In this edition of Getting to know a musical artist we are featuring Christian Howl. He is a trans musician who recently got associated with Grimalkin Records and is working on his next release Once More With Feeling.
Q) Tell us about your latest project. What inspired you to create it?
I’ve been releasing singles from my future album on Bandcamp, “Once More With Feeling”, inspired by a piece of art my wife made on an old iphone of a gravestone with those words on it. “No Place Like Home” is an emotional piece about the all too common queer experience of being disowned by family for your identity. It reflects my feelings around having to cut myself off from the people I feel I should be most connected to. “Somewhere Between Life and Death” is a spacey meditation on another kind of loss I experienced due to a manic episode, it’s a durge for all the lives I once lived and that I know I can never fit myself back into. It’s a portrait of the space between losing everything and moving on. Finally, “Every Old Sock Meets an Old Shoe” is a love song and a tribute to my wife who has given me the stability and support to follow my lifelong dream of sharing my music with the world.
Q) Do you know what your next project is going to be? Can you give us a preview?
My next project is going to be a continuation of the album I mentioned before, I’m eventually going to release “Once More With Feeling” as (at least) a 17 song album. Everything is recorded, I’m just working on titles and art for everything. I’m planning to continue releasing singles on my Bandcamp (available for free), to build up a bit more of a following before releasing the full album, I’m currently at 5 bandcamp followers and I’d love to see that number grow to at least 100 before I put the whole thing out there.
Q) What was the first song you ever performed or put out for people to listen to?
The first song I ever wrote and performed at a coffee shop open mic more than 10 years ago now, I’ve unfortunately forgotten over time and only remember bits and pieces of it, but I was inspired to write it after a close friend took his own life when I was around 19 years old. It was a really devastating loss for me and music was very important for getting through that. After that I never stopped writing songs and sharing them with anyone who would listen.
Q) What do you feel is the most important things a person should take from a piece of music?
For me, it’s about connection, and knowing that you don’t have to be alone even in the darkest places. I hope that my music can basically say, “hey, whatever you’re feeling, I’m here for you, and we can be here together and we can find beauty in our lives even when they’re awful, and we can celebrate together when our lives are happy because that’s important too.”
Q) Do you have a specific creative process when you write new music?
I call it my zen approach to making music, I basically find some chords or make a simple instrumental and just play it and meditate until the words come to me. It really helps me process situations and confront myself in important ways that make me a better person over time. Sometimes I think I’m writing nonsense, but often in hindsight I realize I had been wrestling with something I wasn’t ready to face directly. I think writing this way has been a great container for developing emotional maturity and a deeper understanding of my own insecurities and shortcomings.
Q) What are your biggest dreams and fears around being a musician?
My biggest dream has always been to inspire someone else to want to make music the way that other artists have always inspired me. If someone felt so connected to one of my songs that they wanted to learn it themselves, I would be over the moon, especially if it was one of the first songs they wanted to learn. I can’t imagine anything more validating than that as an artist. My biggest fear is that there’s already too much noise and I’m never going to find that audience that will benefit from all the work I’ve done and will do, and I’ll die without making any real difference in the world.
Q) What do you do to stay inspired, what other performers do you like to keep up with?
I like to play a game I call CD roulette where I go to the local record store and get a few of the discount CDs just based on the covers, I’ve found a lot of my favorite music this way, and I think it’s great for expanding your taste and finding inspiration across genres. I also love to scroll on tiktok to find smaller artists like myself to support, there’s a lot of amazing artists out there that deserve more attention so I try to comment and like as much as I can. A couple of performers I know personally and think are really brilliant are Marble Berry Seeds and Henry Luther and the Blackouts, Henry’s folk revival album and Cam’s (Marble Berry Seeds) The Great Millenial Bitchfest are incredible albums and great places to start. Henry helped me record a few of the songs on my upcoming album, and both of them are great musicians and friends.
Q) If you could tour with one singer or band who would you choose?
Oh man, there are so many that come to mind like The Mountain Goats, the Weakerthans, Copeland, whoever Anthony Green is with now, I’ve been obsessed with so many bands over the years, but of course I’d have to choose my absolute favorite band of all time La Dispute. It’d be a bit of an odd lineup, but Jordan Dreyer is my favorite songwriter of all time and spending time with them would be such a dream.
Q) If people want more information about you or to pick up your music, where should they go?
If you want to keep up with me day to day, I try to post every day on my tiktok. I’ve been getting into making little stop motion videos over there. My youtube has a lot of demos and performances and some of the old music videos I made a while back. My first EP “False Negatives”, from 2020, is on all the streaming platforms, but for my newest and future releases I’m going to be using Bandcamp to avoid supporting the evils of spotify.
Final four questions –we ask everybody.
Q) When the zombies take over the world where will you be?
personally I will not be going out of my way to survive that kind of event. I will just go ahead and pass away when that happens.
Q) What is your favorite fandom?
I’ve always been a big fan of Henry David Thoreau, Civil Disobedience and Walden have had a profound effect on my life and I’ve seen some people online dismissing his work because he had people that helped him survive in the woods, but I think they are missing the point and a lot of what he wrote about was way ahead of his time and still relevant today.
Q) What song or album, do you think people must experience before they die?
Well, I know my taste doesn’t appeal to everyone, but there’s an album by Defeater called “Empty Days and Sleepless Nights” and I think it’s such an amazing example of storytelling, and it’s so cinematic when you get to that part in “White Oak Doors” it just takes my breath away like nothing else. Also have to mention La Dispute’s “Wildlife” especially “King Park” of course, but also “I See Everything” absolutely broke my heart and changed my perspective on religion profoundly, I could go on and on forever honestly. There is so much music that has impacted me deeply and I think everyone should listen to all of it, but I’ll leave at those for now.
Q) Give one fact that most people would not believe about you?
I used to be one of the guys that rides on the back of the garbage truck picking up the bins for about 3 years, and I loved it.
Paper Phoenix ink 