J.D. Beck & Brett Kull of Rise Twain talk songcraft, collaboration, ambiguity, and other “deep stuff.

Thanks for taking the time to chat this afternoon. To start with a little background, so y’all first worked together more than 10 years ago, that sort of beginning of Rise Twain has been a big part of the promotional material, but when did you actually start collaborating on the material that became this Rise Twain album?

Brett: Go ahead, J.D.

J.D.: Well, about a year, a year and a half ago, Brett had asked me to do some work on his solo album, and I graciously accepted—I loved it, it was awesome, had a great time. He and I always got along in the collaborative sense ever since I met him, and as of recently we just started to send musical .wavs back and forth and I’ve always loved all the music he’s written and his creative outlet is just awesome, and we gelled very much in that sense where he would send me something, either it would be in a near complete form or parts, and I would do the same. And we both just, without any pressure, no onerous feelings or anything, we would just get our fingers on it and together we would turn them into songs. 

And we started with just a couple and we were like “Oh, we should do an EP or something, that’d be fun” then, before you know it, ten materialized and then with that, we continued to write, stuffed all that into a file somewhere and we just kept the ten we have with a couple extra ones on the backburner, and here we are today.

Brett: I agree. I concur.

I can tell by the way the album turned out that y’all concurred quite a bit.

J.D. Haha, great observation.

So, it does seem like this kind of, y’know, just sending files back and forth is a way that a lot of music is getting made now. So it started and grew organically—did you just, find yourself with an EP’s worth of material and that’s when you decided “Ok, this is going forward to be an actual thing”? Like, when did you say “We are going to have an album, let’s sign with InsideOut and get this out to people”?

Brett: Yeah, I know for myself that after I had worked with Jeremy on two songs for my solo album, Open Skies Exploding, I was like, I was just looking for another project to unload whatever I was going through in my life and it just, I just called him up and was like “Yeah, let’s do something.” He’s right that we started with just a couple songs and it just kept growing, but I know that in the back of my mind I wanted to do a whole project with him and so it definitely was part of the overall thing that I wanted to do. I wanted to do a whole project. As far as getting a record deal, that was not something we were talking about, that just sort of happened at the last moment. All that he and I were really wrapped up in was the fun of creating music together, with the hopes of putting it out.

So then, y’all were sending things back and forth, at some point were y’all actually getting into a room together? I thought I had seen a post that y’all were composing in the same room, or just when it got to recording?

Brett: Yeah, yeah.

J.D.: Yeah, we would get together, you know, he lives about an hour from me, he’s got a studio—two studios—at his disposal and I have a small little set-up and he would come down, we would do some of the little rudimentary things, we would get up to his studio and just really kinda do a lot of the master work to that. And then, Brett would do these incredible embellishments, put really nice things on it, start the mixing process, and would send things down to me. It was just really nice. So, we would have these meetings of process along the way, whether it came to building the skeleton or working from that skeleton into more developed form. 

Brett: Yeah, it was very free. Like J.D.’s saying, he would send me something on his phone, just of a couple chords—y’know what I mean, Craig?—and then I’d be like “That’s great, let’s work on that.” And then like he said, I would go to his place or, if he came up to my house, I have a lot of really top notch gear, so I would have him play the piano ideas and record maybe a guide vocal. Then I would work on it and just kind of develop it from there. Then we would get together maybe a couple weeks later and he would then add to it, throw his ideas on it, get his vocal happening on it, and it would just come together really quickly. We would work on one song—to completion—that way. 

Composition, arrangement, recording—those things sort of happened together, building everything up into the song?

Brett: Yes.

J.D.: Yes.

Cool. In terms of some of the arrangement, this is a “duo” album, it has the feel of a duo album…actually, one of the things I think you accomplished really nicely in terms of production is that it does sound like people in a room making music together. I mean it kinda sounds—not in terms of sounding like an old 70’s production style, or 60’s—but it sounds kind of like The Band, y’know, they’re just in a room, there’s instruments around, and they go around and they play. It doesn’t sound like that “everything made up on a computer” thing.

Brett: I agree, if you listen to the beginnings of some of the songs, like “Prayers” for instance, you actually hear the piano in the room, there’s an open window, and you hear sort of the birds and cicadas outside and that was just in a moment of J.D. cutting that vocal and that piano part. It’s there, it’s in a room, and it’s great.

Yeah. So then, in terms of the vocals, one of the things y’all have done here is to really have a lot of vocal harmonies, a lot of backing vocals to fill things out. How did y’all decide, y’know, with the arranging who was gonna sing what thing where?

Brett: Well, for the lead vocals I think it was just, Jeremy would say “I got this one” or maybe he would start with the idea for a vocal and the piano chords and it was just a given. There wasn’t any arguing, it was just sort of that it fell into whoever made the effort first. J.D., would you agree?

J.D.: Oh yeah, absolutely. Sometimes one of us had…we had two tunes—correct me if I’m wrong Brett—I think one was “Everspring,” and you had taken that one after we had kind of mulled over it a little bit and we had tried some preliminary tracks on it and it didn’t sit well. We said “I dunno, something’s missing there,” and one of us would revisit it or mull over what we did and start again. But with most of them it was pretty much that the tunes said “Hey, this is what needs to be done here.” It worked out beautifully.

Brett: Yeah, I agree. I think you and I are both intuitive enough to…y’know, if someone has a good enough idea, we just sort of let them run with it and then you just sort of support it as much as possible. 

J.D.: Yeah, totally. Which is really nice for a setting because sometimes you can work with people and, y’know, I’ll use that word “onerous” again, people become like “Ah, it’s gotta be like this how I hear it” and—that’s not to say Brett and I have that type of relationship that was like 100% without conflict—but it was definitely…and anytime things did get elevated, we were scientists in the laboratory. One of us would get really enheartened by something and it was never a sense of “No, it’s gotta be this way, I did this.” 

Brett: It wasn’t like that at all because we knew that we were working together so we both wanted to be really happy with everything. I always wonder—Craig, have you ever wondered how a duo like, say, Tears for Fears, how they would work? Or even like, somebody like Supertramp, y’know, who had two great songwriters—Roger Hodgson and Rick Davies—how they worked together? I dunno how they did, but obviously for J.D. and I, it was cool.

Yeah, for some groups you’ve got…like, you’ve got the Brian Wilson style, or Jeff Lynne, which is they are kind of in control and they tell each person “Here, you’re gonna come in and do this part.” And then you’ve got the kind of really defined band roles…I think with Supertramp it was kind of  what Roger wrote, he was gonna sing that and what Rick wrote, he was gonna sing that. And then you’ve got what you and J.D. are doing which is more of this free-form kicking things back and forth to see how it goes.

Brett:  Agreed, agreed completely.

All of those can work very well. Electric Light Orchestra are amazing, Supertramp are amazing. But you just get different kinds of things out of that. Again, in the promotional material the word “organic” came up multiple times and it really does sound like the process for y’all was this organic thing that grew and built over time. 

Brett: Yeah, it wasn’t contrived. There wasn’t any sort of inauthentic sort of pretense. It just sorta happened, you know what I mean? We both were open—I think that’s another key word too—we’re just open to exploring things. There’s no sort of like ego, y’know, preciousness about ideas like you were alluding to. It was just really cool that way.

Going to production and what y’all came out with as finalized forms here, I hear an emphasis on a sort of precision in production, picking the right things for the right places over a sort of…technical display in the performance. With progress styles of music, one of the things is that audience members are like, “Show me how hard it is. I wanna hear the crazy thing.” And it sounds like this is very song-focused, and the production emphasis is really on putting the pieces in place. 

Brett: Thank you.

And so I’m wondering, what do y’all like about that as an approach to—I mean, you’re on InsideOut so one way or another the word “progressive” is going to be attached here—what do you like about that organic approach to progressive music?

Brett: To me, Craig, the song is always king. I mean, that’s all it comes down to. It’s never about the parts. I know as a young songwriter, when I first started it was about the parts, but you quickly see that’s not about that, it’s about how the song is dictating that things go. I’ll say this, playing a lot of things like—note-y or fast or whatever—that’s actually easy when you’re a musician and you start to understand what music is. It’s the other stuff…it’s the slow things, it’s the playing in time with feel, it’s the space between the notes—y’know, throwing out the cliché—that’s the really difficult thing that comes with time and experience. 

Over many many records, I’ve worked with countless artists and just garnered experience with these things—working with somebody like J.D., years ago, you just take the best parts of what he has to offer and you learn from it. That’s one of the reasons I wanted to work with him now, because he’s just a freaking amazing, natural, fluid musician. He’s unabated…he just flows with it and that’s a really cool thing. That works against my really technical—as far as putting things in places and trying to get the right sounds to work—that inspires me to also be that way. It’s a really cool thing, I’ll just leave it at that.

J.D., did you want to weigh in on that?

J.D.: I love what he said, “the song is king.” Also, something I think is so important too—something that Brett has definitely taught me—is playing to the song. Don’t be controlled by the height of your talents, but yet play to what is demanded by the expression.

Brett: I use this analogy a lot: it’s like riding a horse. There’s more power felt—I know, because I’ve ridden horses many, many times—there’s more power felt when you hold the horse back and you feel that want to pull away. If you actually let it go and release it, all that power abates; if you hold it back and, not constrain it, but sort of dictate where it lies, there’s just a lot of power in that. 

J.D.: Yeah, that’s so important.

I think that’s a helpful analogy…we’ve mentioned the space between the notes, that kind of air in recorded music I think is really important. And a lot of that is not putting things in that space or kind of filling them up when they shouldn’t be filled up. 

Brett: Yeah, there’s an intimacy that happens when you allow that space because the stuff that…the stuff that’s not said, in those spaces, is actually the thing that is being said. I don’t wanna get too crazy with it, but that’s the way it is. So a lot of times when we’re younger, there’s that beautiful, youthful exuberance that we all have, but you’re just filling it with all kinds of stuff because—sometimes, you may be shy, or you may not know who you are, or you may just be someone who doesn’t know. But as you get older and you get experience at things, you’ll allow that space to happen because in that is the essence of who you are. It’s really difficult because it’s a scary thing to do. If I listen to a song like “Oh This Life” or “Prayers,” or the beginnings of some of these or middles, those are moments of us really in there; it’s not being hidden by a plethora of y’know, musical musicalities. There is deep harmonic and melodic stuff going on and we could easily talk about that, but it’s not overbearing because, as I said, it’s always about the song. It’s not about those parts.

Yeah. So, in kind of the same vein, at any point was there some intentional kind of steering towards particular sounds or moods? Because, I hear a real consistency in the music; there’s a kind of prettiness, a kind of brightness, but it’s overall a very melancholy sort of mood, is what I hear. I hear, “This is stuff for the front porch at sunset.” This is that kind of music. You’re there together, it’s a pretty thing, but it’s also kind of the end of the day, a winding down sort of feeling. Did that just happen that you got ten songs like that? 

Brett: Yeah, that just happened in the sense that the mood happened. But I’ll just say this and then, J.D., you comment on it: as a producer, I am extremely aware of how songs are interacting with each other. So I know if something, for instance, was in the key of C that was written and then also another song in C that was a waltz was written, I’m going to steer away from that because we’ve already covered that territory in a musical sense. Now emotionally, yeah, I’m all in, because continuity within an album of an emotional weight—I really respond to it. It works as a holistic thing, too, for an album, so I would go towards that.

J.D.: Yeah, I mean, there’s a lot of…we do have themes, some thematic material that is woven throughout the album. It’s funny because…for example, there’s one part where it says “You’ll never come back” and we do one part at the end of a song—all of a sudden there’s a piano outro that has me singing to that, then it comes to the end of another song and that harmonic progression is secretly coded in two other songs and those words are actually said more than just once. So, it’s kind of like an arch-form to the whole album—you could sit, listen, lost yourself, and come out the other side having experienced something.

Brett: Yeah, there’s a familiarity with those parts, absolutely.

I was wondering, J.D.—well, I guess both of you, but J.D.—in terms of writing, you’re not just a songwriter. So, going to what Brett said about how what goes on in one song influences what you want to do in another song…as far as what you wrote, lyrically, for this album, are there connections between that and other writing that’s been going on alongside it or right before it?

J.D.: I mean, I personally, I always write based off of what I’m experiencing in my life. It’s not always something that’s defined, something that’s out in the open, something that’s clear view or simple to define. Sometimes, it’s metaphorically hidden, but in this, I think that there was…not to say that I was dealing with any type of loss or anything else that maybe thematically is happening in these tunes…but sometimes the color of the tunes, or there’s a situation I’ve dealt with earlier in the day—just coming from my perspective—it plays itself in dramatically into what I then have to produce. And that’s just being an artist, I guess. You have to get it out, and some people…going to a conservatory, there were some people who never ever created from any sort of experience—they created from mathematics. That’s totally the opposite spectrum from me. I’m very much a muse-chaser, I get deeply inspired, and so a lot of my writings and most lyrics usually come from that.

Do you think that really embeds the writing process into sort of the everyday stuff of life for you, then? If it’s a constant…or, not constant, but if your writing is a response and not something that you just go do “when it’s the time to go sit down and write.” Is writing more of an everyday experience for you?

J.D.: Yeah, yeah, I think—and I hate to put age into this, but—I feel like when you’re young, you can really chase the muse and want it and crave it and wish for it, and a big frustrating thing is that sometimes it’s not there. And I think the older I’ve gotten, and the experiences of what I’ve gone through…I feel like now I don’t have to wait for it. I can—because I’m so pressed for time, as we all are in our adult lives, living in American or wherever it is that we live—I feel like, when those moments come up when I can sit down, it’s just a floodgate. It’s just there and ready to go. And I think also just the experience of not having to worry that the muse has to be perfect, and understanding that even in the smallest granule of sand there’s still a microscopic surface that’s huge. I’m getting a little too deep into this, but hopefully it makes sense.

No, that’s helpful. I mean, if you’re writing—and Brett’s done this too—it’s helpful to have metaphors and analogies for thinking about what it is that you’re doing. I’m interested in, then—y’all have both mentioned age and experience and how that plays into how you write or arrange or can make production choices—just as curiosity, has ‘place’ had any impact on this music of Rise Twain? You’re both in sort of the Philadelphia area (more or less?), and so you’re doing some work separately and then coming together in the same space…does the ‘place’ of being in that area have any bearing on how the music came out?

Brett: Yeah, that’s a great question. I would say…possibly the seasons? But the influence of, especially today of the Internet and reading books and seeing movies from all over the world, it’s a lot different than it was in the 90’s. Yeah, that’s a great question, but I think it’s pretty global now, the influence? The fact of experiencing the different seasons definitely—I know that I definitely feel different in the summer than I do in the fall…there’s certain feelings, and then also the stuff that you go through in your life also affects you but that could happen anywhere, whether I was sitting in a café in Paris or y’know, in a biergarten in Munich or wherever. That’s the thing, dude, everybody sort of… the thing as a writer, you sort of use metaphor to create something new that’s away from a cliché and you hope that in that metaphor or analogy or simile, that other people can relate to that in their own way and attach meaning to it. So, it’s a global sort of push that a writer tries to do. And a songwriter obviously, too. I dunno, I know we’re kind of talking about deep stuff but I think it’s worth it. 

Well, I mean…some people like deep music and deep stuff and like to think about it, so I don’t think that’s a problem. It’s interesting that you bring that up, because if you want to talk about something that’s universal, there’s two main ways you can go. One way is to start with this big universal concept, and the other way is to start with your particular experience and say “Well, maybe there’s a universality across particular experiences.” It sounds like y’all have gone more that direction, right? So, the concept for the album isn’t to have a concept, the concept for the album is “Here’s two guys and we’re bringing our experiences to this music and seeing what happens.”

Brett: That’s a great way to put it, Craig, it really is. I think that starting from that—that intimate space—works better, I think, from a songwriter’s point of view, because you hold those keys then, you know that experience. So, it’s really authentic that way. Rather than speaking about grand concepts and things like that. There’s a song on the album, the last song is called “That Is Love”…how many love songs have been written? I love the fact of, first off, trying to tackle that theme, but you have to come at it from personal experience to be able to sell it in the way that the music is constructed and then ultimately how the vocal is presenting those lyrics. So yeah, I think it works better. J.D., what do you think, man?

J.D.: Yeah, I mean…‘universal’ is a word that I like that we’re using here because that’s pretty much—let’s talk here even about what ‘Rise Twain’, what it’s inception was as the name of the band. It’s kind of like being able to offer, I dunno, a painting and an idea of art as experience and emotional process yet keeping it so that it can be adhered to by other people, universally.

Brett: Yeah, so there’s ambiguity to it, right? 

J.D.: There has to be a little ambiguity to it. I think that’s what keeps it interesting and allows you to listen to it and hear certain words or certain angles of the music that go along with certain phrases. Each and every time you listen to it may reflect a different meaning even to that singular person, and allow it to be kaleidoscopical, if that’s even a word.

It is now.

J.D.: It’s not just a simplistic idea, you know? It’s multi-layered, I guess.

And that’s part of the craft, I think, is making something that is able to be that. 

Brett: You do that with your lyrics, to try to…you’re trying to paint a picture and allow for interpretation. There’s a line in “Oh This Life” that goes “There’s an eyelash on your cheek you’ll never see/The details missed by you/You see in me.” When you say something like that, it allows for somehow…those words, when you combine them, it allows for real intimacy and people can respond to it in their own ways. I know what it means for me but at the same time I really want to try to bring people into something. “Sometimes nothing sounds right/’Till I hear you in your starlight.” Stuff like that, it’s just…I love that. It’s ambiguous, but it allows for real detailed interpretation from the listener. 

Right. Y’all were just bringing up the name ‘Rise Twain’ and I was wondering at what point in the process was that name settled as what you were going to call this musical collaboration? 

Brett: J.D., what do you think, like three quarters of the way through, maybe?

J.D.: Yeah, I think so. We were starting to list up some different names and Brett, you had come up with that pairing of words and we kept coming back to it. I think once we heard that—and what it says to me when I hear it, ‘Rise Twain’, and knowing the definition of both those words—it just kinda, it was like “This is it, this sounds great.” Sometimes that’s a hard thing to do with a title for two people or a project or a book or a painting even. It kinda like, with no pressure—just like the music—it was fun to come up with what we were gonna call this. And here it is.

Yeah, and I think there’s a nice ambiguity in the possible ways that name can evoke different senses, right? It gives a sense that it’s a duo, for me when I first hear it, especially when I look at it on the page, it’s just got this sort of Arthurian gravitas to it: ‘Rise Twain’. But, also, I see that, but the sound that I hear is two guys with acoustic guitars, y’know, playing songs. It can do a lot of things. It’s cool.

Brett: I love that! Yeah, it’s sort of that intimate, simple thing works against that—what did you say, the Arthurian? Yeah, yeah, that Camelot-y, sort of Percival/Lancelot thing. That’s so great, I love that.

So, as Rise Twain is here now, with the album about to come out, at this point is it still this kind of, “We did this collaboration, we’re putting this album out” and that’s the end of it that you see right now? Or do you kind of have some plans starting for what Rise Twain does going forward?

Brett: Yeah, I think the fact that we got interest and support from some really cool people at a label has really underscored the fact that, yeah, we want—we should do more, we wanted to anyway, but now it’s like “Yeah, let’s see what we can do with this thing.” And that applies to live performances as well as more collaborations as far as writing some more songs. 

Are y’all working on some tours or festivals, getting that together right now? Any firm touring plans at this point?

Brett: Yep. Nothing firm right now, we’ve got a couple shows booked, I think up in Boston and one in Philadelphia in October. But yeah, we’re gonna try to do all that sort of stuff. That’s part of the plan, I think, with the label and also the DIY essence of what we’re trying to do anyway, as well. So, we’ll just see how it goes. I know that J.D. and I both wanna play, we have some friends of ours who are great musicians who would form the nucleus of the band…

I was wondering if you had people in mind who you’re thinking you want to go out with. Cool. Well, that’s most of it, then, if y’all want to do it and you know people who can do it, you just gotta book some dates. 

Brett: And the cool thing with it too, Craig, is that…it would be like, four really good singers in the band. That’s something that’s a strong suit of J.D. and ours anyway, there’s a lot of great vocals. So, to have other singers, it’s just something…it’s so exciting to me, y’know?

J.D.: It’s gonna be a lot of fun.

It’ll kind of let you do whatever you want, vocally. 

Brett: Yep, totally.

Awesome. So, what’s most immediately next for y’all, musically? So, Rise Twain is working on looking for some touring…

Brett: Yes, I think that’s the focus right now. 

Do you have any individual projects that are sort of the next step after that, already, or are you kind of waiting to see at this point?

Brett: I mean, personally, for me, I’m always writing and I know, speaking for J.D., he’s always writing, so…wherever those songs may go…I mean, writing songs keeps me out of trouble, keeps my feet planted. I don’t know what I would do; I’ve been writing songs all my life, so it’s an outlet. It’s a serious thing, I…it’s a weird thing, too, because…like, when people play me ‘funny music’ like Frank Zappa or stuff like that, I can’t relate to it. I’m like, “This is a joke.” I gotta—this is like, serious stuff. Without it being overbearing or hyperbolic or all that kinda stuff, but…I really like that. I’m writing all the time, I have another group of friends that I work with all the time in another band and we’re working on stuff there. I just got done working with this really talented artist that I co-wrote some songs, produced, engineered, played on the whole record—that’s going to be coming out in a few weeks, so it’s just non-stop. J.D., you’ve got some really cool things going on as well.

J.D.: Yeah, yeah, just doing…I’m working with another electronic duo that I’ve been with for six years and we try to put out a work once a year if not…as much as we can. It, like you said, keeps me out of trouble, and also it keeps me feeling like I’m doing what I wanna do. And, y’know, we all have day jobs, but some of us can have the fortunate ability to revel in their complete passion for their day job. I also build, I’m a woodworker for my day job, but music’s always come first, as well as family. Well, family comes first. My wife even will attest to that, she’ll be able to see me and say “You need to sit down and play because I can tell from the look on your face you need to, to get something out. You need to play, you don’t look like…you look like you’re starving” Always writing, always experimenting, I got a bunch of new equipment lately that I’ve been crazy about. Doing some modular synth stuff, playing around with that, and just seeing the limits of where this sonic world will take me. And also, being able to write songs and pass them to Brett! And he’ll go, “Hey, let’s put it in the cookie jar and see what happens, where this goes.” 

So then…in terms of Rise Twain, but also Beck-Fields and the other music y’all are involved with, what role is the technology playing for you? We talked about how there’s that one kind of structural, formal, mathematical kind of way to write and there’s that other sort of more personal, organic kind of way…it seems like a lot of artists go for one or the other, but do you find that getting a new modular synth—does that sort of help shape the way that you’re writing from experience? 

Brett: Yeah, I would say, definitely.

J.D.: Yeah, it’s just another set of paints that does a completely different thing with your brushstroke. That’s a lot of fun, gosh, it’s almost limitless what you can do now with an iPad. It’s like “Wow!” and the amount of sounds you can get out of ones and zeros, but also honing in on the acoustic instrument, which is always my temple and I can probably say Brett’s as well. You always come back to the simple and actual and real vibration that…that gives you overtones and all the other bells of life that a digital instrument just can’t give you.

Brett: There’s more…there’s more error in the stuff that humans create that’s really appealing to me, y’know? I listen stuff—I listen to all kinds of music, first off, but—a lot of new music is brilliant in its error and a lot of it is just absolutely stagnant in its grid-like quality and perfection. That’s a cryin’ shame to me. And also it sort of dates that kind of stuff, too. Because I know that all of us as artists, as human beings, we’ll outgrow that stage of computer influence on our music, it’s just gonna…it will happen. I was thinking about the 80’s, y’know, the transition between the 70’s and 80’s when sampling and automation came into play in music and people used it all the time and it became really overwrought and it dates a lot of that material. I think, in a negative way? Even though there’s some brilliant songs there. Because when you hear the song—like a singer-songwriter playing the song without all the technology—it’s always like “Wow, there’s the song! There it is.”

Even if you love it, as soon as you hear a Linn drum machine or a gated reverb—even now, if it’s being used in a song coming out in 2019, the idea is “Oh, that sounds like the 80’s.”

Brett: Yes, totally.

It doesn’t sound like 2019.

Brett: Yep, exactly, dude. 

[And here there was a lengthy diversion into existentialist philosophy that has been moved to Part 2 of the interview for thematic purposes].

So, in terms of people wanting to follow for news about what Rise Twain is doing, and as tour dates are announced, as the album’s being released—what is the best way for people to keep up with Rise Twain news? Is that the Facebook artist page? What else?

J.D.: Facebook, Twitter, Instagram is probably my…is probably the most unattended one that I…I’ve tried to put some work into that. I think Facebook and Twitter, because we have InsideOut Music also posting all the information, but yeah, our Facebook is pretty up-to-date with everything that’s gonna be going on. 

Brett: And that applies to—if you were to look up ‘Jeremy Beck’ or ‘Brett Kull’ on Facebook or Instagram—it’s all sort of part of that…bubble of whatever we’re trying to create. It’s all under that same umbrella. 

Right, so, okay, there’s the Rise Twain pages but also your individual social media accounts.

Brett: Yep.

J.D.: Absolutely.

Brett: Everything sort of has a cross-platform procedure. 

Cool. Thank y’all for this chat. It was really wonderful that y’all did that.

J.D.: Thank you.

I don’t have to go, I just thought that was kind of a good place to wrap-up the official interview, if y’all wanna talk you can, if you wanna go on with your lives, that’s cool, too. [And then we did proceed to chat further, covering existentialist philosophy, restoration woodworking, and taking the time to get a project done right. That conversation will resume in Part 2 of MusicTAP’s interview with J.D. Beck and Brett Kull of Rise Twain].

By Craig E. Bacon

Husband, Father, Philosopher, Music/Beer/Comics Enthusiast—Craig has written for The Prog Report and ProgRadar, and now serves as de facto progressive music editor for MusicTAP. Please direct interview requests & review submissions to [email protected]