Art begins before it’s created. This is Spare Notes.

Curiosity, Relationships, Grief, Family, Hope—all these things are baked into the artist's brain before they play a single note, before they paint a single brushstroke or create something that is a passive or intentional expression of themselves. No artist's path of experience is the same as another. This segment is Portrait of the Artist, where the artist is interviewed about their path and about their art.

In this episode Jonah talks to Kelsea Feder, also known as Blums. Her amazing debut album, Sunk Cost Fantasy is out on Take Care Records as of August 7th. It’s a collage, it’s theatrical, it’s a soundscape, it’s a pop record, and it’s a rush of complex emotions and experiences that are sonically explosive. Blums has an extensive background in theater and film, and she has a pop music influence—these show on the record.

Jonah and Feder talk about her background, resilience, personal memory vs art, evolution as an artist, the stakes of relationships, and how Sunk Cost Fantasy came to be this emotive amalgamation of her experiences and reflections.

Bandcamp: https://blums.bandcamp.com/album/sunk-cost-fantasy

IG: https://www.instagram.com/blums____

linktree: https://linktr.ee/blums____

https://www.takecarerecs.com/

Episode Tracks: 1. "Still" 2. "Side of the Road." 3. "Celsius." 4. "Judy." 5. "Cashout." From Sunk Cost Fantasy.

Intro Music: is "XXO" from the album Teeth by Magana: https://maganarama.bandcamp.com/album/teeth

Art begins before it’s created. This is Spare Notes, hosted by Jonah Evans. In this segment, Three questions, Jonah asks the artists three questions. At least one question is about the artist's current project, and the other two are about ideas connected to their artistry overall.

In this episode, Jonah talked to Diego Ramirez of Joudy. Joudy is a Brooklyn-based band, originally formed in their hometown of San Cristobal, Venezuela, in the mid 2010’s. Their new album, Permanent Maintenance, came out July 24th on Trash Casual Records. The band fled intense political climate from their home nation within the last decade and this current record mirrors our current political climate that banks on our constant burnout. There are parallels to what they lived through in Venezuela in the US now. Of Permanent Maintenance, Ramirez said it’s “about accepting that we’re never finished—that healing, love, resistance, and self discovery are all part of a lifelong process of becoming." In the interview, Ramirez and Jonah dive into this idea of permanent maintenance of the body and mind, what it’s like to live in survival mode and transition out of it as well. See you on the other side

Web: https://joudyjoudyjoudy.com/

Bandcamp: https://joudyjoudyjoudy.bandcamp.com/album/permanent-maintenance

IG: https://www.instagram.com/joudy.joudy.joudy/

Trash Causal Records: https://www.trashcasual.com/

(Cropped) Photo by Gabriel Duque: https://www.instagram.com/notduque

Intro Music is "XXO" from the album Teeth by Magana: https://maganarama.bandcamp.com/album/teeth

Spare Notes: Mental Health in Music.

How does music help us process emotion? What does it mean to truly be seen? And what is the distance between who we are and who we think we need to be?

These questions are prevelant in Orphan Prodigy's latest album, Medication for a Modern World and in this interview. It's a title that feels especially relevant today. We live in a world of constant stimulation, endless expectations, and a culture that often asks us to keep producing, keep performing, and keep moving. So what becomes our medication? Is it therapy? Music? Community? Exercise? Authenticity? Or is it learning to build a life that works with our minds instead of against them?

For artists, these questions become even more personal. Creating meaningful work often means balancing creativity with survival, vulnerability with expectation, and finding ways to keep making art in a world that doesn't always make space for it.

In this interview, Jonah Evans is joined by Ian Keller and Danielle Hope of Orphan Prodigy. What began as a conversation about music and mental health became something much larger. They talk about panic disorder, adoption, exposure therapy, authenticity, and what it means to stop chasing the version of yourself you think the world wants and start building a life around who you really are.

Orphan Prodigy: https://orphanprodigy.com/

IG: https://www.instagram.com/orphanprodigy/

Photo by: Francisco Gallo

Jonah Evans: https://jonahinthesnow.com/

Spare Notes Substack: https://sparenotes.substack.com/

Intro Music "XXO" from the album Teeth by Magana: https://maganarama.bandcamp.com/album/teeth

Portrait of the Artist where we learn about the musician's journey, identity, maybe some of their aesthetic or obsessions. And of course, we talk about their latest project.

In this episode, Jonah talked to Nnux (Ana E. López). She’s a “multidisciplinary artist, composer, and performer from Mexico, currently based between Mexico City and Berlin. Her practice weaves electronic and acoustic music, performance art, installation, and digital art, with a deep investment in symbolic languages, poetry, and storytelling. She explores how art can serve as a space for reflecting on our collective potential for personal and social transformation — and our capacity to imagine different futures.” Her new album Metomorphosis just came out!

They talk about the large overarching theme of the album is exploring representations of femininity from different places around the world through mythological stories and metamorphosis aka shifting forms. Notably, shape-shifting myths that involve the Aurhuaco people from Columba, which involve shapeshifters who shift into non-human beings in nature to gain perspective. Check out her album at Metomorfosis when you get a chance!

Nnux: https://www.nnuxmusic.com/

Metamorfosis: https://nnux.bandcamp.com/album/metamorfosis

IG: https://www.instagram.com/_nnux/

Photo/Album art by: Martha Maya

Spare Notes Substack: https://sparenotes.substack.com/

Jonah Evans: https://jonahinthesnow.com/

Intro: "XXO" from the album Teeth by Magana: https://maganarama.bandcamp.com/album/teeth

Nick and Jonah talk about a little music news, live shows and the bands respective albums, and current music obsessions.

Featured artist include SML, CA7RIEL & Paco Amoroso, Panic Shack,  Isaac Wood + Pheobie Bridgers, and Prewn.

Jonah Evans: https://jonahinthesnow.com/

Intro Music: "XXO" from the album Teeth by Magana: https://maganarama.bandcamp.com/album/teeth

Interlude Music: "Yelling" by The Mo-Odds

In this episode of Portrait of the Artist, Jonah Evans and Nick talk to Zofia Smith and Liam Armstrong of She's Green. She's Green is a Minneapolis, Minestota band who just released a new EP called swallowtail. Jonah and nick talk to Liam and Zofia how they found their into music, their recent headline tour in China, Stevie Wonder, and karaoke machines, community, and nature.

She's Green: www.shesgreenband.com

IG: www.instagram.com/shes__green

Photo Finish Records: https://www.photofinishrecords.com/

KEXP Performance: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nvjG6Ke14Is

Artists that came up during the interview: Haze Gazer, Trauma Ray, Knifeplay, Prince (Purple Rain), Glixen, Stevie Wonder, and Oh Hey I Love You.

(Compressed and Cropped) Photo by: Liam Armstrong

Spare Notes Substack: https://sparenotes.substack.com/

Jonah Evans: https://jonahinthesnow.com/

Intro: "XXO" from the album Teeth by Magana: https://maganarama.bandcamp.com/album/teeth

In this episode of Portrait of the Artist, Jonah Evans and Meredith Hobbs Coons talk to Christopher Rountree, conductor and artistic director of Wild Up. They talk about the June 19th release of Wild Up’s fifth volume of their GRAMMY-winning Julius Eastman compendium, Gay Guerilla. The three of them explore touch on the agency, notation, and radical interpretive freedom of Julius Eastman’s work, as well as his philosophy of power, and how performers navigate collective sound-making.

Wild Up: https://www.wildup.org/

Wild Up IG: https://www.instagram.com/wildup/

Christopher Rountree: https://www.wildup.org/people/christopher-rountree/

Wild Up Tiny Desk Performance: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jhWkvi8OPkc

From Wild Up's website/about: “We’re Wild Up. We’re a band. An experiment in its second decade. We make shows, and records. We make projects and tell stories that live somewhere between new music and theater and performance art and pop. The press says things about us. Our leader has a beard. We embrace the kindness of friends and strangers. We have dogs and gardens and kids. We once made the Himalayas out of cardboard, and sang atop them to the stars. We take photos with talismanic art objects. We’re repped by David Lieberman Artists Representatives.”

Photo by: Michael Leviton

Jonah Evans: https://jonahinthesnow.com/

Merideth Hobbs Coons: https://www.meredithhobbscoons.com/

Intro/interlude Music: "XXO" from the album Teeth by Magana: https://maganarama.bandcamp.com/album/teeth

Valley Boy’s new album, Children of Divorce, dropped recently, and Thrin and Jonah get into it with him about being a child of divorce.

Do you see a connection between your mental health and body health? Did your parents ever get divorced? What are some ways you process trauma? Thrin Vianale and Jonah Evans have a conversation with Valley Boy (James) that explores these questions. His album Children of Divorce weaves together stirring vignettes from his childhood and the people who shaped it, after he became a child of divorce at age 12. Other topics they get into include validated feelings when you're a child, unprocessed trauma, getting hives, and how the body keeps score.

Valley Boy: https://valleyboysucks.com/

Big Hassle: https://www.bighassle.com/valley-boy

IG: https://www.instagram.com/valleyboysucks/

tiktok: https://www.tiktok.com/@valleyboysucks

Photo/Album Cover by: Delacey

Intro Music: is "XXO" from the album Teeth by Magana: https://maganarama.bandcamp.com/album/teeth