it's funny because i i feel like i'm also searching for the easter eggs when she drops them how do you know when it's over man how do you know when it's done how do you know when you're sitting there listening to a song you've probably heard in various incarnations a hundred times that we have to walk away from this one this is this is as close to the feeling as we're gonna get is that tough for you when my my weird nervous
circle the vortex drive starts to abate and i i start to just listen to it like a fan of music um but yeah there's a feeling that sets in well it's beautiful to have big red machine back i'm a huge fan of your self-titled album i have it on every format known to man by the way wonderful vinyl pressing it out i have to say um and it's it's great hearing the two of you you know you know collaborating again you and
justin and bringing in you know um some some new collaborators as well and and someone who obviously has become an essential part of your life story really as a creative tailor on this song and i suppose the obvious question aaron is um when did it become apparent there would be a trade of some sort whatever wildfire happened last year creatively for taylor and i i think it just we didn't want to stop writing songs together um and
still don't really and then i and i you know she's just it's kind of like somehow i ended up on the team with the best player you know so you just want to keep passing the ball to her and um big red machine was a great um opportunity because she she really fell in love with a lot of the music that justin and i were working on because i thought i would share it with her um there's a lot of this music i right before taylor approached
me last year justin and i had been in texas to work on these songs and so they were pretty far along but i shared and i shared a bunch of them with taylor and and she really was inspired by them and and she knew the first record so it just kind of was in the air when we were working on folklore and evermore and some of the songs you know some of the instrumental ideas there were some where she felt like well this might be bigger
a machine and so it just kind of happened naturally after we finished evermore um she wrote renegade and it was you know just like again getting hit by a bolt of lightning or something when when you get the chance to work with someone like her she's just she's a savant and sort of like she's a swan and just this incredibly hard working and wonderful person so it was it was uh just special it's so true you know a lot of
us have to work extra hard because we're not blessed with the um god-given talent and taylor was that unique combination of someone who is and and works as hard as somebody who isn't it's interesting for me to think about big red machine being already sort of on the road to making whatever this become has become um and you and justin who one of the things i love about the way that you both work is that you worship at whatever alter
is is is most exciting and most meaningful to you it doesn't it's not like you work in a structure per se um but still you know you had to make a conscious decision i guess to some degree to put this project whatever momentum was behind it just on pause for a second to be able to really hyper focus on what what became your year with taylor um and i just want to sort of like you know was that a conscious decision or did you
just find yourself working on something else it was so unconscious and i think that's one of the great things about big gray machine is it's not pressurized at all it's just i think for a long time i didn't know if i would actually finish an album um it's really been a vehicle the the band it's not really a band but the project has has been a an excuse to work with justin and sort of like engage like it's our friendship
has been has developed a little bit around it as a you know it's just an excuse to hang out and also a way to collaborate with a lot of other friends and for me personally a way to push music forward that i yes just to grow and to try different things and sort of experiment with sounds and so it's not it hasn't been very uh directed towards finishing something and promoting it it's kind of in some sense it's like outside of those lanes you know
um so it was it was natural like jess and i we we pushed it pretty far ahead last march in texas and we were close to having something that that was nearly an album and then the pandemic happened and and all my work with taylor happened
but it didn't feel it felt connected and honestly i learned so much from the process of making those albums that i think when i came back to big red machine i had this newfound drive and maybe intuition or something i
won't directly quote you because that's a suckers game but i but you said something along the lines of sort of you did refer to the idea of faith in in in in making music and the idea i guess of everybody goes through that in life by the way you know and no matter what you do we all lose touch with the thing that inspired us or or keeps us going and we have to find new ways to to reconnect with it um was that really
where you were at at some point and soon you know in in recent times yeah i think so you get overextended or you get over um you know you get over yourself somehow or and i think because you know obviously with the national we've been at it for so long and um but there's moments where you hit a wall where you you kind of like feel like you've done all the things that you were meant to do or the ideas they run thin
um and so if you find a way to have a creative streak like if you if you strike a vein somehow i mean that's the wrong metaphor but of creativity um i think it's it's a gift and uh you never know when it's gonna come and you never know when it's going to end and i think that's what this album is partially about it's like how long is it how long is it going to last um because that could be that could mean a lot of things but one of them
certainly and this is something i thought about in the last year and um you know whether it's with taylor or anyone else like how long does this creative streak last it's such a present observation that's such a that's such a present observation it's like they tell you to stay in the present as much as possible in life and not get swept up by the anxiety of the past or the future and yet it really does being in the present
moment really does kind of affect your mentality of of i'm having i'm so enjoying what is going on right now how do i possibly hold on to it without i guess to some to some degree ruining it by worrying it's not going to be here tomorrow there's these moments in life and particularly in creative situations where you just you want time to stop so you can savor the moment and have it last but you know that oh don't do that don't do that
it's gonna be gone um and that's something that you know i think about a lot and also just i think a lot of this record is about looking back and a certain kind of nostalgia where you're like maybe you're looking for answers by you know shining a light on things that have happened the song renegade with taylor um you know taylor in such a sweet spot and a spot that you've obviously created for you for with each other for each other
um this this just very clear line of inspiration between what it is that you're writing this is what she wants to write over it and and it i it it seems to me whenever we speak that it still just catches you off guard completely that somehow the two of you found each other and this unspoken chemistry just exists every time we we write a song together we both sort of are a little bit dumbfounded by it or sort of kind of like
like how how is this possible because it feels yeah like the shoe fits so well somehow and i think um something about the way that i think or the way that i relate to music emotionally and then her her incredible acumen or her way of tracing music and her storytelling and her sense of melody that there's something that really clicks yeah and her storytelling in this song you know renegade it's it's um it's it's a
as good as anything we've made together i think and it's also something that i but yeah emotionally was really struck by the first time i heard it just the way she talks about how anxiety and fear get in the way of loving someone or or you know create an inability for someone to love and i think it's incredibly relatable but it's expressed in the context of this fairly experimental sound world although um i think we leaned into the you know the
way it came together as a song it just really it really i think sums up the whole big red machine record here's something else that's new for big red machine fans which you'll notice after the last 18 months of fun and games incredible songwriting success and also healthy amount of taylor swift inspired shenanigans she sure loves an easter egg and here we are with taylor swift's handwriting all over some kind of
countdown scenario that gets everyone's super excited i mean that's just something that i'm playfully introducing to the conversation because it must be something that you really enjoyed it's it's a game that you get to play to see how much people are paying attention and how engaged they are and it's something that she's done better than almost anybody else on the planet in my lifetime as an artist so how how much fun has it been for you
to dance in that room it's funny because i i feel like i'm also searching for the easter eggs when she drops them because there's so many or so you know there's as i'm such a fan of what she does but i think she she her mind she has a sort of mystical mythical elements in her songwriting just kind of are there as a constellation in her mind she sees things patterns that she then drops um in different ways and so sometimes i know and sometimes i
don't know um but it's fun and i think her fan her fans are just incredible that the details that they're interested in i love it it's super fun like it's just i feel like i got invited into this like the best club or something here's what we do know august 27th the album date um we know it's got a title um and we know that there's one song with taylor on it is that where the collaboration ends i mean if you guys
can't stop writing there must be more opportunity for for her to be a part of the big red machine experience in a sort of official unofficial capacity if there isn't even if if there is even an official capacity about the grid machine there's another song called birch that's really really stunning that she sings and is a big part of um with justin and that's more of a duet that's more like that's that's more that trade that we
love when those two get and they trade lines justin sort of leads the charge but she's a huge part of it and um kind of it's a duet then and and i think there's no real it's there's no real lines being drawn as far as when i don't think we i don't know i kind of hope we never stop writing songs together because it's so fun and so illuminating all the time who else was able to um to come along for the ride on this big red machine album
because as you said it's a chance for you to collaborate and to create opportunity for you to to learn from other musicians you know there's so many people that i've worked with in the past and close friends there's sharon bennett and and ben howard and um anis mitchell he's one of my favorite folk singers sings a ton and um there's robin pechnold from fleet foxes joins us on one of the the big big songs and then so many
people name and an amazing instrumentalists and it's kind of like an it's a really open door type project where it it feels like there's 29 different musicians who play on it and it doesn't it kind of it is cohesive because all the music kind of comes from me but that goes to many different places and yeah i'm just really excited about it i feel very really lucky not to put find a point on it my memory may be failing me here anyway
but is this the first time that robin and justin have shared a creative moment like that for a while i think it's the first time that they've ever sung together i mean they the song phoenix is actually about this one conversation that they had in a freight elevator and in a venue called the phoenix in toronto um 10 years ago or many several years ago and i think um yeah so you know robin sings the verses in the pre-chorus and then justin and
nanaes sing the chorus and it's just special to have these two kind of voices from the heavens like together um two great voices from our generation together um like that and it's like something you would dream up but it doesn't often happen so yeah you must have moments when you're hearing justin sing and it's just like you are removed from the situation a conscious situation of what you've created and you become just an unconscious
spectator again a fan again all the time yeah it literally happens almost every time where you yeah he just has this we even i mean i think it even surprises him sometimes because his voice just it's you know your head hits the back of the wall and and um also just his intuition a lot of times the first thing that he sings is the thing you know or like the first idea is the best best idea but there's just a raw
there's a raw force um that is in him and just like this this powerful voice i love this world that you have and continue to build through the music that you love to make and i love how it just keeps attracting people into it and you know like i said i i listen to their self-titled album over and over again the fact we're gonna get another one is just joy to me so thanks for your time erin but most importantly thanks for the music you