles temper her monotone delivery.

“When I was making SASAMI, I didn’t think about audience reaction at all,” says Ashworth. “But now that I’m thinking about my next album—and I know it’s on a label

because I’ve already signed a contract and I’m indebted to them, and I’m contractually obligated to make more albums—I definitely want to make an album that will sustain my new livelihood. I’m not going to make some experimental, crazy album. I want to keep playing for people and widen my audience.”

SASAMI is keeping Ashworth on the road, but when she’s back home in Los Angeles, she still teaches—albeit on a volunteer basis.

She is involved with The Deep End Club, a community club in Echo Park, where she teaches a donation-based, all-ages, Mommy & Me style of music class. All the proceeds go toward raising funds for immigrant services.

“It’s always on the table,” Ashworth says of teaching. “I would definitely be okay with going back and I’m super-aware that it could happen. But, as a Korean who is very ambitious, I don’t think it ever will—unless I want it to. I’m a workhorse, but I’m also a through-and-through music nerd. This is my goal. On every level, in any field, you have to be a hustler.”

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TALKING CYCLING, SOCCER, AND ART WITH THE SOCAL INDIE ROCKERS.

BY LAURA STUDARUS

PHOTOS BY ERIK VOAKE

For non–Los Angeles natives, a quick note: LA can be very hard to navigate without a car.

Neighborhoods are spread out, and in many places bike lanes are non-existent, which means everyone has to share the road. But none of that matters to Matt Frazier. Thanks to a newfound dedication to self-care following his thirtieth birthday, Local Natives’ drummer quickly found himself embroiled in the lycra shirt and helmet life.

“I think for me, the touring lifestyle can start to be unhealthy,” Frazier says. “You’re sitting a lot, you’re traveling, maybe you’re not eating super healthy, staying out late. I’m trying to counter that with a little exercise, so I got into running. And I had some friends who were into cycling, which I thought would be a nice counterbalance to running.”

Wheels won over feet, and even now Frazier says starting his day with a spin through Elysian Park—particularly when he can investigate roads off-limits to cars—ranks among his favorite activities. Now, his list of places he’d like to explore keeps growing.

“I’d love to ride somewhere in France, like Alpe d’Huez, where they do the Tour de France. I feel very fortunate to be a touring musician. Now I’m going to take my bike and travel more…I really feel very fortunate to have found this hobby. I’ve had so many random experiences that I would have never had otherwise.”

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“I FEEL VERY FORTUNATE TO BE A TOURING MUSICIAN. NOW I’M GOING TO TAKE MY BIKE AND TRAVEL MORE.”

“TO BE ABLE TO GO RUN AND FEEL YOUR BODY AND WORK WITH OTHER PEOPLE—IT’S TRULY AN AMAZING THING.”

Like Frazier, Local Natives vocalist Taylor Rice attempts to counter his sedentary daily life with sports—namely soccer, a sport he and his dad-turned-coach have enjoyed since he was a kid. Watching is fun in groups, Rice notes (“There’s a bar I’ll go to, to watch the games, but I don’t set the alarm for six a.m.”) although his heart is more into playing.

“To be able to go run and feel your body and work with other people—it’s truly an amazing thing,” Rice says. “As a musician, playing soccer is really an incredible outlet for getting to do something totally different with your brain and body.”

Though he’s often away from Los Angeles, the midfielder (“They’re not the ones who are scoring, they’re making it happen for those who are making it happen,” he explains, offering a primer for the sports adverse) has found a community of likeminded players. A few of them even share his day job.

“I play in this men’s league that plays right near Griffith Park,” Rice reveals. “It’s seven on seven. The team counts M83’s Anthony Gonzalez in its ranks. I also made one of my best friends through soccer, who was later one of my groomsmen.”

Rice says the band managed to play soccer with The National’s Aaron Dessner while they were recording their third album, Sunlit Youth. Thanks to an app that helped them find games of pickup in Brooklyn (where they were living and recording at the time), there was no shortage of play. However, as a band, Local Natives have yet to play regular games on the road.

“I was just thinking we should definitely do that!” shouts Kelcey Ayer, the band’s keyboardist, when the idea is brought up.

“Really, are you in?” Rice replies, suddenly excited. “If you’ll play on tour that would be amazing.”

Not every band member’s side-passion is athletic. When bassist Nik Ewing shows me a piece of his artwork—a somber, Power, Corruption & Lies–style clutch of flowers, constructed from ripped up magazines—he beams with pride, carefully outlining his technique. But when I ask which medium, music or art, requires more emotional labor, he becomes extremely pragmatic. To hear him tell it, it’s a stroke of fate that he’s been allowed to have two careers run side-by-side, even if one comes with more (positive!) baggage.

“I show stuff in galleries now and people buy it,” he reveals. “The new Local Natives album, there’s a lot of people who have expectations on what it should be or what they want it to sound like or something. But when I’m making prints or art, nobody at a gallery gives a fuck that I’m in Local Natives.

They just like it or they don’t. Nobody’s like, ‘Nik’s 2019 work is so derivative of his 2017 work.’”

Ewing still occasionally dips into creating visuals for Local Natives—including signing off on the bold typography of posters for their sets at Red Rocks and the Greek Theatre in Berkeley, and masterminding a print full of visually twisting words based on an unreleased song, originally titled “That Dude Can Brawl.”

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“It came out of the DIY punk ethos,” he says of the connection. “I don’t really trust someone to make an album cover or flyer. In a sense, it is kind of branding. But it was more like I always viewed music as more than, ‘Here’s the ten songs.’ You’re creating this world. So I’m not going to give it to someone I don’t know and say, ‘Can you sum up these songs with a visual that people might identify more with than the songs themselves?’”

Ultimately, Ewing says he’s just happy to have a career in two worlds that can feed both of his creative impulses. It’s an unusual position to be in.

“Music was my passion, and there’s no real reality where I’m going to make a living in music,” he explains of his initial mindset. “I didn’t go to art school, but I started taking graphic designer jobs and art director jobs. I was paying my bills through design and art. Then, luckily, people started caring enough that I could live off music. It was just so weird!

I never thought that was possible.”

Food, Not Feelings How the “Tuesday” rapper made peace with what he eats—and everything else.

By Scott T. Sterling Photos by The1point8

with iLoveMakonnen

iLoveMakonnen’s relationship with food is complicated.

Born and raised in Los Angeles, the rapper wasn’t exactly your typical American kid when it came to eating.

“My family here in LA was from Belize, so there was a lot of Carribbean and island food around to eat. Jerk chicken and patties, stuff like that,” the rapper born Makonnen Sheran explains, looking ever the portrait of postmodern cool in a bright orange hoodie and oversized sunglasses. He’s just arrived in a kitchenette area of the sparkling new Warner Records building in the Arts District of Downtown Los Angeles, now commonly referred to as “The Row.” It’s an area now awash in new boutiques and coffee shops, with Spotify set to occupy a building nearby.

“As a kid, I was what they’d call overweight,” Makonnen continues. “My dad was mad at me for having, like, a thirty-four-inch waist in eighth grade. We’d be at the store trying to find pants and he’d be upset about it.” The rapper laughs easily at the memory. “I’ve always loved food. It’s my thing. I find it comforting. It’s a relationship I’m still in.”

When he was thirteen years old, Makonnen moved from Los Angeles to live with his mom in Atlanta. The culture shock was real, especially when it came time to eat. “My mom was a full vegan. That’s when I learned about nutrition and not being on as much dairy, cheese, fried foods,” he explains. “I was able to slim down and get a little figure living with my mom. It wasn’t easy at all. It’s like withdrawals off of anything. I loved it, though. It was challenging, and I like challenges and to overcome things. It was definitely a big part of my life. I still eat like that now. I picked up more on those traits that my mom taught me. My mom coined the phrase ‘drink more water.’ I just made it a hot line,” he quips, referencing the title of his famous mixtape series.

Like a lot of American kids, the rapper would pick up tips and tricks about life from extended family—primarily, his cousins. “Growing up the way I did, there were a lot more cousins around than adults. So your older cousins learn how to cook, and you learn how to cook from them. It started with a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.

Then I started to make eggs, sausage, waffles, pancakes—it was breakfast all the time.” With lots of family living in the same general area of Atlanta, gatherings were a regular occurence. Running with his cousins, a young Makonnen was at the heart of a family drama that’s come to be known as “the bread pudding incident.”

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“I’ve always loved food. It’s my thing. I find it comforting.

“When I was a kid, we lived down the street from my aunt. My grandmother made this big bread pudding. It’s a tradition in the islands, with rum and everything.

A big dessert cake. The tray was huge. It was too big for me to carry,” he chuckles at the memory. “We had to drive it, like, three blocks to a family party. My oldest cousin was behind the wheel, and I was in the passenger seat with the pudding on my lap. He was driving and on that older cousin shit: windows down, bumping the music all loud, showing out. We got to the last turn before the house, and his driving caused the pan to burn me on my leg. I screamed and the whole pan flipped over inside the car. There was bread pudding everywhere. To this day, that car still smells like bread pudding. I was so embarrassed. After that, I was out of the kitchen for a while.”

While we’re talking, a food delivery service drops off a steaming bowl of ramen from local favorite Jinya. Digging into the thick broth, Makonnen explains this is how he eats in Los Angeles. He’s usually here on business, and relies on the city’s vast and growing network of quality restaurants. When he does get a chance to really cook in the kitchen, he makes it count.

“I like to prepare a nice baked salmon with some rice. That’s the main go-to.

I’m working on some special recipes. I do this peanut butter chicken that my mom taught me, where you bake the chicken with the peanut butter coated on it. It’s really good,” he shares between bites of noodles. “When I’m living in places like Oregon, that’s when I have the time to get in the kitchen. I’m trying to get back out there soon.”

The rapper lights up when he talks about the place where “she flies with her own wings,” per the Oregon state motto.

“I love Portland a lot. Nobody bothers me there. The rain is cool, and there’s always someone there doing something cooler and more interesting that I am. I just geek out over it,” he raves. “There are so many creatives, and you’ll see someone, like, sixty-five years old with blue hair out walking in the forest. It just makes me feel comfortable, like myself. Anywhere else, and I feel like I stand out.

It’s a relationship I’m still in.”

“People still ask me: ‘Aren’t you tired of ‘Tuesday?’

Don’t you hate having to perform it?’”

“The people in Portland are very knowledgeable and open about sharing what they know about good food, good living, and good vibes,” he continues.

“People really trying to help you enjoy and have a better life. There’s like no stress, even though it’s kind of gloomy. I’m used to it. It’s comforting to me.”

Walking across the room for some photos, the rapper talks about André 3000 of OutKast, with whom he texts regularly, as something of a mentee.

Unprompted, he adds that he’s been in touch with Drake, and says he’s “confident” they’ll work together on music again.

It only takes a few spins of iLoveMakonnen’s latest album, M3, to hear a sense of maturity and acceptance in the music. The rapper tends to agree. “It’s personal, but it’s fun,” he says. “With me and my music, it’s like the most serious relationship that I have in my life. So I always express how I’m really feeling in my music. Even when I’m in another relationship with a person, I can’t always express how I’m feeling. So we end up in conflict.” He shrugs. “Over the last few days, I’ve had so many friendships and relationships end, and just read me to filth. But they know that the music is my main thing, and it’s where I’m the most honest. Do I ever see that changing?” Makonnen smiles, as if answering his own question.

“People still ask me: ‘Aren’t you tired of ‘Tuesday?’ Don’t you hate having to perform it?’” he explains with a laugh, referencing the song that made him famous and launched the career that’s landed him here in the shiny new Warner Records building, on the verge of an album release campaign. “I’m like, ‘No, that’s my favorite song.’ It’s the real thing. All I have is good memories from it.

I’m down to relive that good memory every night.”

“I’m like, ‘No, that’s my favorite song.’

It’s the real thing.”

Johnathan Rice

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in Seventeen Syllables Before the sparse crooner released his first new album in six years, he rose to Instagram stardom by way of writing haikus.

By Anya Jaremko-Greenwold Photo by Silvia Grav

Instagram is usually a glut of images: selfies, foods, exotic locales, cute dogs. But Johnathan Rice’s feed is mostly filled with snarky words. Not many words, mind you—Rice’s specialization is the haiku, a Japanese poetry form occurring in five-seven-five syllable verses, just three lines total. Brevity is the soul of wit, after all, and people have short attention spans these days. Rice appreciates the ease with which he can summarize world events in real time on the internet, too: “So much of our culture today is a rush to immediate consensus,” he tells me. “Instagram allows me to react in the moment to anything—if one of the Jenners has a baby, I can get a poem out there within minutes.”

“The Bunny of Bad Ideas”

Oh neat - tarot cards I predict that very soon 36

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We’ll be in a fight

“Proud Parent Just Because”

Your precious babies Threw three gnar tantrums at brunch And you did nothing

“Millennials Nowadays�

Son, your mom and I Are proud of the aesthetic You have curated

As for why he’s taken his poems to Instagram’s traditionally visual platform instead of someplace wordier like Twitter, Rice explains his intent to add more playful #content to your selfie-cluttered ’Gram feed. “I was a reluctant hold-out to Instagram before I became a hopeless addict,” he admits. “I was too self-conscious for the selfie and I don’t get any pleasure from photographing myself.

But then I started thinking, ‘Wouldn’t it be funny to write what I now call dystopian haikus from the perspective of someone who’s trapped inside of a smartphone and can’t get out?’”

As a solo artist, the singer-songwriter has released three records and toured with R.E.M., Ray LaMontagne, and Pavement. The 2017 publication of his book of poetry, Farewell, My Dudes: 69 Dystopian Haikus, led to Rice’s newfound title as “the beat poet of the Instagram generation” according to W Magazine. He’s also known for his twelve-year relationship with songstress Jenny Lewis and their collaborations as Jenny and Johnny. This year, he released The Long Game via Mano Walker Records, his first solo full-length in six years. It’s a breakup album—he and Lewis split in 2015, and he began writing these songs circa 2014—but it’s not a total bummer record, either. The songs are alternatingly sad, funny, and hopeful.

Rice’s haikus are light-hearted but also rife with millennial anxieties. Themes include Twitter outrage, cancel culture, Trump and the dismemberment of American politics, technology’s encroachment on our inner lives, and the vanity of social media. A previously unpublished Rice haiku entitled “Millennials Nowadays,” for example, captures the modern importance placed on personal branding and promoting yourself online, as though a

cohesive color scheme on Instagram can somehow stand in for a complex identity: Son, your mom and I Are proud of the aesthetic You have curated Initially, Rice solicited some friends, a few who happened to be celebrities or influencers, to do dramatic readings of his poems for posts on Instagram; but more people began sending in clips, and now everyone from Anne Hathaway to Mandy Moore to Busy Philipps has participated. Rice praises Kat Dennings’ submission in particular, a video he calls “really high production value.”

So far, the poem readers have all been female (“no men have sent me any. I’m gonna probably catch some hell for this, but I think men are less self-effacing?” Rice ponders of the gender disparity).

Rice enjoys writing about the dystopian elements of the present day with a playful tone because of how somberly authors like Margaret Atwood or Ray Bradbury have always introduced dystopian futures—as something we’re forced into by an authoritarian government. “I don’t think any of those authors quite predicted that it would be totally voluntary, and we’d do it with gusto,” Rice says with a chuckle. “We gladly give away all of our personal information and privacy for free. Our reputations are similar to our chastity.”

But it’s not all bad news: Rice recently inked a deal with a major network for a TV show directly related to his poetry, and it will be his first foray into television. All he can reveal now is that he’ll be in the series, and “it’ll be an exploration of the new digital existence that runs parallel to our physical existence.”

“Anxiety In Me”

Going to the store Some of the lyrics on The Long Game mimic Rice’s satirical haiku persona (“I like you, you’re a lot like me” he sings on “Another Cold One”), but most are far more earnest and less tongue-in-cheek. The record was produced by Tony Berg, who told Rice he wanted to preserve the feeling of aloneness he’d heard in the songs. To hear Rice describe it, the process of writing the record coincided with an extremely difficult period in his life. But in listening to the whole thing, you’ll hear various stages of grief, with Rice ultimately coming out the other side more world-weary, but with renewed optimism (on album closer “Friends,” it’s apparent that he’s met someone new). Of the album’s themes, he recently told American Songwriter, “I have gained a newfound respect for lizards and sea cucumbers— animals that can regenerate after a major loss.”

“It’s the most alone I’ve ever been in terms of capturing performances in the studio,” Rice explains to me of The Long Game. For a while now, he’s wanted to make a record he could tour by himself with an acoustic guitar—but he’s never had a collection of songs he felt were strong enough to flourish exclusively in that format. Until now.

The tracks are austere, Rice’s baritone sparse and unprotected. When he performs, he brings his haikus out on stage as well. He’ll periodically put down his guitar and take out

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a book of poems, a gesture he claims elicits looks of terror and hunts for the fire exits from his audience—until they realize he’s only reading haikus, which are quick.

“For years, I thought in order to be a singer-songwriter you had to have your hair in your face and be sad and project this withered archetype—but I’m kind of a goofball,” he says of the tonal distinction between his songs and his poems. “I’m not just one thing. I see myself as a writer, and above all, an entertainer.

I think it was Bill Callahan, and I’m probably paraphrasing him, who said something to the effect of, ‘Once I realized I was an entertainer, everything got easier.’ I apply that to my own life.

Once I realized that I get genuine joy and fulfillment out of entertaining others, everything opened up to me. I was the one restricting myself creatively. There’s nothing stopping any of us from doing exactly what we want to do. I can write jokes in the morning and sing sad songs at night.”

Sure hope I don’t see someone That I know or love

WANDER > WONDER

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