Music journalism is often a game of chasing leads. Maybe you see a band live and think, “I gotta talk to them after the show.” Or you get an amazing recommendation for one interview leading to your next. It’s fun to go down the rabbit hole, but sometimes, having musicians come to you is just as rewarding.
That’s how I “met” Evan Plante, who releases music as True Optimist. As a long-time member of the Charlotte punk scene, he saw my interview with blankstate. and reached out with some kind words. We went back and forth about his current solo project, ultimately setting aside some time for a more in-depth conversation.
Over the course of an hour, our phone call bounced between excitement for his upcoming double LP later this year and some old-fashioned musical philosophy. Evan is one of those folks who wears their passions on one sleeve and values on the other. And boy, can I relate.
How have things been for you and the True Optimist project since you spoke with Queen City Nerve last year?
Evan: When I talked to the Nerve, we were preparing to release [Mental Health] on a label called Self Aware Records. They had put a date to it, so we were working towards that. I knew what I had and was excited about getting people to hear it for the first time because I had never made a record by myself before. It was a very exciting and fresh feeling time.
Honestly, I wasn’t sure if people were going to “get it,” you know? I’ve always been in these punk bands where you bang out these rock songs, and now, all of a sudden, I’m changing dramatically in my approach to music. I just didn’t know if anybody was going to quite buy it.
When I put out that first record, it was like, “Oh god, I hope this comes off as authentic and real.” And it really did. I was absolutely floored by the feedback I got from that record; people said that when they listened to it, they listened to it three times in a row. I couldn’t believe anybody would say that about a song that I wrote because that’s something that you can only hope for.
After that album coming out, starting to work on the next one, and ending up with what’s going to be a double LP that I’m finishing up right now, my expectations have change. I feel like I’ve explored a lot of other musical aspects and it’s gonna be very different. There are things I gave myself permission to do on this new one.
I also realized that I have limitations to what I can pull off. I’m not a great singer; I’m just learning how to do it right now. I’ve always been a drummer. I’m teaching myself how to play the bass efficiently. My focus has been getting better at all these things. Over the course of the last year, I’ve gone from very excited but nervous about my first record to really excited for everybody to hear what comes next.
There’s a lot of vulnerability that’s needed to do anything yourself and put it out there. Even when putting out a new article, I’m like, “Let’s see if 2 or 3 people read this.” I never expect anything I create to be the most popular thing.
There’s a sort of romance to knowing that you’ve created something great, having only a couple of people know about it, but watching it connect with people. Even though I was doing something completely different, folks appreciated that I was transitioning as a musician. I’ve been in a billion punk bands since I was a teenager. I’m in my forties now, so I’ve been in punk bands for 25 years, and they’ve always been like these cymbal-heavy, in-your-face aggressive stuff like DC hardcore or grindcore. And now I’m inspired by soul musicians. [laughs]
What led you to make such a drastic change in your sound?
I quit playing in bands for about 4-5 years and didn’t want to have anything to do with music. I reached a point where I had been in so many bands and they were all starting to feel, sound, and come off the same way. You’d go play a show and it was a “good, but never like how it used to be” feeling to me. I thought I was doing myself a disservice by still dragging my butt up to go play these shows out of town and not loving it like I should.
So I stopped playing music, sold all my gear, and told myself I would need to buy new gear if I were to play again. That way, I would have to play differently. I would buy some bongos or something instead of a drum kit.
When I finally returned and did what turned into a solo project, I was not writing songs with a guitar. I wanted to really understand, at a granular level, each individual beat and note. I was trying to almost play jazz by myself: play something and then let myself play off of that and do that until I landed in this place where it’s happening to me instead of me doing it, if that makes sense.
I feel that as a bassist, especially one who gets locked into my drummer’s rhythm.
I’m glad you’re a bass player because I’m in love with the bass now, man. As a drummer first, the bass player was always the guy who played along with the guitars, you know? I never really understood how much work the bass player was doing; I just knew that I liked certain bass players I played with, and others didn’t really click so well.
And then I realized, “Oh my god, the bass really determines the whole song style.” You could change the bass and change the song. On this new record, I’ve written a whole song, changed the bass line completely, and then changed it again completely but left the song in place.
I love how powerful the bass is. The first instrument I played was trumpet back in middle school, but I never had a feel for where it fit in the dynamic of a band like I have with bass.
In a punk band, you’re usually playing in 4/4, or you’re playing things that just are landing in four beats. As a drummer I am programmed to think that way, but I’m trying to reprogram myself to play a completely different style of music. And I realized that the bass can do this awesome trick where you can hold yourself back a little bit and not play on the first beat, or you can play something like a line that is longer than the fourth beat on purpose to try to expand and make these like poly-rhythm things happen.
Once you start taking the bass away from the drums, they diverge and then come back together in weird ways. That’s the world I’m trying to live in. I’m playing drums freely with a more laid-back style than a punk band. After that, I’ll sit down with the bass and try not to play in the same time. I’ll write something that is in an opposing or different time against that drum track, and then before I know it, I’m making Latin music or Afrobeat. I figured out how to do this other thing.
Then, I started listening to how drums and bass would work in songs that I really liked. Like, “How are they doing that?” And it was almost always something the drums and the bass were doing.
If you don’t know the band Tom Tom Club, they were from the early ’80s. It was the bassist and singer Tina Weymouth and her husband Chris Frantz, the drummer from Talking Heads. They said they used to get together and make “rhythm beds.” David Byrne would come in and they’d figure out what the song was based on this rhythm bed. So I started using that term to describe playing a drum pattern and then adding a bass part but trying to make it different from what I expect. I want to find something new.
That’s why I fell in love with the bass, man. It was that trick right there. This is completely changing how I view my bass playing now.
How else has your approach changed between Mental Health and this new record you’re working on?
On Mental Health, one of the things I wanted to experiment with was saxophone. I knew a great saxophone player, Brent Bagwell, who plays in a band called Ghost Trees. But I had to figure out which one he could play on. And I didn’t know how to explain saxophone language to a jazz player. I just used the bass and mimicked what I wanted as best as I could. Brent took that and laid down this track, which made it the most rewarding experience.
That’s the most significant transition between these records: I decided I needed to write music for everybody I knew who could contribute. I wrote 20 songs this year, and all of them have someone in mind. Brent plays on three songs. My friend Madison, who plays guitar in Modern Moxie, said, “I used to play trumpet and will learn how to play again!” She’s on a song and absolutely crushed it.
Even though it’s a solo project, and I do play almost everything, it’s fun to give it over to someone else and let them do something that’s just inspired.
There are an absurd number of amazing local musicians, it’s awesome to see collaboration between them be fruitful. That sense of community and solidarity is, in part, what inspired the NC Artist Directory.
That calls back to the beginning of how DIY punk indie-like internet culture was, back when we had message boards and people keeping lists of which bands were cool.
That infrastructure is vital and sorely missed in today’s media landscape.
When Self Aware put out Mental Health, we tried to hire PR to see if we could get reviews and if we could get anybody to listen. We heard a few times from people who felt like it was too experimental. “I don’t know what genre this is. I don’t know what scene this speaks to.” And that was something that I actually took a lot of pride in.
That pushed me to be more geographically focused and boost North Carolina musicians. I want to put in the work to support this community and meet awesome people along the way.
You’re absolutely right. I reconnected with my now-wife when I moved to Charlotte and got invested in the local community. It was a mishmash of old-timers who had been there for years and young kids with nothing to do but art. This was during my “quitting music” stage, but it felt like we were in a little village. It’s condo central now, but that scratched the itch of me not being in a band when I first moved here. You find your scene, people you can trust, and have a place to exist.
Bringing it back to your upcoming record, how are you navigating the album rollout compared to what you did with Mental Health?
With Mental Health, the PR just didn’t work out. I don’t think enough people heard it, which is why I reached out to you. I realized that if I’m not going to go out and play shows, I have to apply myself and my DIY ethic to tell people about this record. I should’ve been doing it more, any time I saw people writing about music or wanting to have a conversation.
I really don’t want to do the whole windup thing again. I don’t want to look for PR, drop a video on this day, do the pre-orders, and then release the entire thing two months later. That’s very manufactured. I don’t know how else to do it differently. But I know that once it’s mastered, instead of doing a big run-up for it, I’m just going to send it to folks like you and ask them if you listen to it.
Also, everybody contributing to the record has said, “We’d really like to play this live.” So there’s a possibility that there may be 10 people packing up and actually playing this thing live someday. I personally want to play the songs with them, but I don’t really want to play shows. But I suppose if we got that far, then there’s a chance we would actually play them in front of people.
Even if it never gets played live, the new record will leave people more overwhelmed by how audacious some of the choices are. We played a berimbau on one of the songs, which is this crazy Brazilian instrument. There’s a good amount of electronics, and it’s a departure for a project that started with acoustic guitar, drums, bass, and piano. That and a berimbau together will be wild; I hope people hear it and like it.
When you think of this new LP, is there a particular song that stands out as a highlight for you?
There’s one called “Nothing but a Slogan” with Liza from Bravo Pueblo singing on that track with me. It’s inspired by a trip I took to Spain last year. We could see across the Strait of Gibraltar to the mountains of Morocco. I was just thinking about how there’s always been a flow of people between Africa and Europe and how strange it was to stand there as someone from the other side of the world.
I started writing about immigration and people moving, changing, and morphing to fit a new way of being. It dovetailed nicely into what I’ve been trying to do musically.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
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