Tyler Baum‘s musical education began with a weird neighbor. You know, that spooky guy with long hair who spent his afternoons on his front porch playing solo bass versions of Creedence Clearwater Revival songs. No vocals, no band; just one dude and his bass, making the neighborhood a little stranger.
I’d say that early exposure to DIY weirdness stuck. These days, Baum hoards YouTube videos of obscure songs and movie dialogue, mining them for samples that he’ll mess with for months before deciding if they’re worth pursuing. When it comes to music videos like “Who Kidnaps Who?”, he spends time making paper face masks and seeing what works. His creative process is a blend of patience and impulse, as he sits for weeks before “riding a creative tsunami” to complete his work.
There were so many avenues to explore when I got on the phone with Baum, fresh off the release of his newest album, Postcards from Pangea. Together, we discussed his journey as a musician alongside advancing tech, the art of letting things breathe, and why the best creative sessions still involve equal parts music-making and socializing.
What have you been listening to lately?
Tyler: A song kind of popped back into my brain after a long, long time of hibernating. It’s called “Dancing Nowhere” by Stacey Q, who had a big hit called “Two of Hearts” in the ‘80s. I just started to hear this melody, and I was like, “What is this?” I did some research and found that it was a deep cut from her album, Better Than Heaven. I don’t know why; it just lodged in my brain. I probably heard it when it first came out. And I just had a hankering to listen to it again.
I’ve been listening to a lot of Black Sabbath since we just lost Ozzy Osbourne. I put on Sabotage, which was an album I wasn’t super familiar with. Its cover is endlessly fascinating to examine. I put it on and had it on repeat while I was doing some yard work. I don’t think it has any super big hits on it, but it’s just a great, all-around heavy metal album.
What is the first musician that you remember discovering on your own and obsessing over?
Tyler: My brother had signed up for one of those Columbia House deals where you get like 22 albums for a penny. He’d run out of choices, and he asked me, “Is there anything you like?” And I chose Credence Clearwater Revival‘s Chronicle, which is an assembly of their greatest hits.
I didn’t know a lot of their music, but I was familiar with the hits from a neighbor of ours. Most of the houses were likely built in the mid-1970s and had been somewhat maintained, but his was overgrown, a little dilapidated, and falling apart. This guy would sit on his front porch with very long hair, sort of a spooky vibe to him, and he would play just a bass guitar through an amplifier. He wouldn’t sing or anything; he was playing just bass solo versions of what I later learned to be Credence Clearwater Revival songs.
My parents also had an 8-track cassette of Meco’s Star Wars and Other Intergalactic Funk. It’s pretty much a disco medley of all of the themes used in the Star Wars soundtrack, the first movie. Then there is the other side, which is the Other Intergalactic Funk, featuring long, instrumental disco songs. I used to play that endlessly.
What was the bridge from obsessing over those records to getting into music on your own?
Tyler: I was in the school band for two or three years. My first instrument was saxophone and that kind of got me in the mindset of playing music with other people. I was never really good at reading sheet music. I would always have to write out the notes and figure it out on my own, but it was cool to play some stuff.
The band instructor was just a hothead, an easy-to-infuriate middle-aged man. He was not really supportive, very by-the-book; a no sense of humor, no-nonsense type of person that sort of just didn’t make me excited to go to band practice every day. I was like, “Oh my god, what a strange personality to be in charge of a bunch of sixth or seventh graders just sort of learning their instruments.”
Getting into Creedence Clearwater Revival and other bands on the oldies rock and roll radio station led me into another direction. Guitar entered my life where I asked for one for Christmas and got one. I thoroughly enjoyed having one, but I was initially afraid of it. I didn’t really touch it or really start to play it for about six months or a year afterwards because it hurt my fingers, or I didn’t know what to do.
But then, at some point, perhaps just out of boredom, I picked it up and started figuring things out on my own. I would just have the radio on the oldie station or the classic rock station, and just try to figure out little parts. It might be the vocals or the bass, but I’d just play along, and then once I started to get that, another song comes on, so I’d switch gears. I’d go from Motown to a psychedelic song, and I had to figure something out.
Then I got together with some friends at someone’s house where their parents didn’t mind if we made a bunch of noise, and just tried to learn some very simple garage band-type material. We made a god-awful racket, but it was learning about how to interact with each other, how to just rock out, and have a good time. Most of the time, for every hour we spent in the practice room or in the room playing music, there’d probably be two hours spent just hanging out and drinking soda and eating potato chips. It was a good balance. I try to maintain that balance still today.
How has that process evolved as you’ve gotten older?
Tyler: I’m blown away by the free tools that are available now. I started doing recording music with a four-track, where it’s just a bunch of knobs, and it’s very hands-on. Now, with GarageBand, it blows my mind. I know that it is fairly simple software compared to what else is out there, but it still blows my mind how precisely you can pan tracks with microscopic accuracy. It’s mind-boggling.
I have a big YouTube playlist of weird songs, weird movies with bits of dialogue, and weird TV shows with bits of dialogue. That grows over months and years, but now and then, I’ll go in and grab a couple of videos, transfer them all to MP3, and start experimenting to see what fits. I love taking one thing from one song and another from another song, and then incorporating some dialogue from a movie or TV show, and seeing how it works.
Things might need to be sped up or slowed down or reversed. Out of every five instances of doing that, two of them will have some sort of spark to them, where it’ll be like, “Oh, this sounds really cool. There’s something to explore here.” Since I’m in no rush, there’s no label or manager or anything asking me to do any of this, I’ll let it sit for a couple of weeks or months, then go back, re-examine it, and chop it up a little bit more. Maybe I’ll think about adding some slide guitar or percussion over top of it, with a microphone and some maracas or a tambourine, to make it a little bit more mine and to add my spin on it.
I think things need to sit a little bit and not be touched for a while, so you can kind of come back and rediscover it. I find that’s the same with visual art and music.
That’s a great segue into your visual art work. How do you find that plays with your music? What approach do you take to creating something like the video for “Who Kidnaps Who?”
Tyler: I see it as riding a creative tsunami and just getting it done. An idea occurred to me to create a paper face mask, but I wasn’t sure exactly what I wanted. Instead of just thinking about it, I grabbed some paper, started ripping it into the shape of a human face, and seeing what worked and what it looked like.
I worked fast getting these little paper-faced puppets finished. I could have really spent weeks and months, fine tuning the facial structure and have it be very somewhat realistic. But I liked the charm of “whatever it was is just what it’s going to be” and making sure it doesn’t fall apart too bad and stays together. At least for a couple of takes of filming myself going through the song and getting footage for a video.
And then there’s a whole second half of working on it digitally, where I bring it to life and place it in front of a tropical beach background. And there’s an excitement to see what it’s going to look like. It keeps me interested in what I’m doing because I don’t know what it will look like. And there’s no way to tell unless you just do it. You see what works and what doesn’t work. Maybe I’ll try five or six different backgrounds, experiment with the colors, and adjust the contrast.
At some point, something starts to look interesting. You just make a decision and stick with it, without overthinking it, because you’ll get slowed down and start to doubt yourself. And it was quick. I worked on it for maybe two or three days, working four or five hours at a time.
After that, I took a week and did nothing, just to breathe. I worked on other tasks, and then came back to it for some of the tedious aspects, such as timing issues, where I was trying to time how my mouth or hand were providing the mouth movement.
Who are some of your favorite local/North Carolina bands?
Tyler: The great and almighty Human Pippi Armstrong released an album called The Drogues, and it’s mandatory listening. I would also recommend Zodiac Lovers. He has just released an EP, The King of Living Places.
If I need some invigorating rock and roll, like I’m lifting weights or playing pickleball or something, I would go with a band called The Sammies. They are just straightforward kudzu rock, I guess you’d call it. And then you go with another rock band called The Eyebrows. It’s just high-energy music that will make your eyebrows frizzle and fry out.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
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