Interview: Young Moon - The Slow Tour

Hailing from San Francisco and now based in Whakatū / Nelson, Young Moon is the dream-pop / shoegaze project of Trevor Montgomery (Tarantel, Lazarus). Playing nationwide on their ongoing The Slow Tour, Montgomery chatted with bandmate Matt Hellriegel (Big Scout) ahead of this Saturday's show at Blenheim's Framingham Winery, with support from Timothy Blackman.

Trevor and I met at the Nelson market, where I was selling organic non-soy tempeh, which sounds like a Portlandia bit. We bonded over The Minutemen, Ali Farka Touré and vegan snacks. I was immediately fond of him, and as the years have bobbled on, that fondness has grown into something akin to true love. Trevor recorded my band, Big Scout’s only LP, and we’ve played together in various nutty configurations, including the Young Moon band, who are currently touring Aotearoa. These Q&A’s were slung back and forth in the form of voice memo, and Trevor was as thoughtful and open-hearted with his answers as I’ve come to expect from him. A gem and a showman. Hope you enjoy the yarn!

Young Moon - The Slow Tour

Saturday 28th September - Framingham Winery, Blenheim w/ Timothy Blackman
Saturday 12th October - Vogelmorn Upstairs, Wellington w/ Timothy Blackman
Saturday 19th October - Big Fan, Auckland w/ She's So Rad
Saturday 23rd November - Wunderbar, Christchurch w/ Timothy Blackman

*Tickets on sale HERE via UTR

Matt Hellriegel: Mōrena Trev. I often think about your transition from the bustling Bay Area, where you’re surrounded by an established creative community, to Whakatū / Nelson, where you seem to be like this standalone art maker. At least in your waking life. You go to your studio at night, and you do this thing alone, and even your band lives in another town. I’m wondering how often you think about that shift in scene, and if or how it has affected your creative process?

Trevor Montgomery: Hey Matt, you sound so dreamy and sleepy, perhaps a little congested. That’s a good question, I think about it a lot actually. I think the creative core is ever-present with me, and that’s something that I’ve noticed, and this transition, really, if anything, has been more beneficial.

It’s due to a lot of factors. Due to that fact that I was like there for 25 years in the Bay Area, living in the inner city and doing that thing, and I couldn’t process everything that had happened to me in that time, really, with any perspective. What I’ve realised is that the core is me, and that the fire that is within me is always within me, and I can always go and sit at the fire.

However, I do enjoy my surroundings now. They are giving me more of a mental health boost, and that is so important for creativity. Mental health… that I think it’s essential to artists. We’re often dealing with mental health issues. So yeah, moving to New Zealand’s really been good for my head, and also given me space to process the last twenty some years of running the wheel in the mouse cage of San Fransisco, and the art scene, and the work scene, and the struggle. The tech scene and the money scene. I’m really into the garden scene right now. The cloud staring scene is my new scene, and cruising the landscapes around me with my eyes is my new scene, and checking out bodies of water is also really my scene. So I think I’m in a good place.

One thing I appreciate about the music you make is that it’s really heart forward or heart first, and this big, intellectual or critical brain that I know you have seems to keep itself in its rightful place, in the back seat. I wanted to know if this is something you think about on an overtly conscious level?

I feel like the answer’s really easy. Music for me has always held this place. Just this pure form of creation that just instantly taps into that place, whether it be a spiritual, emotional or intellectual conversion point within my body where it becomes really physical. So I feel really strongly when I know something is right when I’m making it. It comes through and I’m like “that’s the feeling”. That’s the feeling that leads me to know that I’m on the right path with it, and that’s something that I always have had with music, without trying too hard. Something that I hold sacred and try not to escape from.

And if I may be frank about the fact that, yes, I’ve been a slave to my intellectual / critical brain, and for long periods of my life, gestating and forming whatever it was I was becoming and needing to be. It’s not necessarily about music, obviously it’s about being a human being, and like, the times in our lives when we’re not being our best selves, or whatever. We’re looking at ourselves from outside maybe, and being like “God, why do I act like this” or “why am I like this?” and sometimes you can’t even see it and you’re inside a storm and you just don’t even realise. I’ve been in those places really deeply.

I feel very fortunate, with music, that I have been able to get out of that place of like thinking about it, and that pertains back to the question of moving here, and man that really has helped me. I could probably have moved anywhere, and isolated myself a bit from this place that I spent so much of my time — this really big city, with lots of psychic feedback all the time — I could have moved anywhere that was chill, and probably experienced this removal and somewhat enlightenment within my own journey to where I was like “oh wow, I can see now. I can see all of the valley. I can see all of the sky. I can see the clouds clearly, and the trees and all the leaves”. It could have been anywhere but it’s not, it’s here on this land, and this land is so potent, so I feel like it’s extra special. This new understanding and connection I have to my process.

Your original solo project, Lazarus, holds a special place in a lot of people’s hearts. As I understand it, you made a conscious decision to move away from that sound, which at times excavated some pretty uncomfortable depths. Enter Young Moon! Am I right in thinking that shift was part of some greater healing regime?

Lazarus was really special to me. It was basically me learning. I love it ‘cos I was given the chance to put out the records I was making as I was learning what the fuck I was doing as a singer, in real time. I love that. At a certain point I felt like I had built this process, mentally, that it had to be this certain ‘thing’. I was having a conversation with my friend Jason Quever of the band Papercuts. At the time I was playing with him a lot, touring with him a lot, recording with him a lot, helping him record his records, playing a little bit on stuff. He said to me one day, “the only reason I do this is, I wanna make people feel good”. I was just really struck by that.

At that point I was still really deep in this space where I felt like I had to do something that was really ideologically important and profound. At that moment I had a realisation — I was like oh, I don’t have to carry that kind of weight, and how did I ever get to this place? I was like “that’s what I want!” I’ve always wanted just to make music like the music that I fell in love with when I was a kid, riding in the back of my mom’s car with my headphones on, listening to songs over and over and over and over. So yeah, I made this decision, and I just started making the music that I felt like I wanted to make, and that meant the most to me. That was the birth of Young Moon.

You opened your studio Secret Handshake in an old Masonic temple in Nelson. What does that space mean to you?

The temple. Oddly enough, when I first came to visit Nelson on holiday from the United States, we were driving down the road and I saw the building, and I saw a ‘FOR LEASE’ sign out front, I was like “oh my God, that would be the studio”. Years later, when we moved here, I was driving down the road and I see this building with the ‘FOR LEASE’ sign and I was like “Oh my God, that’s the building”. I called the guy, told him I was an artist that needed space to put all of my gear in, and he was totally open to it. So we met, and I basically got the room and the temple and for years it was just me in this giant old Masonic temple. You know, you’ve been there, you’ve recorded records there. You know what it’s like. It’s kinda run down and kinda creepy in like a David Lynch way, which for me rises it to the top of the list of other places. I feel really fortunate for that, and ‘Secret Handshake’ is obviously in reference to the Masonic thing. There are little slots in the doors, they’re still there in all the doors, that you stick your hand through and do your secret handshake, and they’d be like “okay you can come in”.

People are always like “this place is so creepy” but I grew up in Los Angeles, and I lived in the inland empire. I was like “this is not creepy”. I’ve seen some creepy, creepy shit in my life, but, yeah, the Masons, I don’t think they’re weird or creepy. I’m pretty susceptible to energies, and I’ve never felt anything ‘off’ in the temple. I’ve been there really late, always by myself, never ever once felt like a strange vibe or a weird tinge of ‘off-ness’.
 

Since living here you’ve managed to get out and about to catch some sweet New Zealand music. You saw a bunch of kiwi acts at Camp A Low Hum. Is there a thread? Do you think it feels different to anywhere else in the world? What’s some local music that’s caught your ear since you’ve been here?

My experience so far is that I’m loving it, I mean Camp A Low Hum was just such an amazing experience on so many levels. Seeing the way a festival could be done. The potential, it just blew me away. One band in particular that really got me was this band, Dale Kerrigan. They were from Dunedin, and they were just like, I guess, I kinda felt like they perfectly melded chaos with like this really raw, open, emotional, honest delivery of the lyrics. The way it was put together, and the way they used volume and rhythms and chaos to create this cacophony. It really spoke to me, and it was definitely the thing that moved me the most at Camp A Low Hum. I am so excited to learn more though, and experience more of what there is here, and I feel like it’s a great place to be playing. It’s a bit different. It’s an island in the middle of the ocean, and it’s a bit isolated and I think that’s kind of wonderful.

Okay, I’m gonna hurl some names at you. First thought best thought!

Bedhead

Texas slowcore. I guess the last time I ever really took psychedelic drugs would’ve been… I took mushrooms two nights in a row and went and saw Bedhead both nights. It was at Bottom of the Hill in San Fransisco on the last tour they ever did, I think, as a full band. They were incredible. It was incredible. I love them so much. I love the way they use minimal stuff to build these crazy compositions that are so evocative, and like, I love the drums and the space. So yes, I felt out of body. I don’t think I went with anybody. I often would go to shows by myself back in those days. Bedhead, I believe they were trying to do something. I’m not sure they accomplished it, but I really feel like they were going for something.

Alice Coltrane

Alice. Yeah. Oddly, I didn’t learn about her deep, devotional practice with Yogananda school until way later in the game, and those chants are so cool. I love and have done a lot of those chants with my Yoga Sangha in San Fransisco over the years. Hearing those songs is always cool. But yeah, Alice, man, just fucking mind blowing celestial, cosmic space. Everything that happened post losing John Coltrane on earth, it seems there was a shift toward, or a striving toward harmony. Fully blown-out peace music.

Jefre Cantu-Ledesma

Jef with one f. Jefre Cantu-Ledesma was one of my first roommates, and still to this day such a beautiful and wonderful friend. I’ll never forget the day I dropped him off at the airport — he was getting ready to move to Munich with his then-partner. I took him to the airport, and he just bawled. Cried the most pure tears. I dropped him on the curb with his luggage at the airport and said my goodbye, and the last thing he told me was “stay vulnerable” and I’ve always held on to that. I hold it right here in my chest. Jef is amazing. Just a wild experimenter. A true experimenter. Never wants to stop. Always forging ahead.

Bruce Springsteen

I wasn’t really a fan at all. My brother was such a huge fan, and y’know, like every little brother I was not gonna like what my brother liked. And too be honest, at the time, it just wasn’t cool. It was mainstream, and I was not feeling that, so I was just playing a role. That was my role. Then later in life I got turned on to Nebraska, I listened to that record and fuck, it blew my mind, and you hear that story quite often “…and then I heard Nebraska” but truthfully, the real Springsteen for me, that really gets me, is the synth era. I think 'Tougher Than the Rest' is one of the coolest songs of all time.