1605: Revenge Ballads, Prolific Songwriting and AI in Music with Igor Keller

Robert Plank 0:00 30-six albums in most artists slow down, but Igor Keller just built an entire record around revenge, from mythological betrayals to two true stories of payback. Longboat's latest release, Revenge Ballads, turns one of humanity's darkest impulses into art. We are here to talk about music, to talk about some of these songs that are based on real events, some fictional, some from mythology. There's a single, The Last Voyage of the Gray Goal, and there's just this amazing man, Igor Keller, and he's written about wealth inequality, technology, politics, loss, modern absurdity. He comes from Seattle's jazz scene, and he has the band Long Boat, and he just has some things to say, right? He's got opinions about AI and music, and he's putting out the albums and getting his name out there. So, we're here to just find out about what makes this man tick and what we can learn from him. So, Mr. Igor Keller, how the heck are you?

Igor Keller 1:00 I'm fine. That was, that was quite the intro. Thank you.

Robert Plank 1:04 I do my best, right? And it's, it's fun to like be prepared, but also think on your feet, and also respond with the feedback. It kind of lights all the, the lights in the Christmas tree of your mind up. So, I'm here for you. I'm excited, and I'm here to talk some real talk about just what you're doing to express yourself, so I mean, what is there to you? What should we know?

Igor Keller 1:25 Well, the first major thing is that I don't write love songs, that's why I'm writing about all these other subjects. When it's not that it's not because I'm petulant, it's not because I'm a, you know, I'm a contrarian. It's just that I don't have any insight, and, and so I instead I choose to focus on other topics, and since I write a lot of music, songs tend to coalesce around, around single topics, and they do so organically. They come, I find myself, I found myself writing about music, and so I, in 2015, I made this double album about the life of a musician. It's called Kill the Music. I found myself writing about technology, and so I wrote an entire album about technology, and but for revenge, this seems I'm Eastern European. It's all, and, and other Eastern Europeans will agree with me that, you know, revenge is kind of, is, is, is a very important part of Eastern European society. People, people talk about it all the time. People, people get obsessed by it, and, and it.. I don't know, you know, whether it is, it, whether that's the same among everybody around, in, in, on, you know, on earth, but I, I tend to think about it a lot, and so I decided to make an album about it, but the thing is, is I had to tell compelling stories, and so this album took me longer than usual to write, and I, and I had to, I had to portray different aspects of it, if it was just some, some sort of, like, you have wronged me, you die now, that you know, that is, that was not really that didn't seem like a very compelling subject. So, instead, you take, let's say, for example, the first song is called Medea, and it is basically the plot summary of the play by Euripides that premiered in 430 bc, and so, and but I'm of course, my my assessment is that Jason is the villain of the story, because he has this, this, you know, fairly good woman as a wife, and then he cast her aside, and then she just, she, she just goes on a rampage and ends up killing Jason's fiance, Jason's fiance's dad, who just happened to be king of Corinth, and then their two kids that they had together, and then I always thought that she had left, that, that you know, that her her vengeance had consumed her, and she died, but no, no, she just leaves Corinth and goes to Athens, so she gets it's.. I wouldn't say it's the perfect crime, but she gets away with it, and then.. and then there are other things that the.. the last voyage of the Gray Gull is a. is. is something I made up, and it's, it takes place during World War Two, and it's just basically a freighter strays away from his convoy, and it gets in the sights of a German U-boat, and the U-boat torpedoes the ship, but. The captain decides that he is going to stand and fight, so he turns, he turns his ship on the U-boat and rams it, and but the thing is, is everybody dies, every single person dies. And then there are, there are eight other songs that are, you know, there's, there's Slavic legend, there's one that I made up about a concentration camp prisoner tracking down his, his former guard, who you know, terrorized him and made his life hell, and, and that has a surprise ending. You're gonna have to listen to it. It's called The Devil of Days Involved. I won't give it away, but it is it, I think. think I did an okay job with it in describing the situation, and also resolving it too.

Robert Plank 5:49 Very cool. So you put out some unique stuff, don't you? And I know that, yeah, so to put it mildly, right? You

Igor Keller 5:56 I try, I try.

Robert Plank 5:58 You don't want to have the same cookie cutter stuff, because I know that you're there's there's a lot of like AI music out there. Well, and even before AI, it just seemed like there's there's like a scientific formula, right? There's like a lot of, a lot of music sounds the same. It's like when, when we were kids, you know, there's like there's like 80s music and 90s, and then it seemed like at least for me like maybe 2015 and after, I mean, I don't even recognize the songs anymore, and they all just kind of, they don't seem to be as memorable, and I know you put out things like electronic blues, and so it's like some of these stories, some of this kind of experimenting that comes out, I mean, do you think that the satire and the strong narratives, etc. kind of, you know, gets attention versus all the all the blandness that seems to be surrounding us.

Igor Keller 6:49 Yeah. Well, I mean, I try to make my, my music as distinctive as possible, and my voice is, is kind of unique in the way that, you know, I, my voice is lower, I don't have, I don't have this sort of piercing tenor, and, and, and, so it, it, there is a little bit of gravity that goes along with it, and at the same time, you know, it, I sort of deliver a sort of different kind of melody, because my, my, the music is the music, actually comes first, the and then I do the, it start, it starts as a song, start everything begins that way, and then it becomes a, I do an arrangement, I decide that. Okay, I'm gonna make this, this start into a song. I, I write the arrangement, and then the lyrics come last afterwards, and somehow the song tells me what it wants to be about, and, and then you know, I kind of go with it there after that.

Robert Plank 8:00 Well, that's very cool, and I find it fascinating, the art and the science of it all, right? Because, like, music is math, and it's the people that don't know, they take for granted the amount of work that goes in, and I always just find it fascinating, like hearing about a process, like when I podcast, I talk to a lot of writers, and it's there's a lot of parallels, right. There's like, well, they know what the plot is, or what the characters would be, and at some point it takes on a life of its own, and it seems like a lot of the like successful creators of any kind, right, like visual arts, writing, music, etc. It seems like the successful ones have a process, because, like, there is chaos within it, but there's definitely like a step by step procedure to get to quality and to get to success, so that way they can kind of like have a continuous flow versus like because like no one wants to be someone that's uninspired for five years and then oh like a song popped into my head, I'll make it, and then you don't get anything else for five years, so I like, and I appreciate the discipline and the deliberateness of you, but then the output ends up being something totally crazy, and people just don't even appreciate all the hard work you do.

Igor Keller 9:17 Well, you know, it's if you wait around for inspiration, you won't, you know, I, you might write two songs a year, and last year I was, I was able to write and record 96 of them, and and so I, it's what I do, and, and you know, this is my secret to writing lots of music, is that I make sure that that most of the tunes that I'm writing are at the same point as we go along. It's like I am making, I am making arrangements now, and then I am writing lyrics, and then I am refining the lyrics. I'm workshop. The tunes, and so it's like you have these, say, 15 tunes on an album, and they're all at the same same stage of completion, and, and things, and at first it seems like you're never going to get anything done, and then suddenly you're writing lyrics, and it's like, oh, hey, these are songs now, and you know I'm going to be recording them in three months, and, and, and then you just kind of start living in them, and, and they become, you know, they, they are, of course, personal, personal expressions of what you, what you think, and, and what your opinions, opinion about certain things could, should be, but the thing is, this is once you start singing them, you feel like you own them, you feel like they're they're coming from you, and they feel like you feel like they belong to you, and you're setting them free in the world.

Robert Plank 10:58 Very cool. And do you think maybe like, does this quantity lead to quality, like when you create 92 songs, are some of them just unsalvageable, really bad, and then just that, just the aspect of you just, you create so many, and then some good ones arise to the surface, or like, you know, what's what's that like, like, as far as when you crank them out, like, they can't all be like really exceptional, can they?

Igor Keller 11:23 You know, something out of all the songs that I've, that I wrote for last year, I like all of them, I really do. There are some that I like more than others, but there are none that I list that you know I put on and I go, "Oh, this one, no, no, no. I like my own music, I do, because I have, I have a sort of standard of quality, if, if, and, and I, if I don't like the song, I don't put it on the album, if, if the lyrics are bad, I don't put it on the album, and, and I, I have this kind of artificial threshold, it's like if I feel that the song is less than, say, I 70% to my liking, then it's, it's not, it's not going on any album, and if, if it's, if it's upwards of that, then fine, I have one song on Kill to Music that I feel is like about around 70% and everything else is is above that, and there are there are some songs on on revenge ballads that it's like, yeah, that's 100% of the song that I wanted, that is, it's it's 100% and that's why I'm so, you know, excited about this, about the album, because first of all, it was a lot of work. Second of all, it's all live instruments, and, and it's, it's got it's got a mood, and it's got an attitude as well, and I'm, and I'm really, really glad that I recorded it with, with the band that I, that I have, they're just wonderful musicians.

Robert Plank 13:05 Very cool. So, you've got a quality standard, and you've got pride of ownership. And I have a friend who's a vocalist, and he just, he says things like, "Oh, I want to put up music, I want to put out an album, and I say things like, "You know, sign up for CD, baby, get on iTunes, do a Spotify, get a YouTube, get an Instagram, and he hasn't done any of this, and I'm curious about like the struggling musicians out there, who maybe they, they recorded good music, but they're like, well, how do I approach a band such as you have, or like, what do I do, and what are the platforms, how do I get my music out there? Do you have any thoughts about, like, what should be done as far as the marketing of your music?

Igor Keller 13:46 Well, you know, they're, they're CD Baby is is a good alternative because they can distribute your music to streaming platforms, and that is very convenient. Also, Distro Kid is good as well, they, they do a lot of the same things, but they're, they're, they're, they're, it seems like their net is a little wider, they, they might do a few more platforms than CD Baby, but redundancy is not, is not a bad thing when it comes to this, and I mean, when I first recorded, I recorded my first album in 2011 and I thought, I thought, you know, I'm just gonna put it out, and people are gonna love it, but no, it requires more than that, it really does, and you know, you have to let people know that it's that it's out, and that you know you, you in some cases you have to tell them why they're going to like it, you have to, you have to be persuasive, you can't be, you can't be sort of like declamatory, it's like you would like this or else, but no. You have to, you have to persuade people to like your music, and, and I'm still in that process right now, but I'm not going to stop making music, and right now, what I'm, what I'm doing is in response to AI, I am converting a lot of my music to just solo piano arrangements, it's piano and voice, and, and that's what I'm doing now, and and I'm actually going to the next few albums that I do are just going to be piano and voice, it's going to be, you know, it or solo, just solo piano, solo instrumental piano, that's going to be my next album, and all the stuff sounds kind of like Eric Sati, and, and, and I'm, you know, I'm busy learning all 12 of those tunes, and then I'm probably going to write some more, and then write some, write some tunes with vocals, and, and record those as well. So, hey, look at me, I'm a pianist now.

Robert Plank 16:09 Yeah, you're learning or and applying new skills, and you're prolific, you're not stopping. And you mentioned AI, because, like, you know, AI's gotten into everything, and I think the most mainstream usage is the chat and the writing, and my son is six, and about a year ago I discovered the AI music, because for a kid, you know, I'm like, well, I could make a song that mentions his name, mentions his activities, favorite toys, gets him to use the bathroom, things like that, and I think it blew his mind, and it was a lot of fun, but it kind of.. I don't know, it just.. it sometimes didn't make sense, and it was just kind of weird and random, but then you hear these newer stories about, like, there's, you know, whole bands that get, like, millions of plays on Spotify, or whole musicians, and then it turns out, oh, well, this person doesn't even exist, it's AI, and so I mean it, it's it's it seems like there's the enshitification, is the word, right? It's like a lot of bad quality, but I mean, what's your take on it? Like, is it, is it good as a starting point? Will it eventually replace humans with what's happening with AI music?

Igor Keller 17:20 Well, I, the thing is that I just steer clear of it. It can, it can correct my spelling, but that's about as far as I want to let it in, because it is not it. It only compiles, it is not creative itself, and it doesn't care whether what it produces makes sense or not. It's just following these parameters. It doesn't have a brain, it, and so I, I do, I don't trust it. I, I avoid it like the plague, and, but you know what I'm doing right now is a reaction to that, and, and, which is, you know, my fingers hit piano keys every day. I played for today, I played for four and a half hours yesterday, I played for six, and, and you know, it's just I play for hours and hours a day, because I need to get better in order to, you know, to learn these, you know, right now I know about 90 or 100 of my own tunes, and so I've, I'm just, I'm just learning all of these, so that I can play them in public, and so that I can, and you know, and this is, and, but the thing is, this is that an AI band can never sit in, can never be in the same room as its audience, and it could never try to actually convey a real emotion in, and, and in a genuine way, or or tell a story that makes sense in a coherent way too, so I mean, I, it's to me it is for people who are making money from this, who are trying to make money for it from it, it's just greed, and it's laziness too. It's complete laziness. I mean, I can, I can go to the computer and say, write me a Beatles song, or, you know, write the White Album for me, and it will, and it will be crappy, and, but the thing is, this, you know, humans write crappy music too, but, but, and, and, and maybe our standards have fallen so low that you know AI people can't really tell any the difference between bad songwriting, bad human songwriting, and bad AI, but, but I really, I have things to say, and it's, it's important for me to say them to people, and, and, and you know, and this is the best way I can think of at the moment to, to relate to an audience.

Robert Plank 20:18 Very nice. So you're fighting for your humanity, and that's that, that's I love the intangibles with music, like there's the, like you said, like there's the emotion, and there's like the live studio audience aspect, and with AI it's such an average, right, and it's like with any AI, my brain keeps going back to there was a TV show, The Good Place, and with Ted Danson, and like, the in the afterlife, there was no ice cream, but every shop was frozen yogurt, and it's like frozen yogurt, it's like ice cream, but like not as good, and he's like, there's something very human about ruining something a little, so you can have more of it, and that's what the AI seems like, like, oh, do you want to have 200 more Beatles albums, they won't be very good, but hey, you can have all these, and so it's like, yeah, it's, it's, it's interesting to think about just avoiding, and you know, it'll be out there, but you can choose to avoid it, and focus on what, what excites you, and what you used to express to others, and so it's, it's been such a blast, just kind of jumping all around the topics, and just finding about how you've found your voice and how you're putting in the repetitions, I mean, like, I, you're giving me flashbacks, so I was in school band for like five years playing saxophone, also, and, but I mean, nowhere near to nowhere near your skill level, but I know, like, I, I worked my way up to first share, and the way I did that was, I practiced an hour after school, and I hated it. My dad made me do it, and then after a certain age, I stopped doing the hour of practice, and then I like fell back in quality, and it's like, you can be so good, but you have to keep on keeping the muscle strong, right? And keep on creating, and it's like that's just such a helpful lesson for me in life, it's like if you let the muscles get weak and let the belly flap come back, and then you won't, won't be as good, and it'll be harder to get back in shape, so to speak. And so it's, it's fascinating to hear about what you've done, but in these final few minutes, I want to make sure we focus on what's important to you, mr. Igor Keller. So, what do you think in this conversation might be the missing question that I should be asking you. I just don't know to ask you.

Igor Keller 22:26 Well, it's maybe a statement that, that, that basically art, music, visual art, film, everything like that is essentially communication, and, and the thing is, this is you, this, it's always about learning how to communicate, how better to communicate, and and how to express a point, so that it's coherent, and also it's something that you find satisfying, because you know, I, I find myself sort of avoiding the ordinary rhymes, because you know, my lyrics rhyme, and, and, and, and, so, but at the same time I'm trying to, I'm trying to communicate something, I'm trying to tell a story, and, and you know, music is, it's not a, it's not just a pretty tune, it's not just a hook, it's not just an earworm, it is essentially communication, and that's what I'm trying to do here, and then, but, but the cherry on top is having a relationship with your audience, having having people in the room and saying things that actually make that resonate with people, and even, even if you're, you're writing about the, the, you know, vagaries of self-driving cars, you know, you, you want to, you want to communicate a certain idea, and you know you're not going to get a tremendous emotional response, you might get people laughing at it, but, but you know, it's like self-driving cars, or what? How you know billionaires are untrustworthy, and things like that. You could have people going, yeah, you know, I kind of thought about that too, and you know, because I, I don't, in a lot of indie music, there is the tendency to write songs that are about nothing, and, and call your, your lyrics poetry, and that to me, that's a cop-out, that's a cop-out is about as big as AI, that you know, you have to have, you have to try to communicate something to your audience.

Robert Plank 24:43 Yeah, I agree. Have a message, and it's like when in college I took a couple of music classes as electives, and my mind was blown at John Cage, four minutes 33 seconds, where it's just the sheet music is just.. it's nothing, all the orchestras. Silent, but then the random, you know, someone laughing or breathing or coughing, hairs freaking.. it's like, such a.. such a.. I mean, it just.. it blows your mind, but it's like there can only be one of those, right? Like, yeah, he somehow.. he thought of.. who knows how he even thought.. how John Cage thought of that, but then it's like.. well, if everyone did that or hijacked it, then it's like, okay, well, that's the find your own shit, right? Find your own message to tell, and similarly, like, we could be here on a podcast and just be talking nonsense, and it might be funny for a few minutes, but then it's like, okay, well, what's this leading to? What does it really mean? How can, how can this be useful to me, either through entertainment or me applying this and and also I'm getting from your your thought process here is how important it is to have fun and take the boring and make it interesting, right? Even if you're talking about self-driving cars, like, find a way to jazz it, jazz it up, as you might say, and spice it up and just make it something that that interests people, because we can always, like, you know, look at what you know, IBM and Apple and Microsoft, that's computers are so boring, but then they found ways to say, hey, well, you know, you can use this iPad, and you can, you know, write all the, have all these instruments in here digitally, so it's like, find the magic in it, find a way to have fun for yourself and others, and communicate, and so you've given us quite an education so far. And I don't know much about your music, but it's been good just hearing about your process and what you've created. But if someone says, all right, I've got to listen to this guy now, I've got to check out this prolific song writer, I've got to go and and jump into lose your shit, a hole in the air, what they tell me, etc. What are some next steps here? How can someone listen to your music and find out more about you and your, your possible live shows, performances, albums, etc.

Igor Keller 26:55 Well, you can find everything, you can stream all 35 albums that are now released. The 36 isn't getting released for another week and a half or so, but 35 albums are on my website at longboat.band under the discography tab, so you can listen to all of them to your heart's content. I don't have any recommendations. I like a lot of them, I like all of them. I'm, I'm, I'm very happy with the, the ones that are recent, just because I listened to those more than, than the ones from, say, 10 years ago, but, but the, the, I did write an album about technology 10 years ago, and it's called E minus, and the funny thing is, is that it actually has most of the songs stand up have stood up over the last 10 years, and and the whole sort of, you know, the the social impairments, and and our our failed our foiled hopes in technology, those are still around, and I wrote songs about them, so you know, tell, tell, listen to E minus, and tell me, what if, if you know my take on technology has, has, has aged well or not.

Robert Plank 28:20 Oh, nice. Some things stand the test of time. Well, you're definitely an innovator in many ways, and so we can check out that, that all these albums go to longboat.band. There's the tab that says discography, and if you're scrolling through and you're saying, well, where should I start? Then Igor says E minus is, oh, and yeah, there's like D plus, D minus, E plus, so find E minus and let him know what you think, and if that album recorded 10 years ago still stands up, because we still sometimes it's just, you know, same problems, different year, and so we've been speaking with Igor Keller from Long Boat, they are a band from Seattle that makes pop music, and they perform a wide variety of genres, from garage to electronica, but it's all pop, and they don't do love songs, and they just have all kinds of details on that website, longboat.band, based in Belltown, Washington, and check them out, and if you're a fan of YouTube, Spotify, or you want to buy the albums, then you can go in to your preferred platform of choice and let Mr. Igor Keller know what you think, because he is an innovator, and like I think all artists should, don't just stop, right, it's, it's a, it's cruel to the world, you put out a little bit, and you just put an end to it, like, keep putting out some, some new stuff, and see what comes up. So that's longboat.band is the hub. But before I let you go, Mr. Igor, it's time for the scary part of the show, where I try to stump you. I try to put you on the spot, but luckily you're a jazz musician, so of course you can improvise. And the question is, do you have a fun or in. Interesting quote or lesson that has served you.

Igor Keller 30:03 Oh yeah, well, I have, I have a personal motto, and this, this goes, this pertains to the newest album. It is, it's Latin, it's Ultio et Pax, and it means vengeance and peace, and it seems it seems very, very appropriate to my, you know, Eastern European spirit.

Robert Plank 30:28 Oh, fun. So, you write what you know, right? You know vengeance, you know peace, you know revenge. And hey, some people say that success is the best revenge, so it can take many forms, and you can definitely have fun with it. And so, Igor Keller, the mastermind behind Longboat, they're a boundary-pushing band project, and it blends Mr. Igor Keller's singular vision with contributions from a rotating cast of live musicians. He's a former jazz tenor, saxophonist in Seattle's vibrant music scene, but now he's in pop with a flare for the unconventional, so find him on Spotify, find him on Apple Podcasts, find him on Anchor, but go to longboat.band and just check out what he's up to, what he's creating, and you'll have such a blast, because he is an undiscovered gem, perhaps for you out there, who maybe you want something new to listen to off the beaten path, so Mr. Igor Keller, thank you for being here, educating us, entertaining us, and just sharing your thoughts and your music with us. I'm very grateful.

Igor Keller 31:30 Oh, I've had a great time. Thanks for having me.