Episode Transcript

Charlie Melcher:

Hi, I'm Charlie Melcher, founder of The Future of StoryTelling. I'm delighted to have you with me today for the FoST podcast. Aloe Blacc is a master musician and lyrical storyteller. The son of Panamanian immigrants, Aloe grew up in Southern California where he began his musical career in hip hop before turning his focus to songwriting. He's best known for writing and singing on hits such as "I Need a Dollar", "The Man" and "Wake Me Up" with Avicii, which peaked at number one in charts across the globe.

Charlie Melcher:

Pitchfork called his 2006 album, Good Things, “inspired, innovative and ambitious,” while his most recent album, All Love Everything, was praised by NPR Music as a “really beautiful, uplifting collection of songs.”

Charlie Melcher:

While all of Aloe's songs demonstrate his impressive vocal capabilities and genre-defying sound, what sets his work apart is his storytelling. Aloe's specialty is writing lyrics that tap into the heart of human experience. All Love Everything is a perfect example-- through his creative and compassionate songwriting, he captures the joys and challenges of life and love with grace. All in all, Aloe's music never fails to affirm, motivate and inspire. As a fan of Aloe's as both an artist and a human being, it's a real pleasure to have him on the FoST podcast. Please join me in welcoming Aloe Blacc.

Charlie Melcher:

Aloe, it is such an honor to have you on the Future of StoryTelling podcast. Welcome.

Aloe Blacc:

Thank you. It's a pleasure to be here.

Charlie Melcher:

So you are a consummate singer/songwriter. You are someone who crafts songs, makes them, understands the importance of the lyrics, of telling stories through music. Can you tell me a little bit about how you approach writing your lyrics?

Aloe Blacc:

Writing lyrics happens in many different ways. I start with one simple idea. The nucleus of a song, for me, comes from an emotive moment in a conversation or while experiencing someone else's art that inspires a lyric. And it can happen at any time and any place. Quite often I may be on an airplane flying across the country or across the continent to another country, and I'm watching some media on the television. And it becomes a moment that really inspires words, that they're important enough for me to write down.

Aloe Blacc:

And sometimes it could just be the cinematography. Sometimes it's a line in the film. Sometimes it's a glance or a stare or an emotion captured between two characters. That happens quite often. And if I'm not watching media on an airplane when I'm traveling and I'm just sitting on the airplane quiet within my thoughts, I am my own captive audience to everything that's happening in my brain. And so many ideas just start flooding my mind that I have to write them down one at a time so that I don't lose them.

Aloe Blacc:

And so I write down all of these little thoughts and sentences and ruminations and ideas, and I collect them as my starting points for when I am in a studio ready to write a song. Sometimes the song comes all at once while I'm traveling, but more often than not, it comes in little couplets and little words and sentences here and there that I collect along the way and assemble later.

Charlie Melcher:

I'm just curious, do you keep a notebook or what physically is the way you capture these?

Aloe Blacc:

When I first started making music, writing lyrics back in elementary school and through college, I would write everything down in a notepad. So I have multiple notepads with my earliest writings. But it was around early college, mid college that the computer became my best friend. And I started recording all of my ideas in text. And when I had my first smartphone, it really became the best friend to my songwriting process.

Aloe Blacc:

Prior to the smartphone, it was a mini digital camera that also had an audio recorder. So I would use the digital camera with the audio recording feature to record these ideas. And so over the years, I'd say probably the past 20 years, I have gigabytes of ideas.

Charlie Melcher:

And do you think of yourself as a storyteller when you are crafting a song?

Aloe Blacc:

Absolutely. I think the story is paramount. I know early in my songwriting career as a hip hop artist, there was a lot of stream of consciousness that didn't tell a linear cohesive story. It was disparate couplets put together in order to impress my fans and my friends about how witty I could be every two lines, but there was no real storyline.

Aloe Blacc:

It wasn't until I was inspired by some of the greatest singer/songwriters of the American Songbook and in the world as well, that I began to really want to synthesize my thoughts in a way that was succinct, impactful, concise, and linear so that there is a story that's being told and that's easy to digest, easy to receive.

Charlie Melcher:

I mean, I've always thought about songs as one of the very original forms of storytelling, right? I mean, if you think back to our early era as an oral culture, right before the invention of the alphabet, the epic poems were often sort of sung for people to remember them so that they could retell them. Or it goes even further back, you know, African drumming. All the early forms of communication-

Aloe Blacc:

Absolutely.

Charlie Melcher:

... and storytelling seem to have music associated. Or many of them, not all of them. But does that all resonate for you? Do you ever think about that in terms of the power of your storytelling?

Aloe Blacc:

Yes. Absolutely. I think we're hardwired for receiving message and information through song. And I think that hardwiring is ancient. I believe the earliest forms of learning came through song. And it's evident in some of the longest established cultures and Indigenous communities around the world. My wife is Australian, so I've had an opportunity to visit some of the tribes, the mobs as they call them in Sydney, and also in the middle of the country.

Aloe Blacc:

What I've learned is that they have thousands-year old systems. Scientists are considering the Aboriginals from Australia to be the oldest living culture, 80,000 years they're saying now. And they have a system of song lines which are oral mappings of land, right? So rather than drawing a map, they offer songs, strings of words and melody that help to dictate movement, how to traverse physical space. And this is beautiful. It's a beautiful telling of how far back song goes to helping us survive.

Aloe Blacc:

Because at the end of the day, we're using this kind of communication. When you are at the mercy of the elements, using whatever is the most effective methods of communication in order to survive, and if song has lasted this long, it certainly must be part of our DNA. It's hardwired for us to receive information, to process information and to share it. And I love that I get to do it in modern times.

Charlie Melcher:

You and I have talked about this before, Aloe, where I've came to the learning about songlines through Bruce Chatwin's book. There's a great book that he wrote about traveling in Australia. And he explains that idea that these songs that were passed down for generations to generations to generations, as you said, had instructions in them. It blew my mind to think about that. What nursery rhymes did your mom and dad sing to you, right? We all had songs sung to us as kids that these Aboriginal families would've passed those around from generation to generation so everyone knew the songs and you never knew when you were going to need to remember that song to save your life.

Aloe Blacc:

Absolutely. I think about the purpose of story. The purpose of story is to offer us a vicarious experience so that we do not have to engage the danger ourselves, so that we can learn from an example and should we encounter this danger, we have some understanding about how to move through and save ourselves.

Charlie Melcher:

Yeah.

Aloe Blacc:

That's what I try to do with song as well, offer something that is instructive and supportive.

Charlie Melcher:

And this idea that stories and songs have embedded survival information. Maybe that's why we've evolved to be story animals, to be a species that responds so well to stories. That type of survival information, yes, it might be about how to find water in times of drought or what to do if there's a tsunami coming or something like that, but that kind of survival information can also be social survival, right? The survival of how to thrive in society or how to find love so that you can procreate and pass your gene, your kind of genetic survival.

Charlie Melcher:

It's these realms often that songs, particularly contemporary songs, kind of play in. That there's a kind of understanding about the human condition and how to navigate your own emotional landscape, your emotional survival as well.

Aloe Blacc:

Absolutely. And I think this is something that we take for granted, but the songs that last the longest, they're evergreens, we call them, those are the ones that I feel really do a good job at expressing to us how to navigate that emotional landscape. The songs that are here today, gone tomorrow are generally widgets for the industry.

Aloe Blacc:

But if you listen to a song like Bill Withers' "Lean on Me," he's offering to an audience a suggestion about how to be a friend, about how to be a stand for someone who needs help. And so we get to have these training sessions and we get to run them in our heads over and over again, projecting ourselves into the scenario. In the same way that we will train for an athletic event, this is our social training. And song is an important courtyard for that. It's the arena.

Charlie Melcher:

Oh, I like that. So when you craft a song and you want to share some life experience, I mean, does that change for you over time? Are you really drawing from your own personal experience?

Aloe Blacc:

Yes, absolutely. Because I recognize that the music industry generally focuses on age 15 to 25 and all the experiences in there, and then primarily around romantic relationships. And I think that it's important for us to have a breadth and depth of experiences that are being chronicled in song.

Aloe Blacc:

And so as I get older, I want to be able to share all of my experiences as a father, as a husband, as a friend, as a businessman, as a philanthropist. These are all the sides of me and I don't want to be mono-dimensional in my music just because I know I can make a hit and a lot of money off of a love song. I want to be sure that I'm offering people and my fans the opportunity to learn more about me and recognize their story and how it relates through my story.

Charlie Melcher:

What's a good example of that? What's a song that you think really represents some moment in your life?

Aloe Blacc:

There's few I'll mention. One would be, "Mama Hold My Hand." It's a story that I wrote on my Good Things album that speaks about my relationship with my mother as I age. So starting as a young man, wanting to do things on my own and not being able to, and asking for my mom's help, "mama, hold my hand."

Aloe Blacc:

And then growing into my kind of rebellious years and not wanting my mom's help, and my mom trying to help me. And then growing into my adult years recognizing that, wow, there are some challenges at life. I really need some advice, "mama, hold my hand." And then transitioning to my mom getting into her advanced years and me recognizing that and saying, "mama, hold my hand, I think you're the one who needs help now."

Charlie Melcher:

So let's listen to a bit of "Mama Hold My Hand."

Aloe Blacc (singing):

... Mama, hold my hand

I don't think I can cross this road by myself

Mama, hold my hand

I don't think I can cross this road by myself.

Aloe Blacc:

Being able to tell a story like that is, I feel it helps so many others process the transitions that you go through in life. On my recent album, All Love Everything, I have a song called Family. And I speak in this song about my relationship with my wife. I speak in the song about my relationship with my kids. And one of the lyrics is, "I read my little ones to sleep and put my face right next to theirs to feel and breathe." And these are things that are real for me and I'm hoping are real for others. But if they're not and there're people who don't have kids yet, they can have this song in their mind as they go through life thinking, okay, one day I'll have kids, I'll read to them as well, I'll be close to them, close enough to feel them breathe.

Charlie Melcher:

Let's play a little clip of that.

Aloe Blacc (singing):

I read my little ones to sleep

Put my face right next to theirs to feel them breathe

I’m gonna show them how to dream

We’ll plant a seed and watch it grow into a tree

They know I’ll always be around to pick them up when they fall down…

Charlie Melcher:

So as you get older, do you feel like your songwriting really changes or evolves?

Aloe Blacc:

I definitely feel like my songwriting changes and evolves as I get older. I'm adopting so many more methods and I get to learn from so many other artists. I've studied the songwriting from Elton John and Bernie Taupin, amazing duo at songwriting. Studied James Taylor and Joni Mitchell, of course Bill Withers, Stevie Wonder, Nina Simone. The reason why I say "study" is because I'm certainly enjoying and listening, but I'm also putting together a rubric of what creates a good song? What are the elements that make good songs so powerful?

Aloe Blacc:

And on a very surface level, if the text reads well without music and tells an impactful story and brings you to an emotional place, then you are already working with very good content. If the music itself, the sonic foundation is moving without lyrics and word, that is a great start as well. If the melody that the lyrics then play with is catchy or touching, then you've got three elements that you can combine to make a really powerful evergreen, lifelong song. And hopefully the content, the message within there, is something that is helpful to humanity. The kind of rubric I'm using in terms of how my music is evolving and changing, I'm using these tools to improve my methodologies.

Charlie Melcher:

Are there things that you think you're missing out there in the world of music? Are there sort of spaces that you're more interested in now as you have a family and you're getting older?

Aloe Blacc:

Wow. In the world of music, I don't know if there's anything I'm missing, so to speak. I feel like I've explored almost every angle that I am aware of with music. What's interesting is moving into this technological era of Web3 where we have an opportunity for machines to learn what we do as humans and then to process and deliver what we do as humans.

Aloe Blacc:

I'm really interested in AI and machine learning and how it can potentially do what humans do. So I'm working on a project right now with an NFT profile picture project, a collector's project that I did, where we're going to be basically machine generating, computer generating music by layering different sonic elements. But there is a whole other field that I'll eventually get into that will involve teaching machines how to make songs and write lyrics and create melody and synthesize entire compositions, hopefully as promising and beautiful as the greatest songwriters of the world.

Charlie Melcher:

Certainly share that fascination with AI and know across a whole range of different artistic expression, of forms that there are people collaborating with AI, right? That there are ways in which AI can and machine learning can iterate so quickly, can create so many different versions, and then let somebody... It's almost like an idea generator or a rough sketch generator, and they can then sort of curate out of the many options that have been created. But that's just where we are right now.

Charlie Melcher:

I think it might not be too far before these AIs are able to actually learn someone's preferences and craft custom, complete music or art of other forms that are really pleasing and original to someone's individual tastes. And that, on the one hand, seems incredibly exciting because who wouldn't like to have more of Elvis. Well, Elvis isn't recording any new pieces. So here would be some pieces that you might enjoy. But on the other hand, I wonder if something is lost, if it's not actually being driven from some human experience, from the wisdom of life that an individual artist has in them.

Aloe Blacc:

Yeah. I get that. I see that there could be a loss of the soul of the music or of whatever the AI is creating. I'm just really interested in seeing if it's possible. And then at that point, in the same way that we categorize our fruits and vegetables at the grocery store, GMO or pesticides or organic, then we can do the same with art and say, "This is machine art. This is human art. Up to you to decide what you'd prefer to purchase." And it's working at the grocery store, so it should work for our consumption of art as well.

Charlie Melcher:

I've been dying to get over to London to see the ABBA Voyage experience. Have you heard about this?

Aloe Blacc:

It's a hologram experience, right?

Charlie Melcher:

It's a hologram experience. And there's apparently a live band and people are dancing. It's a concert, but these are holograms made from the real musicians. So they wore motion capture suits, it captures every real detail of their body motion, of their own voices. The only difference is they look like young ABBA--

Aloe Blacc:

Sure.

Charlie Melcher:

-- instead of of current ABBA, but apparently it's spectacular and people just have an amazing time as if it was live concert, but you don't have the problem of people getting sick or people taking vacation. I mean, they can basically run it every day in multiple locations. And I've heard some say this might be the future for us.

Aloe Blacc:

I think it will be. Several years ago, I bought a motion capture suit for that exact purpose, not necessarily for immortalizing myself, but to create characters that can be ultimately immortal characters that I can write the songs for and present as artists to the marketplace, which ultimately could be animated and have a very non-human look, but also could be extremely life-like and have a very seemingly human experience for the audience.

Aloe Blacc:

I am very bullish about that kind of media. And in no way am I an elitist about humans presenting art. There is capitalism in industry, and that's one thing. And then there's culture and humanity, and that's another thing. And we all have a choice on how we want to manage our relationship to both. My thought is I'm going to continue to do real life human songs, and at the same time develop technology that will be telling stories in other ways.

Aloe Blacc:

And ultimately if the algorithm is written properly, I'll be serving my purpose of magnifying and proliferating music that's going to create positive social transformation, even if it's created by machines that aren't part of society.

Charlie Melcher:

When I think about the type of songs that you make and other people who are using their voice in both of those ways, it reminds me that music is one of the most powerful tools we have to combat the kind of polarization, apathy, anger, a lot of the things that are tearing our world apart and people feel hopeless because they don't know how to combat that. How do we get people in harmony with one another? And actually music is, I think, literally the best tool we have.

Aloe Blacc:

Right. No pun intended. But yes, music brings us together in harmony. And when I'm on stage and I see tens of thousands people at a festival singing my lyrics back in harmony or in unison, it is the epitome of togetherness, of unity. These individuals are coming together because they want to celebrate life through music and through song. And that's a story in and of itself. It's the relationship that I have with that audience singing my story, but then them singing back to me. The song is now part of storytelling that I think gets missed in some of the other forms. In a painting, it's a very one sided conversation.

Charlie Melcher:

(laughing) It's very fixed.

Aloe Blacc:

The painter has completed their job, and now it's up to the audience to interpret, certainly. But music with a live in real life, in real time experience, yes, my song is written, but I have the opportunity to change things as I go with the audience. And that is beautiful, where the story can change as we go.

Charlie Melcher:

Yeah, I mean that kind of call in response or just that energy that's two way, because I'm sure depending on how the audience is singing it, how they're dancing in response to what you're playing, things change and there's an act of co-creation. There's a collaboration.

Aloe Blacc:

Definitely. I say that sometimes on stage like, "Tonight you're here for a concert, but really it's a party and at a party, it's not a spectator sport. You are part of the event. So participate please."

Charlie Melcher:

Many years ago I had the pleasure of meeting Mickey Hart, who was the drummer for the Grateful Dead. And he was working on a book about, I think it was called Drumming at the Edge of Madness. But it was basically sort of talking about the harmonies of the universe, the wavelengths of the universe, and that there was something about music and getting in sync with these kind of wavelengths or the patterns of the universe, because it was this unique thing that could let us all align in a way.

Charlie Melcher:

I just love that idea that through your craft, through your art and those of other talented musicians, that we really do have a chance to... I feel like I'm going to quote a line from a song now, "You to live in harmony."

Aloe Blacc:

I'm hopeful that music is going to continue to be a great connector. I am very, very privileged to have this position of writing songs that ultimately touch the world. Not every artist gets that opportunity. But I also feel like if we are all engaged in music, it helps to create a common activity that is low impact.

Aloe Blacc:

So you don't have to be on a basketball court or a soccer field. It is high touch because the emotion that's happening through the lyric or the melody or the harmonies, it is intellectually stimulating. We all have the ability to use our voice in some way. It's a muscle just like any other.

Charlie Melcher:

Aloe, this has been so fun. Thank you for spending the time with me. Thank you for the beautiful music that you share with all of us out there in the world. And just for being the human being that you are. So it's been a pleasure. Thank you.

Aloe Blacc:

Yeah, it's my pleasure. Thank you so much.

Charlie Melcher:

My thanks again to Aloe for joining me on today's show. If you'd like to hear more of his music, please see the links in the description below. And my warm thanks to you for being a listener. If you enjoyed the show, please consider leaving a rating or review on your podcast platform of choice. We always appreciate it.

Charlie Melcher:

To be sure not to miss any news about the podcast and to be part of the Future of StoryTelling community, sign up for our free monthly newsletter at FoST.org. The Future of StoryTelling podcast is produced by Melcher Media in collaboration with our talented production partner, Charts & Leisure. I hope we'll see you again soon for another deep dive into the world of storytelling. Until then, please be safe, stay strong, and story on.