An Interview With…
Taylor Cochrane
(36?)
Taylor Cochrane is the 36 year old frontman of his band, which is named 36? What a cool coincidence! Our conversation revolves around the significance of the number 36, autism being a catalyst for his passion for music, and the stories behind some of the band’s latest tracks. The story behind FEERS made me laugh really hard. I’m sure you’ll like it too. :)
Dylan: Give us some basic background - who are you? How old are you? Where are you from?
Taylor: I'm Taylor. I'm 36 years old, and I’m from Calgary, Alberta.
Dylan: You're really 36 years old right now?
Taylor: Yeah, I am. It’s my golden year.
Dylan: You just got married! Congratulations, that's awesome.
Taylor: Thank you. We tour together as 36? and as her project, Laura Hickli and as our other bandmates project Quiet Winter, we're kind of like a trifecta of bands. We all tour together so we can stay three days in every city, and play three different shows as three different projects, and just get to know everywhere we're going a little bit more than just kind of like the usual tour thing, where you just kind of hang out in a bar and then leave, and that's your whole understanding of the city you're in.
Dylan: That's cool. I was surprised you brought up Garden Grove when we were talking before the interview. Did you and Laura meet through playing music?
Taylor: We met through the Calgary music scene. There’s a local music collaborative project for a science and art festival, and a bunch of us formed, kind of like a Calgary supergroup out of, the more well known local bands to do some silly, science based kind of covers. And then, I started giving her rides to band practice because I really liked being around her. Now we're married. So yeah, it worked out.
Dylan: What's the music scene like where you're from, and what kind of music did you grow up around?
Taylor: Calgary is cool because it's relatively young as far as like, having a musical identity, so the music that comes out of Calgary is all over the map. There's a lot of post-punk stuff, like Women and Preoccupation’s (Viet Cong), those bands kind of have a kind of sound that’s pretty prevalent here, but it's overall a diverse selection of musical genres. I feel like a lot of the bigger music cities have a particular sound, like, I can usually tell when a band comes from Vancouver or Toronto.
Dylan: I was gonna say, how did it influence your own sound? But I guess you guys have a very kind of diverse sound from record to record. So do you think that maybe that played a role in that?
Taylor: I just really love all kinds of music. As long as it sounds like it's coming from a genuine place, and it's produced in a way that feels like it’s portraying the emotion of the music properly, then I'll enjoy it. There's no particular type of genre that I'm particularly drawn to, but I grew up listening to nothing but pop punk. But once I was out of high school, I started to love everything, and so when I'm writing music I feel like I'll be inspired by just something different all the time, and that'll kind of inform what ends up coming out.
Dylan: What are your favorite artists/records?
Taylor: Merriweather Post Pavilion by Animal Collective is a really big one for me. Black Messiah by D'angelo. I really love that record. To Pimp A Butterfly was really big for me. A lot of Akron/Family's earlier stuff was also really influential to me. And I grew up on blink-182.
Dylan: How did you get into creating your own music?
Taylor: I have autism, and [music is] my special interest. In high school, I was definitely a loner, I didn't have a whole lot of friends, and I just found my comfort [in music]. Every day after school, I would just sit in front of my childhood computer, and use pirated versions of recording software. I was using Acid Pro 4.0 at that point. Every day I’d be writing and recording songs in the studio. I think in grades 10 through 12, I wrote and recorded over like 200 songs, all like total trash, pop punk stuff. But that was how I started to figure out who I was. I really thrive writing in the studio. I'm a producer by trade, and I just love exploring sound. Usually when I'm writing a song, it'll just arrive in my head, and the idea will be completely sorted out in my mind and I just need to record all the parts.
Dylan: How did you land on the name 36??
Taylor: When I was figuring myself out through music, I was also just heavily over medicated on ADD medication. It was during the ADD panic era, I guess I'll say, where every single parent was, being very like your child might have ADD. I just went through the ringer with the medication, and ended up on like 10 times more than I had started with after a year of doing it. And basically ADD medication is, like, its stimulants. So the way that ADD works is that your mind is just like, generally under-stimulated. Because of that, you’re constantly searching for stimulation, and that takes the form of being distracted, because nothing can really stimulate your mind enough to be able to do basic tasks. And so I was just like, pumped full of all that stuff as a kid, it was just generally living in a semi psychotic state for the majority of grade 11 and 12, and during that time, I saw the number of 36 as this kind of, I don't know, divine number of some kind that would show up in important moments in my life. I'd always look at the clock and it would be there would be a three six in the clock, or [stuff like that]. I would [also] notice the number 36 coming up in like references in pop culture at the time. I just saw the number everywhere and assigned a divine significance to it. And so then the band name is basically just being like, “Hey, what's this number about?”
Dylan: Do you feel like the significance of the number has changed throughout your life?
Taylor: I do. Nowadays, it's definitely evolved.. I do still get a jumpy feeling whenever it seems to serendipitously [appear]. If it's a particularly special day for the band, and then I go to the burger joint down the street, and then I'm number 36 in their system, I would be like “oh!” you know? It's definitely not as like, it's not as intense as it used to be. I guess it doesn't have its dominion in a lot of ways.
Dylan: Well, I want to talk about the new album. It's called Finding Love//Having Autism. I want to talk about some of the singles you released ahead of the album release. What's wasted about?
Taylor: I always have trouble putting this one into words, but it's basically like the resiliency of staying in [a toxic] relationship, and comparing that to the resiliency of just plastic, and how plastic just takes forever to degrade. It's impressive that plastic can live in a landfill for like, a billion years, but it doesn't mean that it's positive.
Dylan: It might seem like a no-brainer, but I was going to ask you - what's I don't want to go out tonight about?
Taylor: It's about celebrating NOT going to the awesome party. You know what I mean? I feel like there's so many songs about partying, and having a great time partying, and not a lot of songs that say, yeah, sometimes it's just nice to not go to the party. That it would be nice to play video games and hang out in bed with your partner and watch TV for hours. We've been watching Love Island recently.
Dylan: It's kind of awesome, right?
Taylor: It's kind of like an addiction.
Dylan: Okay back to it. What’s FEERS about?
Taylor: Basically, it was my 19th birthday, and I was belligerently wasted. I was hanging out with a bunch of my friends, and two of my friends, this girl that I had a major crush on at the time, and just a friend of mine were making out all night. And then at the end of the night, my friend just like, booted me in the nuts, because, you know, sometimes you just do that. And then I just lost my mind and ran down the street and just kicked a bunch of mirrors off a bunch of random cars a block away from my house, and then walked into my house, and went to bed .I woke up and my mom was like, “the cops are here to arrest you, dear.” I had the level of privilege where I could just, like, walk out and lay down in the back of the cop car and just cry, because I was like, “oh, I need to go to Europe next year! This can't be happening!” Anyways, I had to do an addictions awareness program and some community service. I didn't end up with a permanent record.
Dylan: What's your writing process like? It seems like a lot of it is lived experience, but, and you told me, a lot of it comes to you at once, and you kind of have the complete thing in your head. But is there anything else you'd want to touch on?
Taylor: I'm like an antenna. Sometimes when I'm in the right headspace, I can just receive a song from the cosmos, and then all of a sudden, I just have the entire song written in my head. [Then I’ll] usually think of a certain thing that feels lyrically poetic. If I have a cadence of a particular phrase in my head, it just feels very intuitive to immediately turn it into music. I found that throughout the years of writing music, I've learned how to embrace what is already there with a song. If I ever try to like, change a song into something that’s more palatable to me at the time, it'll always suck. So I've learned to just kind of let it be whatever it is and chase that kind of particular vibe. Ever since I started doing that, I’ve been really happy with everything that gets written that way.
Dylan: Do you have any advice for new artists?
Taylor: My advice, I guess, would be to chase your own thing. If you're making art that's true to you and someone else is like, “this isn't very good,” they're wrong. I mean, as long as you're like, a good person. But yeah, I don't know, stay true to yourself, because life is so much more enjoyable when you’re living it authentically. And don't be afraid to do really fucking crazy shit with art, because pushing the envelope in the arts is so important, and new voices are [as well].
