New Music Now 012: Eszter Balint

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Charley Deppner: Welcome to New Music Now from Ink 19 Magazine. We’ll hear tracks from four albums today, including I Hate Memory!, Eszter Balint’s very first concept album. I’m Charley Deppner. I’m an Ink 19 contributor. Please welcome Eszter Balint, and also welcome to the show Pat Greene. Tell us a little bit about yourselves.

Eszter Balint: Yep. I’m Eszter Balint, and I’m a performer, singer, songwriter, and musician. I play violin, guitar, sing, and I also act sometimes — which sounds like I’m really bragging. I do at least dabble with all these things.

Pat Greene: I’m Pat Greene. I’m a freelance writer, artist, curator, musician. I ran for mayor in Orlando in 2004. It was supposed to be a joke. I guess it was.

[00:02:06] A Foul Form, Osees

Charley: Thank you all for being here today. For today’s episode, I’m gonna showcase A Foul Form by Osees. It’s their 25th release over the course of 20 years. Overall, the album borrows heavily from anarcho art punk from the dawn of the 1980s, and even closes with a cover of Rudimentary Peni’s “Sacrifice.”

Pat: I only am familiar by name.

Charley: Yeah. Well, I’m gonna apologize, this being your introduction to them, because this is a little bit, uh, grittier than pretty much everything they’ve released. They’ve kind of gone from the super ego of the band straight back to like the id of more of their punk rock roots, so it’s a little abrasive compared to what they usually do — and I think that’s what’s unique about the album.

Pat: Is it a midlife crisis?

Charley: I don’t… I don’t know. I don’t think so. I mean, I think they were kind of at the pinnacle of their career, and they just decided to do like a bit of a, a departure, a bit of a rug pull. This is more of a hardcore punk album for Oh Sees, more reminiscent of Crass, Discharge, the Void, and I’d like to even think there’s a little bit of Alice Bag. This first track you’re gonna hear is “Perm Act,” and it typifies this sentiment.

[00:03:16] Perm Act

Pat: I’m gonna compare this to “4′33″.”

Eszter: Yeah.

Charley: I’d like to think that if you were to kind of do a time machine, or if you were an alien visiting art house, punk rock bands in the early ’80s, and you had to reinterpret what you thought you heard, it would kind of sound like this. I’m able to slip this to a lot of my punk rock friends from the ’80s as a way of convincing them that they could, or should, like Oh Sees, and they’re not just some kind of hippie band, I guess.

Pat: I like it. It did feel like something I would be listening to in the early ’80s. Like it was, definitely had that feel. Pardon my ignorance, Charley, but when you say they had a sort of a hippie sound, I definitely didn’t hear hippie in it, what does that mean to you? Like…

Charley: Well, I mean, they’re more, they started as kind of a garage punk band, and they did a lot of very even acoustic type Stewff. You know, like if you were to say, track back, they’re more of that Orange County sound.

Pat: I felt a little like, a “California Über Alles” kinda thing, you know.

Charley: Yeah. That’s the other part about them, is that they’ve changed their sound and their name with as much frequency. They’re hard to keep track of, cuz they’re constantly reinventing themselves. They started off as OCs, Orange County Sound, and then progressed from there.

Pat: Quite a difference.

Charley: Yeah. And almost turned into like a Pink Floyd before they released this punk album.

Eszter: Okay. I just wanted to say that I enjoyed listening to this so much more together than I did alone. And I think that there’s something about this kind of music that just doesn’t lend itself to you being dropped in the middle of it without any context, because it is, as you say, very frantic and frenetic. And I have no problem with that, but I need to be kind of invited into that journey getting there. And listening to it with you, and with you, Charley, who picked and loved this track, that was like doing part of the journey and also getting a little more context that this music of theirs is a bit of a reaction to other music. That set that stage for me. So, I actually really enjoyed it, and I loved the drums, which had a kind of almost military vibe to it. Um, tight and great. And I like it.

Pat: It’s, kind of like, say going to a Neu show or something, where I wouldn’t drive home and listen to that in the car, but when I’m with other people and I see the performance, it’s like a different experience. But, you know, you wouldn’t walk down the street with your earbuds on and just, you know? I mean, I wouldn’t, I wouldn’t, I wouldn’t, Charley, I dunno, Charley.

Charley: Speak for yourself.

Eszter: I, now, I might too, see now that I’ve been a little bit more privy to the evolution, I actually might be in the mood to listen to it walking down the street with my earbuds.

Pat: It might become nostalgic for you now at this point, since we all hung out together. [crickets] Sorry.

Charley: Well, It’s interesting what Eszter said about a progression, because, you know, I’m one of those people that used to listen to a whole album, and I was really into the sequence that artists pick. “What’s the first track on the second side?” always had some kind of relevance to me, and I always feel like the songs tend to lead into one another.

Charley: And so, with that being said, I picked the track that follows the track we just heard, “Perm Act.” It’s called “Social Butt,” and it has the distinction of being the least-listened-to song on this, but it is part of the progression from the last track we heard to this track, so, brick by brick, I think this is a good followup to the song we just heard.

[00:07:35] Social Butt

Charley: I really like, kind of, that era of punk rock chanting that you hear in the chorus. And it’s nostalgic, but new sounding to me. It’s still, it’s refreshing to hear. You don’t hear that lack of, precision, I guess, when you’re just barking and chanting, which was, uh, seemed very endemic to a certain period of time in music.

Pat: Yeah. It also felt like, what Eszter said about the drumming before, there was a, like, the chanting and the drumming almost felt militaristic or political or, you know, like something like… when you go to other countries where the cars drive around and yell to you about the elections or whatever, you know, like over a speaker or that kind of thing.

Like yeah. I understand what you say about the chanting though, because it has a certain power too, that, I don’t know. It’s a more nuanced power, you know.

Eszter: Yeah, I really like the drummer. This is a great drummer, huh? Very punchy. And I love drums anyway, and I really love the drums on this track. Love the chanting, the punk attitude. I have to laugh at the idea that we’re getting nostalgic, re, you know, visiting, that era, because, you know, there’s just a cat eating its tail in irony in that, because that whole era was all about anti-nostalgia, right? Like it was the most anti-nostalgic thing you could do or be. So it’s a little bit funny that there’s a revival. Again, I just feel like this is kind of a communal type of music, in a weird way. Totally enjoy listening to it with you. Not so much when I listen to it alone.

Pat: I feel like we should all get in a car and ride down the road listening to it together, you know. So.

Eszter: Yeah.

Charley: I think it’s interesting you mentioned the drumming, because the way the band has built up over the last few years, they’ve turned into a two-drummer band. Typically when they play live, they have two, and they’re both amazing drummers. And one of the aspects of this album that interests me is that they’ve built this very solid band with, you know, two guitars, a bass player, two drummers, and a keyboardist — they’re all amazing in their own right — and how they’ve stripped that down to play a much, looser and, uh, basic sound versus what they were kind of building the band into, particularly with two drummers.

Eszter: Yeah, I, that’s interesting about the two drummers, cuz one of the things I love about the drums on this track and the previous is its kinda simplicity and sparseness and directness. Yeah, it’s cool.

Charley: Tell us about Afro Gypsy.

[00:11:41] Afro Gypsy, Tianna Esperanza

Eszter: So I found this album because of this assignment, actually, because I’m not, you know… When I was younger I used to be more like, “oh my god, what’s PJ Harvey’s new album? Let me listen to it from top to bottom immediately.” That’s not really the way I listen to music anymore. And I think that’s partially cuz my hard drive is so full with like billions of songs and records. So there’s just a much slower simmering, uh, attitude about it.

But anyway, I went around and looked frantically for something, and there was a lot of good Stewff, but nothing that I felt like “this is it.” And then I found this, and I felt like “this is it.” And then I found out there isn’t even an album yet, and I think this woman, Tianna Esperanza is gonna be, just to use a really hackneyed phrase, someone to watch. Like, I actually think she’s kind of phenomenal. I was really moved by the songs and by her incredible wisdom and sort of old-soul quality, even though she’s apparently 22.

Pat: I found out that she’s the granddaughter of Palmolive from The Raincoats, which I love The Raincoats, but she sounds completely different than The Raincoats

Charley: …and The Slits. Well, and The Slits.

Pat: Yeah, Sorry, I’m more of a Raincoats person, by the way, so.

Eszter: Yeah, so this song is called “Terror,” and I think it’s an apt title. There’s a lot of mood in it. Uh, there’s also a lot of explicit content, so I don’t know if we need to issue a trigger or warning or anything. [hello, this segment’s lyrics mention death, crimes, sex, and other potentially sensitive topics.]

Pat: There should be a trigger warning if something’s boring. Sorry.

[00:13:22] Terror

Eszter: First of all, give me a cool female vocalist, and I’m usually in, enough said. I’m easily seduced by that. I’ve actually often ended up liking songs because there was a powerful vocalist, female vocalist, whose voice I found compelling. So that’s number one right there. I think she’s an incredible singer. And what I love about songs, is when they’re like a little film, it’s like a whole little movie that you can kind of feel or visualize, and I really get that from this story. It is like a little horror movie. There’s also that intense drama in it, which I find almost humorous, just because it’s so over the top, it’s almost cartoonish, and it’s… and we all know what being 22 is like and how dramatic that time is.

Pat: I felt the cinematic or sort of a musical theater character, but it also felt like the humor just became kind of terrifying, too, you know. It felt like all of a sudden she realized too, and she just got angered. I love the way it felt. It almost felt like she was sort of improvising as she was delivering it. It’s really brilliant.

Eszter: But I think she has a sense of humor and like that super pretty voice that she sings in the beginning about, you know, “I’d like to dig my keys into your eyes” or something, or “liver.” And she sings it in this gorgeous, like, floaty, angelic voice. I think there’s just a lot going on. Humor, cinematic, incredible vocal chops, and just a really cool production.

Charley: Well, I definitely like the blending or mixing of tones, I think you said. Juxtaposition, between the more ethereal way the song opens, and then you have that angelic voice kind of, saying something pretty dark and scary, and then it, kind of goes into this blues sounding… But very seamlessly. The way you’ve got several tones kind of working together. It’s an interesting palette.

Pat: And it’s also a song that you could hear if you were at a gathering. If you weren’t really paying attention to the lyrics and you just heard the music and would think, “oh wow, that’s an interesting song,” but then all of a sudden you sat down and really listened to what she was saying, it would hit you for sure.

Charley: At some point I was wondering, you know, she seems terrorized, but then obviously I think the transition is she becomes the terror.

Pat: Yeah.

Eszter: I also wonder about that. Like maybe she’s not a totally reliable narrator, which I love an unreliable narrator.

Pat: Well, she might have just been capturing a scenario that’s not too unfamiliar. But either way, I think that, you know, it works.

Eszter: So the next one is also from Afro Gypsy. This one’s called “Three Straight Bitches from Hell.” And I think I should have probably put this one first, because that one’s kind of a hard act to follow, but let’s hear it.

[00:17:57] Three Straight Bitches from Hell

Eszter: Oh that groove, when it comes in. I just love that.It sounds like a looped acoustic guitar doing two chords, but then layered somehow. I don’t know, but it’s instantly infectious. I’m fascinated by singers, and this is often girls, too, who are incredibly young and sound like they’ve lived for a thousand years. Like, where does that voice come from? And it doesn’t, doesn’t feel like they’re just putting it on, trying to sound like an older person. It’s like, interesting to contemplate.

You know, there is a lot of drama in there again, but there is also a very playful, off-the-cuff, almost like journal diary notes, quality, too. I mean, I can almost kind of get a hint of that Raincoats connection there.

There’s just a real, not formal-traditional songwriting structure to the lyrics that I dig in this one. and some really funny lines, actually, if you listen to it. She’s definitely got a sense of humor and again, a wisdom. So, I’m just intrigued.

Pat: Eszter started out saying that it’s, her music feels cinematic, but this feels like it could be the end of the movie, you know? She’s such a great storyteller, like she makes it uncomfortably funny. It’s really hard for me to believe that she’s 22. But she’s not playing Follow the Leader on that one. You know, she’s just kind of like, “if this sounds right,” you know, “I’m gonna use it.” I don’t know who’s playing on this, too, but I’d like to look more into that. It’s really brilliant.

Eszter: I would, too. And I’m just gonna say one more thing, which is that this is the kind of music that I really love, where it’s hard to say what kind of music it is, cuz all the tracks have a lot of different influences going on, and yet there is a unified voice there.

It’s not like she’s just doing a mashup; her vocals and her presence kind of give it a singular quality of her own. But she’s got influences in there from folk, old school R&B, almost more of a hip hop presence. There’s definitely, you know, a punk attitude in one of the songs and a little bit in the one we heard. So there’s just like, she seamlessly and comfortably does not choose one track for her sound, which I like.

Pat: When I interviewed mike watt he said, “Genre is a Berlin Wall.” I really love that phrase, because I, it just feels like, when you get down to it, they’re, I mean, they can help you along the way a little, but don’t get too locked into it.

Charley: When I listen to that song, I think about how much music’s out there where people brag about the lovers they’ve been with in their life and how, uh, how glorious it’s presented, and they’re presented as wins, and things like this. And, and what’s funny to me about this song is this is not one of those songs where you’re necessarily, uh, bragging on the loves of your life. And it’s probably closer to an honest truth for a lot of people. And again, it’s, it’s very folksy. It’s a story within a song, within music. And, uh, I like what you said about closing credits, like, the end of a spaghetti western.

Intermission

[00:22:36] All My Love Deluxe Reissue, Habibi

Pat: My choice is the All My Love Deluxe Reissue bundle from Habibi. Kill Rock Stars is re-issuing two Habibi albums: Cardamom Garden and Anywhere but Here. It’s funny, I’ve been sending Habibi’s music everywhere, sending it to all my friends and asking everybody to listen, because I’m pretty obsessed right now.

It’s as if Kill Rock Stars granted me a wish I feel like they might have been reading my text or something.

Raheel, the lead singer, is Persian, but she said she grew up primarily around more Arabic culture around the Detroit area. So Habibi is an Arabic term meaning “beloved.” And, uh, “Come My Habibi,” by Habibi, is a brilliant song.

[00:24:08] Come My Habibi

Pat: I love this band, but I also love how I feel, like lost psychedelic tracks from somewhere east of Greece, you know. And Raheel’s got a radio show, an online show, and it kind of feels like somebody who’s been diligently going to the thrift shop, finding all these jazz albums, and you can hear all these influences that she has. And this also feels kind of cinematic to me, too. You know, I remember staying by Damascus Gate in Jerusalem, and the scratched record in the ’80s, over these like, cone speakers where they, you could hear prayer call in the morning, and it kind of had that feel of just something very organic and kind of raw, you know.

I’m a fan.

Charley: Well, it’s my, uh, sincerest wish that everyone could be somebody’s habibi. I’m a big fan of excessive vamping in a song, and way the song kind of just, continues the way it does. I mean, uh, back before my hard drive filled, I would lean into certain record labels. You know, Kill Rock Stars is in that category.

Before, before the internet, when you leaned on labels like Kill Rock Stars or K Records or Shimmy Disc or Touch and Go. So they always have a special place in my heart, you know, anything from then. And as much as I leaned in, there’s always Stewff I haven’t heard of that people like you are really passionate about, and I’m glad I had a chance to be introduced to it.

Eszter: Thank you for introducing me to it as well. I love this. It’s great.

Pat: Oh yeah,

Eszter: Yeah, I just really like the vocals. I like everything about this. I just, I love surf, I love psychedelia, and I love that, bringing in that Middle Eastern sound, which is like the center of it. Uh, I love female singers, as if I hadn’t made that clear yet. Um, so this is, this is cool. Thank you.

Pat: I think that the vamping element also is a little hypnotic too. You know, like, it…

Eszter: Yeah.

Pat: …just like, kind of keeps you there.

Eszter: For sure.

Pat: Well, full disclosure, I talked to Raheel, and she told me that this song was influenced by the idea that she was listening to a lot of Lee Hazlewood. Plus she said it was sort of based on the antagonist in The Good, [the] Bad, and the Ugly. We brought up some spaghetti westerns before, so… but this is after I’d listened to it several times that she told me this, and you can kinda make your own judgment.

[00:27:12] Angel Eyes

Pat: I love the way it starts out, like, it sounds like Alice Coltrane, you know, at the beginning. It’s got that kind of the harp going on, and then it becomes female pop from the ’60s, and I love the sort of changing gears, and it’s very pretty. And the guitar almost sounds like it could be like Pat Martino or some kind of jazz guitar kind of thing.

It’s got that sort of, uh, repetitive background that we talked about. Like all the songs seem to change gears too, which I feel like sometimes when you listen to a minute of a song, you think you’ve heard enough, but I don’t think you should ever do that with this band.

Eszter: I love the sparseness, minimalism of it, and love her voice. It’s, it’s just soothing and immediately inviting. And of course I love all those references. I love spaghetti western music, I love Lee Hazlewood, I love ’60s female girl groups, and I love garage rock. And that, again, there’s that very obvious Middle Eastern sound, which gives it an unusual bent. But it does have that garage rock sound, too., It’s a cool blend.

And I love that they are not at all bothered by the, you know, two chords going on for the whole duration of the song, which I never let myself get away with writing two-chord songs. So it’s cool that someone else does that.

Charley: Just so you know, like I can’t shake the Ennio Morricone, um, spaghetti western aspects, and as a fan of Lee Van Cleef’s character in [The] Good, the Bad and the Ugly, you know, it’s, the song’s great.

-fs[00:30:13] I Hate Memory!, Eszter Balint

Charley: Okay. I’ll try not to scream I Hate Memory! with the exclamation mark.

Eszter: I just appreciate that you had the right impulse, cuz it’s like, if I wrote it in little tiny font and no exclamation mark, somebody might mistake that for an actual sound adult real concise sentiment, which it’s not. Obviously there’s a little meta playfulness to this.

It’s just like some moments, we hate it. So this record, now that no one listens to full albums, right? “That’s just such a thing of the past,” is of course, the time that I decided to make an album that tells a story as an album, because why not do the most challenging thing?

Um, but it’s a collection of songs about a teenagehood, about a certain era in New York, about art, about community. And somewhere in there, I am, but I kind of am trying to tell these stories without necessarily featuring me so much upfront, like, “this is my story.”

Um, it’s more like, this is my point of view, if anything. And, it’s actually also a show that I’m working on right now. I call it an anti-musical. It is basically a theatrical piece, but with the songs at the center of it, and I wrote most of these songs with Stew. of Stew and the Negro Problem and of Passing Strange fame. So he’s the one who said, “let’s do something.” And I was so thrilled, cuz I really felt like an artistic kinship with him when I’d seen his work. So he encouraged me to do something about this era and growing up in this very artistic milieu that I grew up in in the early ’80s.

And I said, “no way,” cuz I’m not somebody who’s really comfortable with telling my memoirs. That’s not the way I roll. And also, I’m not that nostalgic. I’m not that romantic about the past. I know that these are really interesting stories from that time, and people are really interested in it, but I’m just not into being sentimental and stuck in the past.

And he said, “that is exactly why you are the person who should do this. Those are the reasons.” So I said, “okay, challenge accepted.” And, uh, we wrote the songs. I hope that the album stands on its own without the show. And I think it does.

This is called “The First Day,” and it’s based on when I arrived to America with my father and this extended family who were all theater makers. I was walking around the streets of New York with my dad, and this is a very impressionistic recollection.

[00:32:56] The First Day

Charley: As someone who did not know how stupid I was, who painfully knows how stupid I am now, I mean, and dealing with children — formerly as a teacher, now as a parent — who don’t know how much they have yet to know or learn or realize, the chorus speaks to me quite well. I’m also intrigued, Eszter, a little bit about, uh, do you admittedly have a little bit of contrariness, um, on your musical, anti-musical and your hate of memories that you’ve crystallized into song?

Eszter: So are you asking if the, if the contrarian of the chorus here is part of that, or are you just asking in general?

Charley: No. I mean, this is a, you’re trying to capture a distinct feeling…

Eszter: Yeah.

Charley: …or a sensation in your music that’s under the framework of hating memory, I guess.

Eszter: Yeah. I really don’t — nobody can hate memory. It’s a, it’s a ridiculous, absurd stance, but it’s like going back and looking at it and wallowing in it or visiting it or feeling sometimes shame about it or feeling like you’re not that person, anymore, or you know… it can be difficult for myriad reasons that we don’t have time to get into.

But, um, difficult for me. Some people love to live there, but it’s uneasy. So I took on a project because it needs to be done, cuz there’s cool stories there, because I think I do have a unique perspective, and because I like a challenge But it’s not easy, motherfuckers.

Like, that’s what that means, you know? Like, okay, I’m gonna jump in, but first let me vent for a second. This is fucking hard. And it sometimes makes me feel like screaming. Um, so yeah. And there is a little bit of a… I do have a little punk rock, contrarian attitude about everything. Yes. Hence the anti-musical.

And I think I will just say about this song, about the chorus that you mentioned, Charley, it’s funny, because I was working on this song with Stew, and that chorus was really just a placeholder for me. I was kind of writing the song in real time. I had some words and I kind of made that up on the spot, cuz it felt like, right.

And Stew said, “that’s great.” And that’s how it became the chorus.

Pat: Yeah, I felt more, as a listener I really liked this a lot, but I really felt more sort of the duality of a person than the contrarian kind of thing, where I feel like it’s not really sort of either-or. And I also love how you gave this feeling, but you didn’t go into detail, but you definitely had the feeling that this is love. But you also had that feeling of a slight cynicism.

Like, like an overall feeling that you have in these situations. You know? I don’t know if that’s, you know…

Eszter: All of what you just said resonates. Thank you. That’s great. Those are all the things I love, that I’m pulled by, you know. That, like the dual thing of expressing contrary emotions at the same time, but it’s not so much about being contrary and it’s about both things exist, right?

We fell in love with America that day and had all these illusions about it. And uh, there is a little bit of that humorous cynicism of we don’t know we’re stupid yet, but there’s also the joy and the love.

And I actually love that you said, I don’t really get into describing the feeling so much, I just kind of sprinkle these images that, that more like convey it. And I think that’s the way I tend to write, or I hope to write. So I appreciate that. And I’m not sentimental. So like, there is a line in there that I actually am kind of proud of, for me personally, not in a literary way, but there’s a line that says, “We fall in love with a dump today. Its indifference, the most beautiful thing.” And I was like, “ooh, where did I come up with that?” Because we had come from Hungary, where like it was so provincial, everybody in everybody’s business, so like, overseen by an authoritarian regime, and I think my father just so fell in love with that sense of openness.

But yeah, there’s also sense of indifference. So it’s both, right.

Pat: I remember, um, my mid twenties, and I was going out with this woman and she asked me how many times I’d been in love, and I said, “well, there’s a few times where I thought I was in love.” And she said, “if you thought you were in love, you were in love.” And I was like, “good point.”

Eszter: Good point. Good point.

Yeah, this is a track called “Second Avenue” I also wrote with Stew. And um, this one I just, I wrote the words like pretty quickly um, but it’s a little bit less happy.

[00:38:48] Second Avenue

Eszter: So this is one of those tracks where, uh, you are describing actually, the moment after the incident. So you’re never really talking about what it’s about, but something bad happened right before this, and uh, it’s a young girl walking as the sun is rising, for her it’s still night, and it’s just about all these feelings. It’s again, a lot about New York and watching the sort of waking up of the city, and there’s a lot of inner turmoil going on, but there’s also a kind of, for me, there is actually a kind of peace almost, or maybe that’s the wrong word. But there’s a kind of, something, an equanimity maybe is the right word, about walking away from a potentially harmful, scary, upsetting, heartbreaking, whatever situation and just being all alone, very alone, but still in the midst of this buzzing coming-to-life city. And in a way, there is a, like, again, that duality of “it’s gonna be okay” in there, in the midst of this kind of haunting, sad, um, lonely place.

Pat: Yeah, I love the idea that we have to read into it a little bit, and it felt like, I don’t know if it’s like a solitude, or I don’t know. You get like this feeling where something’s over. Even though there’s mixed feelings about something being over, there’s a feeling, like that at least it’s over, you know? And I don’t know, but I like these two tracks a lot.

Charley: I really like how lyrics, the vocals, had a little bit of grit on ‘em. You know, they’re just beneath the music a little bit, but even, what could described as a narrative of the song, you know, it was even subservient to like, the smells being described.

And really it was, a mood, everything was kind of being evoked and kind of percolating, you know, like just before the water boils on the coffee or some kind of thing. So it did have that morning feel to it, and it was just a little crispy around the edges, at least the vocals.

And it was just kind of nice how that kind of evoked a feeling like you’re not quite awake, the radio isn’t quite tuned in solid yet, and it was just building to something, you know. I can’t wait to hear more of the album.

Pat: It feels more melancholy than sad, you know, to me. And it does feel like, what Charley said, it does have that grit does feel like Second Avenue.

Eszter: Good. That’s good. Yeah.

I’m just, I think I said, you know, everything I wanted to say about it, but just wanna shout out to Stew, because he came up with that picking pattern, which is, there’s a delicacy to that and a kind of folkiness, which I think is such a nice bed for these words.

And, this one took us a while to get it just right, because it’s delicate, cuz I don’t want it to be too sad, and I don’t want it to go a country song way, like, at one point it did almost go that way. So it was delicate to find the right tone for, as you guys were saying, the mood. This one’s all about mood.

Charley: Just shy of a slide guitar, I guess.

Eszter: There is a slide guitar in there.

Charley: I did not have the confidence that was something I wanted to hear myself say, but.

Uh, Eszter and Pat, thank you all for being here today.

Eszter: Thank you so much for having me. I love Ink 19, by the way, and I’m really, thank you for having me on.

Pat: Yeah, it was great. It was really, I really enjoyed this.

Eszter: Yes, thank you. I’m gonna miss that bell.

Charley: Where can we find you?

Eszter: The album is out on all the usual platforms. And it’s digital only though, so no hard copy, but if you come to a show of mine, I also do sell these download cards, so that’s another way to get it. So.

Pat: I’m Pat Greene, and you can find me on Instagram at @hearsayu. It’s H E A R S A Y, the letter U.

Charley: And my name is Charley Deppner, and you can find me on the pages of Ink 19.