I’m pleased to once again present Future of Forestry. A friend of mine named Andrew took the time to transcribe this interview with a favorite band of mine: Future of Forestry. For those that don’t have the time to listen to the interview, I hope that you enjoy it. Future of Forestry is a band that takes their name from the title of a C.S. Lewis poem.
Listen to the Interview | Visit Future of Forestry | Order the Music of Future of Forestry
== Begin Transcript ==
**Music – Slow Your Breath Down – Future of Forestry**
Mark: Hello everyone, this is Mark Ostley and my co-host, Paul Martin, from NarniaFans.com and we are bringing you a NarniaFans.com and Middle-Earth Network Special. Paul you have brought a special guest for us today, do you want to introduce him?
Paul: Yes I would like to. His name is Eric Owyoung and he is from the band “Future of Forestry.” They’re a favorite band of mine going back since the release of their album “Twilight” and I’m just, I’m very excited and very honored to be able to interview him today, and,so we’ll bring Eric on right now…
Mark: Eric, you wanna say hello to all the listeners out there?
Eric: Yeah, hi everyone! Hi Paul, hi Mark, thanks for having me on here, real excited to chat with you guys.
Paul: Excellent. Alright, let’s get right into it then. First of all, tell us about the band and, for those who don’t know, just give us a good introduction.
Eric: Yeah, sure! The band is “Future of Forestry” and I’m based here down in San Diego, California. Future of Forestry is pretty much a rock band, but a lot of people have described it as having a very ambient feel to it – kind of melodic, ambient rock may be the category. What “Future of Forestry” is often known for is just having a lot of fun with a lot of instruments. I use things like a harmonium and a 4-octave vibraphone on stage or a toy piano and things that just kind of make the songs have a different flavor, a different interest and to always have something going on that’s different and engaging.
Paul: Excellent
Mark: A 4-octave vibraphone. I don’t know if I’ve ever heard of that (laugh) We’re going to have to find out more about that a little bit later
Eric: It’s kind of like a xylophone with big tubes on it so it kind of resonates. It’s a lot of fun; it’s a beautiful instrument.
Mark: Wow
Paul: Awesome
Mark: So, about the band’s name, “Future of Forestry”, there’s some connection to a C.S. Lewis poem in there. What led you to want to use that, or inspired you to use that for the name of your band “Future of Forestry?”
Eric: Well, I’d love to say because it was some, you know, intellectual ascent into this great moment of awe, but actually it was because it sounded really, really cool.
*Laughter*
And that was the beginning of it. It was like, “wow, Future of Forestry” that just, you know, with all the “F’s” in there, and the way that kind of rolls around in your mouth, it just was a really cool sounding name. But the really interesting part of it was, after the name was being considered, I took some time to look into the poem, and, to actually fall in love with the poem and to take the poem on as a little bit of a mantra for the rest of what the band stood for and, lyrically, a lot of the direction that I took with the band. The poem, just to quote the first line, says, “How will the legend of the age of trees feel when the last tree of England falls?” And so, it’s a setting in the future that C.S. Lewis has kind of drawn up in our mind that all the trees are gone. And he goes to explain in his poem the perspective of even the children who’ve grown up in this new, futuristic time that have no idea what a tree is and, as we’re trying to describe them as these living things, they’re kind of thinking of these weird creatures and stuff. And so it’s really fascinating, but at the root of it, what it really is getting at, is this idea of what he calls this “Eden” state, this time of our roots, of realizing who we are, where we came from, and what is beautiful in our lives.What is beautiful in our lives is certainly not found on a computer screen with little dots and found by connecting by Facebook and stuff like that, but rather the more pure things of our “Eden” state that we have been born into. And so, it’s a little bit of a call to us, especially in these times in which it’s very easy to forget what’s beautiful and what’s natural and what’s important in our lives.
Paul: That’s amazing.
Mark: Wow, that’s impressive.
Paul: You said, on I believe it was the “Solstice” DVD, that you wanted to create music that basically emulates that, you called it, “A beautiful collision of people, music and art” that you wanted to create in a way that was deeper than any of us could ask for. I think that summed it up very well, that you actually are doing that.
Eric: Yeah, the fun part of it is when you realize that the sum is greater than all the parts. So, when you take, you know, a crowd, and you take some guitars, and you take some keyboards, and you take some, you know, microphones, and the people on stage and you add all of these things up, the product that you get from it is so much greater than the sum. You get this otherness, this very spiritual interaction that is so incredible and so much greater. And that’s what’s fascinating to me is that I get to be in touch with that when I become a part of music.
Paul: Right. Just out of curiosity, too, are any of your songs, then, inspired directly by any of the works of C.S. Lewis?
Eric: I wouldn’t say directly; I don’t think there’s any, like, specific quotes. But I would say a ton of it is from the idea of the “Future of Forestry” poem, really calling us back to ourselves. Like, even when I said that, I just realized, one of the songs that I titled was, “Did You Lose Yourself?” And the whole song is about being kind of inundated with technology and our lives being plugged into technology and, in the second verse, it kind of gives you a vision of the flipside of that where I’m on a boat in the sea of Japan and just living off the sea and experiencing a completely different kind of a whole life. So, yeah, that song is definitely about what C.S. Lewis was talking about.
Mark: That’s amazing. What’s some of the processes you go through with putting together a song?
Eric: Um, people always ask me how I write and I really never have a solid answer because it’s different every time. Sometimes it’s starting with a lyric and I use the words and start shaping the melody around that. Sometimes I am just inspired by an instrument and start playing it and then start recording it and then it just builds from there. I would say, overall, though, I’m always drawing from life. I’m always drawing from just random experiences. Whether that’s a conversation with you guys and, while we’re talking, you make me think of something and then I just stop and write it down in a notebook or I’m listening to somebody else’s song and it makes me think of something or watching a movie: there’s so much around every single day that inspires us, but we rarely actually capture it and write it down. So I feel like it’s my job to make sure I’m a good record keeper and just write it down when it comes and then, when it’s time to write a song, I have a notebook full of just random life experiences and ideas to portray.
Paul: Wow. I guess what I’d love to ask, then, is, going on to the song, “If You Find Her,” which is very harmonious and not a lot of instrumentation in it: what inspired it, then, and how did that song even come about? Because each song on “Twilight” is completely different from the last and that one just seemed to be one of the most peaceful on the album.
Eric: Hmm. That’s interesting that you say, “most peaceful.” The song, “If You Find Her” is commonly mistaken because we have a large Christian fan base and, for some reason, any time you say, “her” in a song, people assume that it’s, like, symbolic of the church or something.
*Laughter*
Paul: Right, right.
Eric: And I always have to tell people, “Look, people, sometimes you can say ‘her’ and it’s not about the church.” And so it is purely a love song: there’s nothing more, nothing less. It’s a love song and the song was written to a girl that, at the time, I was just pursuing and realizing her beauty and her intricateness and that’s pretty much my life was coming to a place of peace with her. And so things went well with the song and I ended up marrying the girl!
*Laughter*
A special girl and a special song to me.
Mark: That’s awesome. I was going to ask, too, “how did the pursuit go?” but you already answered that so it sounds like it turned out quite well.
Eric: Yeah, if it didn’t go so well, I don’t know if I would speak so fondly of the song, so…
Mark: So I have to ask, though, (sorry, Paul) but I have to ask, so did you, how would say it, sing to her to kind of win her over, too, or…?
Eric: Yeah, I wrote the song for her and it’s an interesting song because the song is basically saying, “I love you,” but it’s like talking to the person’s inner self. So it’s basically saying, like, “Well, you may not be ready to hear ‘I love you,’ but I’m saying it anyway.”
Paul: And that’s fantastic.
Mark: I think, Paul, that I may have found your equal in the romanticist department. We joke, amongst ourselves, but that Paul met, well he met his wife before that, but he proposed to her on the set of “The Voyage of the Dawn Treader” on the ship…
Eric: Oh, wow!
Mark: …and we’ve got that story. And I’ve always said that Paul is one of the most romantic people I’ve ever come across, but Paul, I think you’ve met your equal now.
Paul: *Laughter* I think I have. That’s pretty fantastic. Okay, so going back to even “Twilight,” what are your personal favorite songs on the album, because it’s really hard for me to find one song that, like, every time I listen to it, I get to the next song and that song’s my new favorite, and I get to the next song and that song’s my favorite. So, I guess, what are your favorite songs on the album?
Eric: Oh man, Paul, there’s no way an artist can, like, pick his favorite songs
Paul: It’s true.
Mark: It’s like picking your favorite child.
Eric: Yeah, exactly, exactly. Which is your favorite child, you know? Each one is unique and each one you want to hang out with at different times, you know? There’s a wide spectrum of songs on that album all the way from “If You Find Her,” which is, you know, “If you find her, tell her that I love her.” It’s [a] love song and it’s just acoustic guitar. It’s the most simple song you could write. And then you have other songs like “All I Want” that are very very, uh, it’s a heavier feel and lots of very complicated drum beats and things like that. And then you’ve got very ambient songs like Sanctitatis which is a Latin song that comes from Latin liturgy, which says “Veres Sanctus.” The song is basically about, it’s translated as, “You are holy, holy indeed, the fountain of all holiness,” which, even when it’s translated, is very beautiful, but I wanted to sing the song in Latin because, sometimes when we sing in English, we have associations with those words as English-speaking people. And so, I thought, “Man, I don’t want to have associations. I just want to express this but not to have the word association,” so it’s very spiritual to me to sing it in a different language that we don’t typically hear, but, then, that we still know the meaning of it. And so that song is very ambient and very spiritual to me. So it’s kind of all over the map, there, with the album and so, I really couldn’t pick a favorite of those.
Mark: Well, and in that song, too, it sounds to me as if you’re using language, in a sense, as notes or the words, in a different language, as notes, or melody, to compliment the song too.
Eric: Well, that’s exactly what it is. In some ways, I stole that from the band, Sigur Rós, which is one of my favorite bands; They’re from Iceland. I have no idea what their religious standpoint is, but I all I know is that I’ve been to their concert and, when you’re there, there’s something so powerful and spiritual about that experience that, um, it’s incredible. And, what I wanted to do with my music was to have that spirit, but also to directly be able to express, through the lyrics, what that spirit was, you know, the Spirit of God, and to be more direct in that.
Paul: Yeah. And Sigur Rós, I could kinda tell, was a very big influence on the music that you write as well, um, big fan of them as well, so…
Mark: Moving on into the Solstice DVD, you’ve got the, what I think Paul and I agree on, is a far too short Christmas EP and a second one with some more great music
Paul: Yeah, it was Advent Christmas.
Mark: Yeah. Yeah, Advent Christmas: do you plan on recording some more songs with that trademark sound?
Eric: Well, yeah, I guess those were recorded more out of necessity than they were really, like, for marketing or anything like that and the reason was because I was doing these Christmas tours and people were just like, “When are you going to record these things?” And so I started with six and then they were like, “Well, we want more now,” because, you know, the set list was building, so I did another 6. So I guess, in essence, you have a full-length album there, if you put them both together. There’s the live DVD, which has a good number of Christmas songs on it as well. There’s been talk of this year’s Christmas tour doing a live recording of one of the dates on the tour. So, if that’s true, you’ll have all those songs done live plus more. And live is very special with Christmas tours because I take an extra amount of musicians, such as strings, you know, violin and cello and I involve other instrumentalists so we can have as many as eight people on stage playing all the instruments. I mean, you hear a lot of sounds on those Christmas albums? Those sounds are being played live. It’s not like, you know, backing tracks or something like that, but they’re actually played, so it becomes a really special tour.
Paul: Hmm, awesome. Do you have any favorite Christmas songs that you haven’t done yet that you’d love to do?
Eric: That’s always tough, I’ve kind of expired all of my favorites. Those are already on there, songs like, “Oh Holy Night” is probably one of our most played songs, and I love that song too. There is nothing more, you know, Christmas spiritual and nostalgic and beautiful than singing that song. So there are a few songs here and there, but they’re probably more obscure, like “Rose E’re Blooming” is a really beautiful song, but I know that song from singing in choirs and things like that, whereas the general public is not too aware of that song.
Paul: Gotchya. I guess let’s go on from there to the Travel trilogy. What inspired, I guess, the three-part musical odyssey and did you have an outline of the arc for it, or did you do each set of 6 songs individually for the albums?
Eric: The series kind of developed as it went. The song, “The Traveler Song” was what inspired the whole series. I wrote “Travelers Song” before deciding whether it was going to be three EP’s or even deciding whether the series was going to be based on “Travel. And so the chorus of “The Traveler’s Song” says, “If you travel here, you will feel it all, the brightest and the darkest. And if you travel here, listen to your heart and take with you what lasts forever.” And that, to me, set the stage for this whole series. I said, “Man, what a great way to just kind of talk about a journey, talk about the process of experiencing dark and light in life and taking with you what lasts forever.” And so that kind of set the whole stage and all the songs were born from that. We had a lot of fun with it. I took the idea of three EP’s and had each one based on a different mode of travel. So, for one of them, it’s based on airplanes, and I did like an Amelia Earhart cover, where there’s a girl standing in front of an airplane and it looks like it’s from the 1940’s or something. So the first one was based on flight. The second EP was based on ships and sailing, and so I wrote this song, “Set Your Sails,” and on that one there’s a painting of a girl standing in front of a ship and that one kinda looks like it may be in the style of the artist Luca, which is, uh, actually I’m not even sure if that would be 30’s or…I’m sure there are art buffs who are cringing.
Paul: *Laughter*
Eric: And then the third one is more of like a 1960’s feel where there’s a girl standing in front of, like, a hotrod car and (it’s a DeVille, actually) that’s kind of a 60’s look to it, so that one’s based on traveling in an automobile. So, anyway, it’s flight, traveling through flight, traveling through water and traveling through land and, you know, I had a lot of fun with that.
Paul: Awesome
Mark: Would it be fair to say, too, you know, we talked about you using language like Latin as part of the melody. It also seems to me that you’re using your music as much more than just a song or a ballad or a piece of music. You’re also interjecting, I guess, it’s an experience unto itself. I mean visually, with some of the art you’re talking about, you know, melody wise. So it seems to me, and correct me if I’m wrong, that you’re trying to combine all of these elements to tell an underlying message.
Eric: Yeah, definitely, and I would even say the experience is the most important thing to me. I don’t like to script for people what they’re supposed to believe and what they’re supposed to get from these songs. You know, because I’m not trying to write some theological disposition or something, I’m writing a song, which is creative and hopefully opening kind of creative doors for people in their own lives, and so, half the time when I’m writing while I’m writing a song, I don’t actually know what the song is exactly about, and I’m not sitting there crafting the song to make sure every word communicates exactly something that’s totally clear, but it’s communicating an experience, so I’ll use words that bring the emotion of that experience. For example, the song “Set Your Sails,” I just wanted to paint the picture, so the chorus says, “Hey, the night is waiting for you, take a picture of the silver moon.” Why are we taking a picture of the silver moon? I don’t know, but it felt right, you know? Or there’s another song called, “Hills of Indigo Blue.” It says, “We’ve found the westward way to the hills of Indigo Blue.” What are hills of Indigo, where is that? I have no idea. When I think of hills of indigo blue, I think of the ocean, I think of ebbing blueness like the ocean, and so that was a way to describe it. So there are a lot of things that I’m not even sure what they’re about, but I like to paint pictures and I love to see how fans take that and go, “This is what it is,” and, “This is what I think it is,” and they come and they do all this research and they find these things and they’re like, “I know this is what you meant, right?” And I disappoint them and I go, “You know what? That’s amazing that you found that connection and how is that a coincidence?” and I say, “I didn’t really mean that, but, if that’s what it means to you, that’s awesome,” and it really opens a lot of doors and inspires people in their own lives, so that excites me.
Mark: That is amazing the way you describe that because, to me, it sounds like your music, too, is obviously and experience, but also a sensation of sorts – if that even makes sense.
Eric: Yeah, definitely. I don’t know, when I grew up, I grew up in the church amidst almost a vibe that said, “Emotion was bad to have in religion,” and it’s so anti-what Jesus taught about basically how you need to involve your heart in those things and you can not be in love with someone and not have emotion.
Paul: Right, or not have intimacy.
Eric: Yeah, exactly. And so those things that I feel and experience in a spiritual sense with God are very, very emotional and I love to tap into that and I learned not to be afraid of that, but to really lean into it and let people feel that as well.
Paul: Awesome. And going on to, I guess, into the future, what is next? Are you working on a new album then? I mean, you said you’re doing another Christmas tour, but…
Eric: Yes! All of the above. I’ve got two tours planned this year: one will be a fall tour in September, which will be probably west coast, and then another Christmas tour, which will be…I can’t even remember if this is the fifth or the sixth year I’m doing the Christmas tour, but I’ll be heading from the west coast, I’ll be heading out east and touring the east coast and back. So that should be a lot of fun and, yes, a new album is coming out this year. We are going to surprise people with the date instead of giving it away. It’ll be a bit of a surprise, so, you know, we’re just asking people to stay in touch, but I can promise that it’s in the workings and it will be released this year.
Paul: Excellent!
Mark: And how can people stay in touch with ya? How can they find you on the web and how can they keep in contact with what’s going on for the future with you guys?
Eric: Well, this is the future, so any way they want to
*Laughter*
You know, you get your whole selection of Facebook, Twitter, website, blog – whatever you want, so…if you just type in, “Future of Forestry,” it will probably get you to where you want to go. You know, we obviously have a website – futureofforestry.com. Facebook tends to be the way that people are going these days and the way we keep in touch, but, you know, whatever floats your boat.
Mark: Sounds like a plan to me.
Paul: Yup. So what about advice for other potential [musicians] in the future too. What would you say to them if they want to create music?
Eric: One of the things I’ve always learned as an artist is, um, I said this in the DVD and I don’t know if you remember this, but basically I said in the DVD not to take yourself too seriously, and I kind of say that off the cuff when I was being interviewed on DVD, but I can’t tell you how many times those words, I’ve actually had to go back them and remind myself that I said that because, in music and in art, we take things sooo seriously and we take them so heavy and we identify ourselves with them. Why? Because we’re artists. That’s just what we do, and it’s really a temptation to get hung up on things and one of the things I’ve learned is that, when I’m able to let go of that and just work fast and work hard and to move forward and to not get caught up in those things, that’s when I’m freed up to be creative. But when I get focused on one thing and I’m trying to make the one perfect song, that song just ends up turning out to be bad, it turns out not to be honest anymore, it turns out not to be creative anymore. So, I think that it’s worked out really well for me to just always tell myself, “Move forward, move forward. Keep working hard, but don’t get stuck.”
Paul: Awesome.
Mark: I was going to jump in there too and say that’s a really interesting answer. You know, we’ve been able to interview other artists, and I’m mainly talking about people who work with canvas and oils and that type of thing, and that sounds very much the same process in those regards because, I remember interviewing Jef Murray, he’s a world renowned Tolkien and Narnia artist, and he said, in essence, the same thing, but in the sense that he said, “You set out to paint the perfect painting, but at some point, you’ve just got to step away from it and you’ve got to say ‘Ok, it’s done and I can’t do anymore’ because, if I try to add or make this even better, it’s actually going to ruin it.”
Eric: Well, there’s a really cool story, and I like to read, kind of like, art books and things. My wife is an artist as well. She’s a visual artist, and so we found a lot of common ground, and, in one of the books we have, tells a really cool story about some students that were given an assignment in a visual art class. They were divided in half and half the class was given the assignment that they need to paint one painting for their final grade and the other half of the class was instructed that their final grade was going to be based on the number of paintings that they do and, in the end, they would just weigh them on a scale, and if it weighed a lot, you know, they had a lot of paintings, they would get a good grade. So, out of all of these people, who do you think’s art came out to be extremely beautiful and expressive and wonderful? It wasn’t the students who were trying to do that one painting, it was the ones who were free to just do whatever they wanted and who weren’t afraid someone was going to be evaluating their painting.
Mark: Whoa
Paul: Yeah
Mark: I think that’s some of the best advice for aspiring musicians and filmmakers I’ve heard – and artists. That is incredible, thank you for that.
Eric: Well, I wish I could listen to my own advice a little bit more, I need to hear that as well.
*Laughter*
Mark: Don’t we all!
Paul: Indeed! Oh, gosh. I guess, Mark, do you have any other questions?
Mark: Just comments, other than, you know, we hadn’t met before this interview here, Eric, and I just have to come away by saying I’m very, very impressed with you as an individual, you as an artist and musician and just very honored that you spent some time with us here!
Eric: Thanks! Likewise! I’m glad to hear that, what you guys are doing is successful and support what you guys are doing. I love, you know, what you stand for and the whole scene of Lewis and Tolkien and all that literature. It’s fantastic stuff, so glad you guys are doing it
Paul: Well thank you very much. We just hope that all of our listeners can learn about your music and take inspiration from your words as well in this interview, as well as maybe go out and listen to your music and get inspired in their own lives to make art and to be driven by the passion of creating the art rather than…even the outcome can be not as good as they hoped, but it’s the adventure, I guess, of creating the art that’s sometimes better than the final product, really.
Eric: Hmm. Well, thank you guys for letting me be a part of it and thank you to the listeners out there and Future of Forestry stands in support of this process. Really really grateful for that as well.
Paul: Excellent. So, Mark, you want to take it from here?
Mark: Yeah, and thank you Eric and thanks for everyone listening and joining us today to listen to our interview with Eric Owyoung…
Eric: That’s right, Eric Owyoung
Mark:…from Future of Forestry and make sure you check out his music because, I’ll tell ya what, from both Paul and I, we think it’s a phenomenal experience for everyone to listen to.
Paul: Mmhm, and just one thing to interject, too, that it’s something anyone of any age can get into. My mom overheard it and she had the Christmas album playing constantly over the holiday season, so, I mean, anyone can get into it and can love it.
Mark: Alright, thanks for joining us, Eric, and we’ll have you back again for sure
Eric: Hey, would love to talk with you guys again.
**MUSIC – Set Your Sails – Future of Forestry
== End Transcript ==
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