I have been looking forward to this conversation for a while. Today I got to sit down with Waylon S. Thornton. If you don’t know him he is the lead singer in a duo under his name. I can't express how amazing his unique sound is. Which is why I wanted to sit down with him and talk.

Now if you're a musician, if you don’t already know him for having a recording studio, you're about to. At his house he has set up a recording studio, but not your average one. His studio is based on recording to cassette tapes, on four-track recorders from the 80’s-90’s. When I asked him why he chose this method it honestly made sense to me. I chose it because first and foremost he likes the equipment, second, he likes the limitations it imposes. It's kind of the same reason I am shooting a film camera. It makes me sit back and think about the shot, getting rid of all the extras and focus on the basics. There also happens to be a specific charm to it, both the music and photography. The final aspect to this which I also resonate with is he is making physical evidence that these bands existed. This is a big town, and with bands coming and going, creating artifacts that people can hold onto and not accidentally delete off of a hard drive is important.

We continued to talk a while longer about art, shows, pollution, and family, but this does feel like a proper ending point.

Check out his music, and please if you're an artist, produce something physical in the world. Don’t let it all sit on the computer. Go get a physical recording. Show people, display it, be proud of it.

Now, most of you probably know him for his music. Honestly that's a pretty good way to know him. From my musically-uneducated perspective, he has one of the most unique sounds in Gainesville. I asked him how he found his style and he went on to tell me he had a few false starts with the guitar. He did have music in his house all the time though, from his dad listening to AC/DC, to having southern gospel church music and being surrounded by Bluegrass.

Finally after discovering Wheezer like we all did in the mid 90’s and early 2000’s his guitar playing finally stuck. Shortly after that his musical inspiration shifted towards The Pixies and Beat Happening. While he said he never got into the really heavy hardcore he has a pretty good appreciation of early American hardcore, he likes his guitars with a bit more of a “twang”. At some point he started to get a bit more experimental, he enjoys making unusual music while trying new set ups. He also draws a lot of inspiration from 60’s music, particularly the weirder psychedelic music that they had to overcome without using computers.

Our conversation didn’t start off with music though. We talked about something even more exciting. Government regulations. If you didn’t know a few days ago the US government shut down at a federal level. I won’t go into details why this happened, but in short its pure fucking incompetence. Now for my work we might not see any immediate problems, but will probably see something down the road. Waylon is actually seeing something a bit more immediate with his job working with the FDA and regulatory compliance. The FDA is so short staffed they can’t even get someone to come out and do their job so his company can move forward. I am not trying to get political here, but please go out and vote, local and federal.