Interview: Healy on Joshua Tree, Dan Harmon, and Subluxation
Ethan Healy is a native Memphian currently working towards his Doctorate of Physical Therapy. Chilling in his parked car with the AC cranking outside of a sushi restaurant in Memphis, Ethan joined us via FaceTime to talk about his latest album, Subluxe, and his process in creating the album:
MTIG: So thanks to Instagram, we think we gathered that you went to some Sedona-ish place to record this?
Ethan: A portion of it, yeah. I did a lot of it in my room just because I like the intimacy, I like being able to be myself. I didn’t go into a studio for it at all. So I met my two producers, Grant and Conrad, but they go by YOG$ and PLC, they met me out in Joshua Tree. I’d just watched “Rattle and Hum,” U2’s documentary about the album Joshua Tree, and I was like “aah, we gotta go.”
So we went out there for five days and ended up making 12 or so tracks, but really only two of them stuck. We recorded “Look Like God” and “Chaparral” there, and I did the vocal recording back home. In “Look Like God” it’s literally us playing it back and listening to the song and watching the sunset in Joshua Tree. Super surreal and very honest.
MTIG: So how did you know when you were done with the album?
Ethan: Well this is cool I get to talk about this right off the bat. Are you familiar with the show “Community”?
MTIG: That’s literally our favorite show of all time.
Ethan: Okay, perfect! So Dan Harmon, the guy that created it, he also does “Rick and Morty.”
MTIG: You’re our favorite person.
Ethan: Dan Harmon coined this “eight-point story structure,” and that’s what the first project was based on, so I knew at least one track was going to fulfill one part in this structure. The first part is the character in a zone of comfort. Number 2: they realize they want something. Number 3: they enter an unfamiliar situation. 4: they adapt to the situation and 5: they get what they want. Eventually, they return to their previous situation having changed, so it’s like the hero’s tale, almost.
So I knew that it was done when the whole story was told and I felt comfortable with a number of tracks that were on it.
I read this book a couple days ago and I found in it this one thing that was said a big part of creativity is subtraction. And that was a big part, was having to realize we had 16 or so tracks but I had to take four of them out because they didn't add to the project. So there’s purpose in every one.
MTIG: So what does “Subluxe” mean and what story are you trying to tell with that album title?
Ethan: “Subluxe” is short for “subluxation.” A dislocation and subluxation refer to the movement of two joint surfaces apart. A dislocation is what you typically hear if someone dislocates their shoulder, it pops out of the socket. And, so, when you sublux your shoulder or sublux a joint, it comes out of its normal anatomic position, but then returns to its original position. So, when thinking about the story structure and thinking about just the word itself, that idea stuck.
But really, the main gist of it was the connection between the joint moving out and returning to its place, just like the character. It’s different points in this person’s life, and of course, there’s going to be inspiration drawn from my life drawn throughout it. I tried to make it remain a character that wasn't truly me.
I saw it almost as a past life or a future life type of thing. It outlined the character as he tries music and eventually goes out West and makes it big and then realizes that’s not really what he wanted and eventually comes back to his original position, or original place in life and everything’s changed around him, including himself, and it’s a reflecting moment.
MTIG: Throughout the whole story, what’s your favorite part?
Ethan: Aww man, I think it changes. I think for a brief moment, I really liked the beginning. I spent way more time on “Reckless” than a lot of the tracks on there, and you can probably hear it.
And then “Butternut” was a cool song that just wrote itself, in like five minutes. I don’t remember writing the song, it just came out. It was really really cool. I think, honestly, I go back and forth but I think I like the beginning just because it’s a lot of character introduction and I get to speak my mind.
MTIG: Talking about how this is telling the story of this character that’s obviously influenced by you, it seems like both Memphis and Physical Therapy and school influence that. Every now and then, we’re like, “Did he just say Punnett square? Did he just say double helix?
Ethan: Yeah, that’s totally right. I try to sprinkle in the right amount of, I wouldn’t say “intellectual stuff,” but words and phrases that you would not typically expect to hear. I definitely used to overdo it and I noticed it, and thought, okay, I definitely want it to still remain palatable and digestible to where people aren’t overcome with “oh man, he’s really trying to push this scientific smart rap agenda on me and I’m not really about it” kind of thing. But yeah, PT and Memphis and me are huge… I definitely innovated those three things to make the project, for sure.
MTIG: In a lot of the songs, you use a lot of pretty cool samples, for example, text message sounds. What’s your favorite sample that you’ve used and what makes you decide a certain sample should go in a certain place?
Ethan: So, synesthesia is an interconnectedness and interplay of senses. Kendrick has it, Maggie Rogers has it, Van Gogh had it. When they hear sounds they see colors or they see people’s names or they see images of people or they look at words or letters or numbers and see them in colors. So I started thinking about that stuff, and I started thinking how multi sensory experiences grab people so much more.
I bought this microphone, it’s a “3Dio” microphone, shaped like human ears, and the way it’s recorded and the way it plays back, it sounds like how you would normally hear it in person. So, I did a lot of recording at my window of the birds and the train, and honestly, the texting stuff just fell in there. It was crazy, in “Butternut,” I set my phone down and I was recording the vocals with the microphone, and then you can hear that Grant texted me, like, as soon as it went quiet between two chords, and it was a “zzhuuup” kind of thing, and I thought now that I know that this is happening, I have to really use it to most of my abilities.
So, I think my favorite sounds were in “Grape Soda.” At the end of the song, I recorded myself taking the garbage out outside. It sounds like a gate shutting and some clanking, which is me throwing the cans, a bag in the garbage can. The end of “Grape Soda,” is “try to see you when I wake up,” and it cuts out, and it’s my bed. I need a new bed frame or something, but it’s super creaky. So I lean over in bed, and you hear the “eeeerrrrr” from the box spring, and you can kind of hear me exhale, and I think that’s my favorite.
But the train was totally accidental, and it turned into an anchor for the project. When you hear the train in the songs, the character’s in Memphis. When you don’t hear the train, he’s not in Memphis. So, if you go back, recording “Python” was the first time the train spoke on the album. It was totally accidental, but it harmonized with the song, and so I thought, “I’m going to start doing this more.” Eventually I started waiting for the train to come by to record it either just making noise or harmonizing with other songs on the album.
MTIG: Because you said that the train is something you can hear from your room in Memphis?
Ethan: Yeah, so the train runs literally probably 100 yards from my house. Right when I moved in, it was waking me up at 4:00 am and I was so mad. But one night I was studying, and out of nowhere, I hear this weird rumble. And it keeps going and it doesn't blow its horn, and thought, “Dang.” I’ve never heard a train going by without blowing its horn, it sounds so nice. And that’s where I learned to appreciate it.
And then the train started harmonizing with everything that I did and I started hearing harmonies within life everywhere I went. So that’s when I caught the hint and thought, “Maybe I need to use this.”
MTIG: We know you started off with a more singer/songwriter-y style and moved towards hip-hop and rap avenues. How’d you get started with music and what lead you to this transition?
Ethan: With guitar, I realized I couldn’t find the melodies I was looking for, so I branched out to finding beats online and making stuff on keyboard or piano, and that’s when I made a couple solo hip-hop projects. I made one with five or six tracks, and then, after that, I made a concept one. I wanted to make it sound like it came out right when I was born.
I grew up listening to Lil Wayne and Kanye. My first day of school, going to high school, I heard the first track on Graduation, which is “Good Morning.” The first words I heard when I got in the car on my first day of high school were “welcome to graduation,” and I thought, this is kind of crazy. And immediately, Kanye stuck with me. I knew I had a good sense of rhythm and I wanted to give hip-hop a try, and I started finding out more about myself through that.
You can listen to Healy's debut album "Subluxe" on Spotify or Soundcloud. Follow him on Facebook for his newest updates on all things concerts and new music.