Why did you name your new album Yada Yada?
Central Parks and I called the new album Yada Yada because it fit perfectly. It’s often mistaken for being yiddish, but essentially it’s used in reference to uninteresting or longwinded talk, like when a crusty politician is talking incessantly about something that everyone knows is B.S., or when you want someone to cut to the chase. There is a lot of white noise everywhere we turn our heads these days, and the line between fantasy and reality often begins to blur. Yada Yada was a satirical attempt at responding to that sentiment.
That’s a beautiful old school ride on the album cover. What inspired you to put it on the cover?
Thank you. The biggest inspiration for putting it on the cover was that this has always been an album that I imagined people listening to in the car. Yada Yada has old school roots on steroids so it had to be an old school muscle car. That’s not to say that someone driving a minivan can’t listen to it, but once you press play this project transports you to the driver’s seat of something with a little more character. I didn’t want to put my face on the cover because the story that this album tells is much bigger than me, and that smooth ride is the perfect starting point.
You seem to have some grim ideas about the immediate future. What do you think the next ten years are going to look like?
I wouldn’t say my ideas about the future are necessarily grim, but they are definitely not sugar-coated. The next ten years will contain a lot of good and bad things, as is the way of the world. I see a lot of intense technological growth but this also has the potential to bring about more intense personal and spiritual detachment from the people we care about and the physical world around us. At the same time, communication tools and access to information should become more widely available on a global scale. I think that we are on the brink of some very big changes and it is important to educate as many people as possible so that we may be more readily adaptable. At the end of the day, it’s still survival of the fittest out here. There is a lot of work to do.
What’s a life motto that you try to live by?
One life motto that I have been increasingly trying to live by is “stay chill”. Obviously I could say things like “family forever” and “all life is precious” and “treat others the way you want to be treated” and so on, but those are a given in my book. As humans and animals, sometimes it is easy for us to fly off the handle and make rash decisions in moments of provocation, but remaining calm is almost always a better alternative. Imagine you’re playing basketball and have possession with just two seconds left on the clock. If you fall prey to fear in this situation then you might launch the ball out of bounds or miss the shot, but if you stay chill and collect yourself, all you will hear is “swish”.